Jon Sumrall is the belle of the coaching carousel ball this year.
The 42-year old Tulane head coach is the early name to watch for the North Carolina opening for obvious reasons after the Tar Heels fired Mack Brown. Sumrall flourished at Troy, winning 23 games in two seasons, and has No. 17 Tulane in the American Athletic Conference championship game in his first season guiding the Green Wave. Sumrall could even have his team in the 12-team College Football Playoff if Tulane wins out and Boise State loses and/or further chaos engulfs the Big 12. There’s even an aura of sentimentality behind the idea that North Carolina could once again strike gold with a coach from Tulane, which it did when it hired Brown from there in 1988.
Sumrall was CBS Sports’ No. 2 ranked Group of Five head coach coming into the year, behind only Liberty’s Jamey Chadwell who has also been mentioned for the UNC opening, and has been a serious factor in previous Power 4 coach openings. Sumrall was the runner-up for the Mississippi State job that went to Jeff Lebby, according to sources, and would have been the pick at Kentucky to replace Mark Stoops if he left for Texas A&M as he intended at one point.
Sumrall is widely seen as the complete package — a sharp defensive tactician, a skilled recruiter, and a charismatic leader known for building and maintaining strong team cultures.
UNC is the only Power Four job open at the moment and it’s unclear if there will be a better job this cycle with Florida backing Billy Napier for another year. The UNC opening is an intriguing one as the job has long had potential and what Rhett Lashlee has done with SMU this season is proof enough that with the right approach the ACC is wide open to new contenders at the top. Football will never be the top priority at the school, but it is located in a fertile recruiting area and there isn’t the intense pressure to win as there would be in the Southeastern Conference. There’s a feeling that with the right coach and committed resources in the NIL (and soon-to-be revenue share) era, you can win big in Chapel Hill.
The job, however, does have some drawbacks. Brown, a 73-year-old national championship-winning coach, made $5 million. In the Southeastern Conference, eight coaches make $9 million or more a year including Stoops, Missouri’s Eli Drinkwitz and Ole Miss‘ Lane Kiffin. Only one UNC coach has left on his own terms in the last 40 years and that was Brown in 1997 when he took the Texas job. He had no such luck this time around. The program last won an ACC Championship in 1980.
If you’re Sumrall, you have to think long and hard about waiting another year in what could be a frenzied coaching cycle with multiple high-profile openings. If Kiffin ever left Oxford, for instance, Sumrall would be an obvious name to step in, according to sources, and replace him in a job that comes with one of the nation’s top NIL collectives. Sumrall previously worked as a linebackers coach at Ole Miss under Matt Luke.
There’s also the obvious connection to Sumrall’s alma mater Kentucky. Not only did the Alabama native play there but he coached under Stoops for three seasons before becoming Troy’s head coach. It’s a harder job, on paper, than UNC but beyond the sentimental ties, Sumrall knows how the place works, that it pays more and knows what he’d have to do to hit the ground running if he got the top job.
There’s a famous story in college football circles that super agent Jimmy Sexton called Georgia and informed it that SEC rival South Carolina intended to hire Georgia alum and then-Alabama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart. Whether it played a role in Georgia’s decision to fire Mark Richt has been debated but what can’t be is that Smart ended up as Georgia’s head coach by the end of the year. Could Kentucky consider the same action if it feels like this is its best shot at Sumrall? Stoops’ massive buyout of nearly $45 million makes that extremely unlikely but there could be a negotiated number if he took a job elsewhere or simply retired. Stoops, 57, recently pledged an offseason fix to a Kentucky roster that has gone 4-7 this season.
If Hugh Freeze flames out in a critical Year 3, Sumrall’s Alabama ties and success within the state would make him an obvious replacement candidate, too. Auburn pays Freeze more than $6.7 million and has a rabid fanbase that is very helpful in the NIL space.
The key is this: Sumrall knows he’s in a great position at Tulane and isn’t eager to just jump at the next big thing. He’s one of the highest-paid Group of Five coaches, has shown an ability to get quality talent out of the portal to New Orleans and has a great staff which includes offensive coordinator Joe Craddock, who has been mentioned for prominent Power Four OC jobs elsewhere.
If Tulane can keep the band together and continue investing in the program, particularly with revenue sharing which won’t be as commonplace at Tulane’s level as it is with Power Four schools, Sumrall can afford to be patient.
North Carolina is a good job, but if Sumrall continues this current pace, he’s setting himself up for a great one.
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