Bianchi: The more Lane Kiffin talks, the better Jon Sumrall looks

“Gotta earn it. Gotta earn the logo,” Sumrall said. “We ain’t earned it yet. We haven’t earned a damn thing.”

And unlike so many modern coaches who tiptoe around entitled players who earn seven-figure salaries, Sumrall sounds refreshingly unapologetic about demanding more from his mercenary millionaires.

“If a guy wants to act a certain way about doing something tough, I’m like, ‘You make money, shut up bro,’” Sumrall told Sirius XM. “‘You’re getting paid, dawg, put the work in.’”

That line alone probably made half of Gator Nation want to run through a wall, because Florida fans don’t want to hear another coach talking endlessly about “process.” They want to hear somebody demanding something, and Sumrall clearly does.

They also DON’T want to hear somebody preaching patience, and Sumrall isn’t.

“I’ve got expectations to win every game we play,” Sumrall said a few days ago on the Action Sports Jax podcast. “I’m not comfortable with anybody going, ‘Hey, how many games are you comfortable winning this year?’ If anybody tells me bowl eligible, we’d better be, or I’ll be at the top of the stadium getting ready to do something stupid. … To me, you have to have urgency every day. As soon as you put a ceiling or a cap on what you can do and start to think with limits in mind, you’re automatically handicapping yourself. For me, our expectations are for our guys to expect to win every freaking time that we take the field.”

Now let’s compare that energy to the chaos surrounding Kiffin right now. His exit from Ole Miss already turned him into one of the biggest villains in college football. The Rebels were enjoying the greatest season of the modern era and preparing for the College Football Playoff when Kiffin bolted for LSU in spectacularly messy fashion.

He reportedly fought with administrators over whether he could continue coaching Ole Miss during the playoff while simultaneously taking over a direct SEC rival. Staff members were caught in the middle. Players were blindsided. The entire thing looked less like a professional transition and more like a reality television meltdown.

And then this week came perhaps the most tone-deaf moment yet. In a Vanity Fair interview, Kiffin tried explaining why LSU is easier to recruit to than Ole Miss, essentially saying some Black recruits and their families didn’t want to play in Oxford because of the school’s racial history.

Factually, he’s not entirely wrong. Politically, socially and publicly, though, it was an absolute disaster because Kiffin coached at Ole Miss for six years and never once seemed interested in publicly discussing Mississippi’s complicated racial history while cashing paychecks and winning games there. Now suddenly he talks as if LSU is the Stanford of the South in terms of diversity and progressiveness.

As I wrote earlier this week, Kiffin is like the employee who leaves Applebee’s for Chili’s and suddenly brags about the international cuisine.

The comments reopened every uncomfortable conversation tied to Ole Miss and Mississippi’s past — the Confederate imagery, the old “Dixie” traditions, Colonel Reb and even the origins of the “Ole Miss” nickname itself. Whether Kiffin intended it or not, he walked directly into a cultural minefield while simultaneously making himself look opportunistic and self-serving.

That’s the problem with Kiffin. He’s brilliant offensively. He’s magnetic. He’s entertaining. But eventually the storm always follows him. Drama follows him. Chaos follows him. Self-inflicted wounds follow him.

Florida fans wanted the Lane Train because they were desperate for excitement, but excitement and stability are not the same thing.

Meanwhile, Sumrall seems to be trying to build something that at least appears rooted in discipline, toughness and accountability. While Kiffin takes hot yoga classes, Sumrall is lifting weights at 6 a.m. with his players.

What Sumrall seems to understand is that the Gators lost their edge and their identity years ago. They stopped looking hungry and, too often, looked comfortable being mediocre.

Sumrall clearly finds that unacceptable.

Will any of this guarantee victories? Of course not. The SEC doesn’t care about offseason culture victories. Florida still has to beat Georgia, survive nine SEC games and prove it can matter nationally again.

And maybe Kiffin wins huge at LSU while Sumrall flames out in three years. That’s entirely possible.

But sitting here today — five months after Florida fans thought the sky was falling because Lane Kiffin said no — it suddenly feels possible that the Gators may have ended up with the better fit after all.

Email me at mbianchi@orlandosentinel.com. Hit me up on social media @BianchiWrites and listen to my radio show “Game On” every weekday from 3 to 6 p.m. on FM 96.9, AM 740 and 969TheGame.com/listen