Jon Sumrall’s Teenage Son Left the Game Early and Texted Him: “I Don’t Know That This Is Forgivable.”
Jon Sumrall took the Florida job and inherited the hardest version of it: a program with expectations, a schedule with no mercy, and a fan base that has spent two decades comparing everything to a standard set in 2008.
On Saturday, South Carolina came to Gainesville and won 38-19. On Monday, Sumrall told reporters that his son Sam left the game early and sent him a text.
“I don’t know that this is forgivable,” it read.
Why He Shared It
Coaches usually keep family out of the podium. Sumrall put it out there himself, unprompted by any question about his household, and the choice says something about where he is five games into the job.
It is a way of saying he understands the temperature without having to say he understands the temperature. A head coach cannot stand up and agree that his team was unacceptable. He can quote a teenager who already did.
It is also, if you have ever been a 15-year-old at a game your dad is losing, completely believable.
The Game Was As Bad As the Text
Florida fell to 4-2 overall and 1-2 in the SEC. South Carolina controlled it.
Sumrall’s read on the opponent was blunt: “They’re the best talent team that we have played to date.”
That is a defensible statement and a dangerous one. It is true that South Carolina has NFL talent across the roster. It is also the kind of line that gets replayed if Florida loses to someone with less.
The Schedule Does Not Care
No. 7 Texas comes to Gainesville on October 17. That is a team that just played in the Red River game and sits firmly in the playoff conversation.
Florida at 4-2 with a home loss to South Carolina and Texas on deck is not a crisis. It is also not a position any first-year coach wants heading into the back half of an SEC schedule.
The Gators were preseason No. 1 in college basketball, which is its own strange backdrop. The football program is the one that decides how Gainesville feels in October.
The Larger Point
Sumrall came from Tulane and Troy with a reputation as a builder and a culture guy. Those reputations survive year one almost universally, because everyone grants a first-year coach a grace period.
What the Sam Sumrall text actually demonstrates is that the grace period in Gainesville is shorter than the one in most places, and the coach knows it. He is not pretending otherwise.
Beating Texas on Saturday would make the whole thing a funny story he tells at a banquet in five years. Losing to Texas makes it the first entry in a much longer file.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
