Speaking with the Enemy: A visit with Troy head coach Jon Sumrall

Editor’s note: Troy head coach Jon Sumrall recently completed the Trojan Tour, which saw various coaches travel to several cities in proximity of the Troy campus. While appearing at an event at Pensacola’s minor league baseball stadium, Sumrall sat down with The Rebel Walk senior writer Steve Barnes for a conversation.

PENSACOLA, Fla. – With a backdrop of Pensacola Bay at the Trojan Tour, Troy head coach Jon Sumrall is finding himself in uncharted waters these days.

He has been named the Troy head football coach – his first college head coaching assignment – but he appears to be settling into the helm quite well. Sumrall, who recently turned 40, has served as an assistant at Troy, Kentucky and Ole Miss in his career. His first game as a head coach will be Sept. 3 at Ole Miss.

THE REBEL WALK (TRW): Your first game as a head coach will be in Oxford. Will that be kind of surreal for you to be on the visiting sideline in Vaught-Hemingway Stadium?

COACH JON SUMRALL: Yeah, it’ll be fun. You know Ole Miss obviously is a really good football program, playing at a high level right now. We’ve got our work cut out for us, but it’ll be a fun opportunity for our kids and our coaches to go measure themselves against a team, a Top 25 team the last couple of years and probably will be this year as well.

TRW: Lane Kiffin has a bit of a quarterback quandary, but you have as well. He has a transfer quarterback from Southern Cal, you have a transfer from Utah in Peter Costelli, yet no starter has been named.

COACH SUMRALL: Peter is a really talented kid. You know he hasn’t played in a college game – he redshirted last year as a freshman at Utah. Peter’s got a really good arm, very talented as a runner, he ran a 10.8 (100 meters) in high school as a sophomore, so he’s got great speed, good size. 

We’re looking forward to watching him grow and develop as he starts to learn our system better and (returning starter) Gunnar (Watson) is doing great things too. Our quarterback room — Gunnar’s got a lot of experience, he’s really matured and grown and has stepped up as a leader. Neither will be given the job, they will have to earn it.

TRW: Lane Kiffin likes to have fun with social media and his players seem to enjoy it. When you were at Troy as an assistant under now West Virginia coach Neal Brown, the coaches and football staff put together a dance video that featured you. How did the players react to it?

COACH SUMRALL: They laughed, they probably thought our dance moves weren’t very good. I think everybody who understands this game is a players’ coach because it’s about the players. Everything we do in our program, it’s players first. I don’t make any decision on what’s best for me or what’s most comfortable for me; everything we do is about our players. 

That video is one of the things we did to make sure we keep our players entertained at an awards banquet, so everything we do is about our players. We’re a players-first program. Last time I checked, if there weren’t any players there wouldn’t be any coaches.

TRW: Speaking of Neal Brown, you are following in his footsteps at Troy, but also Larry Blakeney who directed Troy from a Division II school to the FBS. Have you reached out to either of them for advice

COACH SUMRALL: Neal and I are really good friends, I worked for Neal at Troy from 2015 to 2017, he and I are close. I’ve got a lot of respect for Neal; I learned a lot of things about being a head coach from Neal and I always hit him up for advice. 

And then Coach Blakeney, I had the privilege of having him come down and visit during the spring. We had an alumni letterman’s event and had over 150 guys that are former players one Friday night and they stayed around to watch practice on Saturday. Coach Blakeney came down that Friday afternoon and spent a couple of hours in my office, so I have always loved Coach Blakeney. When I was at Troy the first time, he was so good and so kind to me and so welcoming to me and I have a lot of respect for both those guys and what they did at Troy.

TRW: What excites you most about your first Troy team?

COACH SUMRALL: We’ve got a lot returning on defense, so I think we have a chance to have a special defense. I’m also excited to see some of our offensive playmakers step up and see what we do to establish our identity on offense. 

What are we going to be about? What’s it going to look like? And so I’m excited to see how that comes together, how we gel. I think we can surprise some people with what we do offensively as long as we’re disciplined and execute on a high level.

TROJAN TIDBITS:

• Since joining the ranks of the FBS, Troy has upset ranked Oklahoma State and Missouri at home. On the road, the Trojans have won at LSU and Nebraska. One thing those two road upsets have something in common: Troy wore their chrome helmets in Baton Rouge and Lincoln. It will be a good bet the Trojans will wear the same ones in Oxford for luck.
• One former Rebel might have a soft spot for the Troy program. When Eli Manning won his last Super Bowl in 2012, he had three former Trojans with him on the New York Giants’ roster – defensive lineman Osi Umenyiora, wide receiver Jerrel Jernigan and kicker Lawrence Tynes.
• The Troy football team has won three national titles in lower divisions of play, but the most notoriety the school has ever received athletically is from the Trojans’ basketball team. Jan. 12, 1992, Troy set a record for the most points in a basketball game at any level when it beat DeVry Institute 258-141. Yes, two hundred fifty-eight. How was that possible? If a team hits 51-of-109 three pointers, it helps.
• While Ole Miss has been the Rebels since, well, it seems like forever, Troy has only had the Trojan moniker since 1975. Prior to that, the athletic teams were known as the Red Wave. In the 1920’s, Troy hired a football coach from Alabama, and he wanted to bring the Crimson Tide name with him but settled on a variation.
• The late civil rights activist John Lewis is a native of Troy. Unfortunately, he could not attend his hometown university because the school was still segregated. After Lewis’ death, the university renamed its signature building after Lewis. His first memorial service was also held on campus in Trojan Arena.

Kickoff

Ole Miss and Troy will kick off at 3:00 p.m. (CT) on Saturday, September 3, in Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. The game will be televised on the SEC Network.

(Feature image credit: AJ Henderson / Sun Belt Conference)