Less than a year ago, Auburn officials met at Jon Sumrall's home in New Orleans to discuss the details of a future they believed was nearing reality. On Saturday night, Sumrall walks into Jordan-Hare Stadium as Florida's head coach. On the other sideline stands Alex Golesh, the coach Auburn hired after talks with Sumrall collapsed, partly because of Lane Kiffin, whose decision to leave Ole Miss for LSU affected five SEC schools.
Florida had interest in Kiffin, then swooped in on Sumrall after Kiffin's decision. Golesh was supposed to be somewhere else, too. During the final week of the 2025 regular season, he was trending toward a deal at Arkansas.
Two coaches who nearly landed at different SEC schools. Now they each lead 2-0 teams as they open conference play. Both on the sidelines that they didn't expect to be last November.
The hypotheticals get fans talking. After all, Sumrall was close to being Auburn's coach. Asked this week if he wonders what it would have been like to coach in his home state, at his wife's alma mater, Sumrall told CBS Sports: "Never.".
On Monday, a reporter asked Sumrall whether his extended family is rooting against him this week. "If I do, they're not family to me," he said. "Yeah, there's ties, but Florida pays my mortgage, so any family that is pulling against us, they ain't my family.
I mean, I don't care what their last name is." Golesh and Sumrall came up in the SEC as assistant coaches (Sumrall at Ole Miss and Kentucky; Golesh at Tennessee) and were rivals in the American Conference as head coaches. In their only head-to-head meeting, Sumrall's Tulane blasted Golesh's South Florida 45-10 in 2024. Auburn studied film from that game on Sunday.
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