Jon Sumrall's 'good' mindset fuels Florida rebuild amid Gators' recruiting surge, QB battle

GOOD

— Jon Sumrall (@CoachJonSumrall) May 8, 2026

Things have been more than just good for Florida on the recruiting trail. The Gators have 11 verbal commits since the beginning of April, including five-star running back Maxwell Hiller, the crown jewel of the class. But whether he's getting the commitment from Hiller or news that a player will verbal elsewhere: "our response, no matter what happens, is 'good'," he told CBS Sports.

The notion of good comes from a video by former Navy SEAL John "Jocko" Willink, which describes a response to adversity.

Sumrall walks to a closet in the back of his office and pulls an orange and blue hat out from the golf brand Good Good, a turn of phrase when two golfers acknowledge their putts are close enough to concede each other's.

He doesn't wear it too often as Florida's collective is in the process of producing ones they can sell.

Sumrall shows the Jocko video to his teams twice a year, and he tries to live by that sentiment, with somewhat staggering results.

"My third game is head coach, we throw an interception, first play of the game against App State. I go on the headset, and I go 'Good. I don't want to watch our offense right now anyway.' Everybody said, 'What the hell is wrong with you?' And then we lose the game on a Hail Mary: good, we weren't ready to win a game like that. We need to get punched in the mouth and have the gut punch of losing on a Hail Mary. And then that team went on to win 11 straight games after that, finished 19th in the country in all of college football, went 12-2. You have to be unwavering, and you can't let the best of the best distract you, and you can't let the worst, the worst, rattle you."

All of it falls under attitude, which is one of four core values of Sumrall's program (toughness, discipline, and love being the other three). Sumrall references a line from a poem by Charles Swindoll with a similar sentiment: "I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me, and 90% how I react to it."

"Good" as a response to struggles is similar to Nick Saban's approach, reframing the ups and downs of life with an even-keeled perspective and a focus that is not outcome-driven. It's common among leaders in business and sports. But they do keep score on Saturday in the fall, and it doesn't mean he's immune to disappointment as a competitor; it's more about how he chooses to use the feelings as fuel.

"I really want the losses to make me nauseous. I want it to make me sick. I want to taste it fully. And so that way, it makes my desire to pursue what it takes to win even greater," Sumrall said.

It's all in service of fighting complacency, which he sees as the world's greatest disease.

Post-spring practice feels different now

As far as roster building is concerned, early May features a lot less chaos for Sumrall. The last few years have seen a rash of player movement after spring practice, driven by the second transfer portal window. This year, so far, regulation around so-called ghost transfers outside of the portal windows seems to be holding up. Penalties are severe, including a half-season suspension for the head coach and a fine equal to 20% of the school's football budget. That means things are relatively quieter for a period of time overall.

"While we don't have the ability to maybe reinforce or upgrade certain holes we have, you also don't have to worry about renegotiation either," Sumrall said. "So there's not that lingering threat of the final hour in the April/May window of like, oh gosh, hold on to your roster, and hopefully guys don't leave, and you've gone through spring ball, and you have to figure out how to replace a guy that you got a lot of reps invested in, that you were counting on."

For Sumrall, the new quieter post-spring period has pluses and minuses. No spring portal has a specific effect on a coach like him, who arrived in December, days before the early signing period. In the past, he's used the portal to make a great impact ahead of his first season. In his first year at Tulane, the Green Wave went heavy with offensive players in the portal in January, then got through spring and realized there were holes to fill in the secondary. They added Jonathan Edwards from Indiana State and Micah Robinson from Furman. Both are now in the NFL and were significant contributors for the Green Wave.

[Florida earns commitment from five-star OL Maxwell Hiller as Jon Sumrall flexes recruiting muscles early

Brad Crawford

"As a first-year head coach, I'd love to have the second portal, really," Sumrall said. "Now I've seen this team practice, and I may have thought I knew about certain guys, but you know more when you've seen them on the grass live. As an established program, no second portal is very ideal. As a program is trying to get jump-started and build the roster in the first year. That second portal window is very useful. For the long haul of the health of college football, we do need one portal, which we have now, and once we get to the other side of rebuilding this thing, I'll be very glad there's one, but in year one, I would gladly accept one for a little reinforcement."

Sumrall says he doesn't think there should be a caveat for coaches like him and admitted it makes for healthy roster building. There are far fewer things to juggle because, while the spring portal was going on in years' past, there was also high school recruiting.

Not quite the 33rd team

It's become a common refrain within college football to reference the NFL model. North Carolina even went a step further, referring to themselves as the 33rd team. But the fact is that college football, while becoming more professionalized than its pseudo-amateur roots, has struggled to define the parameters for true professionalism. The second portal window created a dynamic in which there was basically a constant period of negotiation, whereas in the NFL, the season happens, then free agency, then the draft. Sumrall points out that constant recruiting is the key differentiator between college and pro football.

"We're not the old school college football, but we're not quite the NFL, we're somewhere in-between," Sumrall said. "I think you have to have a merger of thoughts there. You can't just say we're going to operate like an NFL team, because we're not an NFL team, but you also can't be stuck in the rigid ways of college football, because you have to adapt and evolve with the new landscape we're in."

Florida has leaned into a new front office structure with Dave Caldwell (formerly GM of the Jacksonville Jaguars) as general manager, joining Nick Polk (who was on staff for Napier's last year, and formerly worked with the Atlanta Falcons) as assistant GM and Cole Heard as chief of staff (coming with Sumrall from Tulane). It allows Sumrall to avoid involvement in negotiations. While he's aware of who gets paid what, he says it muddies the waters when coaches are in the nitty-gritty of negotiations. Specific money conversations at Tulane were handled by Kelly Comarda, a lawyer by trade who had started Tulane's collective. At Florida, Caldwell runs the point when it's time to talk money.

"I've never been big into being the one doing the negotiation," Sumrall said. "As a coach, you're involved in all parts of the program. The difference here is the depth of the staff in our front office at Troy was a front office of one or two. Then you go to Tulane, your front office is a front office of eight. You come here and you got a front office that looks like an army at times, and so everybody has a very specific role and responsibility. I tell the coaches and everyone in the front office all the time, really, y'all aren't negotiators. There's only a couple of people who actually negotiate deals here. And if you want to be a negotiator, we can reassign you."

Transfer quarterback Aaron Philo (12) is competing with Tramell Jones Jr. for Florida's starting quarterback job. Getty Images

An uncertain summer awaits

The Gators exited spring camp without an answer to the starting quarterback question as Aaron Philo and Tramell Jones Jr. continue to battle for the job. Along with Alabama and Tennessee, it's one of the few true quarterback battles in the SEC. Questions about the offensive line will also need to be answered as well. Both position group battles affect the other, and Sumrall has said that the offense's defining storyline is not just who lines up behind center but what's happening up front as well.

There will be ups and downs from here until the season opener and many more once Sumrall's first season in charge formally kicks off. The only thing certain as Florida tries to build back into the beast it once was is the head coach's response.