If you were Jon Sumrall, AKA the most fascinating person in this coaching carousel, what would you do?
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Consensus will probably tell you that it’s Lane Kiffin.
Interpret that how you will. Consensus will tell you that it’s Kiffin who is considered the top candidate for a variety of SEC vacancies in what’s turning into an unprecedented coaching carousel. Consensus will also probably tell you that such a unique position makes the Ole Miss coach the most fascinating person in this coaching carousel.
But there’s at least a decent chance that Kiffin’s coaching carousel arc has an anticlimactic ending of him staying at Ole Miss, likely as a richer man. After all, Kiffin is in the $9 million club with a team that just earned its highest Playoff Poll ranking in 11 years. Does he have to leave? Certainly not.
A few weeks ago, Kiffin took to the podium and shared a consensus opinion. That is, Tulane coach Jon Sumrall will move up from the Group of 5 ranks and get an SEC job this cycle. Kiffin then proceeded to wipe the floor with Sumrall’s squad, but the point remains an overwhelming feeling, especially after Power Conference candidates like Curt Cignetti and Rhett Lashlee agreed to new contracts.
It’s Sumrall, not Kiffin, who should be viewed as the most fascinating person in this coaching carousel.
You’ve likely seen his name for all 4 current SEC vacancies. After all, he’s coached all over the South, and he’s been a successful head coach at Troy and Tulane, which are in 2 states (Alabama and Louisiana) where there are big-time vacancies. That doesn’t even include his alma mater, Kentucky, who could soon have a $37 million decision to make on Mark Stoops, especially if there’s fear that their long-expected coach-in-waiting has a better SEC job waiting for him.
That begs the question — what’s considered a good job for Sumrall?
To be clear, that’s not to say that Sumrall is going to be offered all of these jobs and he’ll have some Signing Day-type announcement with a row of hats. That’s not how this works, even for the coveted candidates.
But at the same time, you can bet that the 43-year-old head coach is asking this question internally as his name surfaces. That includes evaluating his current job, Tulane, who has Playoff life but is where every other Group of 5 program is in the first Playoff Poll. That is, outside the top 25. While there are programs like aforementioned SMU and Indiana who have found ways to benefit in this new era of college football, one can’t help but think that there’s still an obvious ceiling at the Group of 5 level.
While Tulane would certainly give Sumrall another raise to stick around — he reportedly got bumped up to nearly $3 million annually last December — the money to be made in one of these SEC jobs blows that out of the water. A “good job” for Sumrall isn’t necessarily one that pays him the most. It’s where he sees the path to competing for national titles.
Auburn, Florida and LSU have all won national titles in the last 2 decades. They’ve also combined for 7 coach firings — all of which included buyouts of at least $15 million — and 0 Playoff berths in the 2020s. In the Playoff era, the only coaches at those respective jobs who earned a Year 5 reached or won a national title during their tenures (Gus Malzahn and Ed Orgeron).
Another way that Sumrall’s approach should differ from 2010s logic is with the roster he inherits
With the 30-day window for players on the roster to enter the transfer portal, Sumrall’s decision can’t be based on the assumption that the current roster will be kept. Even Kalen DeBoer, who inherited the No. 1 team in the 247Sports talent composite with several key veterans who stayed in board in 2024, still lost guys like Caleb Downs and Julian Sayin. More important for Sumrall than the roster he could inherit should be how he feels about the roster he’ll be tasked with building.
After the 2024 season, Brian Kelly pledged $1 million of his own money to help finance an LSU roster that was headlined by a high-priced transfer portal class that ranked No. 1 in the cycle. That didn’t yield the national championship results he hoped for, but there’s no denying that LSU was a major player in acquiring talent and keeping talent. Would Sumrall have that same kind of alignment at LSU? Or would all the instability at the university level, which recently led to promoting interim AD Verge Ausberry to the full-time role, lead to an unclear picture there?
As an in-state coach, Sumrall has had a unique vantage point seeing the Louisiana government’s involvement in the aftermath of Kelly’s firing. He could be thinking “man, I’d really prefer to have my future decided within the confines of the university and not at the state level” or “I love how much this state cares about football.”
We don’t know. It’s the job of Sumrall’s representatives (he’s a CAA client), to find out real intel about these jobs. Every athletic director who has interest in Sumrall will sell a vision of alignment. Duh. Kiffin was infamously sold a vision of alignment and a lack of major NCAA sanctions before he took the USC job. How did that work out?
Sumrall doesn’t have to navigate a situation like that, but he does have to weigh that heavily. Alignment is something Bill Belichick didn’t have upon arrival at UNC. It’s something Bryan Harsin didn’t have upon arrival at Auburn. It goes beyond whether boosters and administrators think you’re the right person for the job. It even goes beyond how much money is available to acquire a roster in a given year.
The assistant pool is the underrated element of alignment. Cignetti’s first new contract extension that he signed at Indiana bumped his assistant pool salary up to $11 million, which was nearly as much as Ohio State’s. His most recent new contract has a clause that states Indiana’s assistant budget will be top 5 in the Big Ten and top 10 nationally. That’s alignment.
For a defensive-minded coach like Sumrall, there’ll be an expectation that at whatever school he goes to, he’ll have to make a splashy offensive coordinator hire that’ll likely be north of $2 million annually. Kiffin had that type of alignment at Ole Miss, and it allowed him to poach defensive coordinator Pete Golding from Alabama and get him a deal that reportedly paid him $2.1 million in 2024.
A place like LSU has been better than Florida and Auburn at landing high-priced coordinators, but then again, both of those 2 programs had a head coach who held on to offensive play-calling duties. Make of that what you will. USA Today’s Matt Hayes reported that Napier attempted to poach Ole Miss OC Charlie Weis Jr., but failed to do so.
Alignment can look different for a Year 1 coach than a Year 3 coach on the hot seat. Napier’s shortcomings at Florida weren’t from a lack of support. If anything, the unprecedented amount of support he received with a ballooned staff made his lack of on-field results more alarming. If there’s a sense from Florida that the wasted funds of the Napier era will limit Sumrall’s potential budget, that has to be considered. For what it’s worth, there aren’t any indications that’ll be the case from a Florida administration that believed in 2024 that it had the resources to poach Kiffin from Ole Miss.
If Kiffin has a different sort of alignment at Florida than Sumrall, that matters. All of this is relevant context.
What if this ends with Sumrall doing the thing that fools us all?
At this point, “fooling us all” would be him going to Kentucky. As in, the program who currently has the longest-tenured coach in the SEC but is in jeopardy of paying a historic buyout after its 4th consecutive disappointing season.
If Sumrall decides that home is where the heart is and he returns to the place where he played and coached, it’ll be more evidence that we need to rethink how we view the coaching carousel. With generational wealth and a path to the Playoff available at so many Power Conference programs, Sumrall going to Kentucky instead of Auburn, Florida and LSU would be a massive victory for the little guy.
Again, though, that would be fooling us all.
What wouldn’t fool anyone is if Sumrall ends up at 1 of those 3 premier SEC jobs with a lucrative contract and a national pat on the back. He could be this cycle’s version of Mike Elko, who was considered the non-splashy hire that replaced the guy that was fired with the largest buyout in the history of college athletics. In Year 2, Elko has Texas A&M off to its best start since 1994. Perhaps of equal importance, he could be the reason why big-time programs invest in someone like Sumrall.
A fascinating month or so awaits. If Sumrall leads Tulane to a Playoff berth with an AAC Championship, that’ll only complicate things.
For now, though, keep your eyes on the most fascinating person in this chaotic coaching carousel.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
