{"id":478871,"date":"2025-12-30T00:50:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-30T00:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/478871\/"},"modified":"2025-12-30T00:50:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T00:50:10","slug":"jon-sumrall-opens-up-on-losing-his-dad-in-days-before-college-football-playoff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/478871\/","title":{"rendered":"Jon Sumrall opens up on losing his dad in days before College Football Playoff"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was a difficult lead-up to the College Football Playoff<\/a><\/strong> for Jon Sumrall<\/a><\/strong>. While incredibly busy, balancing two jobs, Sumrall lost his father, who passed away after a battle with his health at the age of 77. <\/p>\n

Sumrall would go on to coach Tulane<\/a><\/strong> in a losing effort shortly after his father\u2019s death. After the game, Sumrall was emotional, speaking about finding out that his father had died and what his family meant to him in the lead-up to the Playoff. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been hard,\u201d Jon Sumrall said<\/a>. \u201cI\u2019m not gonna deny it. I called my mom Friday morning at about, I don\u2019t know, 6:00 a.m., whatever time, when I was driving into the office. She picked up and she just said, \u2018Jon, I was going to call you in about an hour, but Dad passed last night, through the night.\u2019 I\u2019m like, \u2018Alright, Mom, what can I do? What do you need?\u2019 She said, I\u2019ve got \u2014 she had the emergency people there to help.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having grown up in Huntsville, Alabama, Sumrall has coached relatively close to home for the most part in his professional career. That did allow his parents to travel to games this season, even with his father\u2019s ailing health. <\/p>\n

\u201cI told her, Mom \u2014 she had gotten my dad to the last couple games. They came to the conference championship game, they came to the Charlotte<\/a><\/strong> game, they came to the FAU<\/a><\/strong> game. My dad had been facing some struggles for a while, and my mom is tough as nails,\u201d Sumrall said. \u201cAnd I told Mom, I said, \u2018Mom, you don\u2019t have to come to the game but I\u2019d love to have you there if you want to be there. You make the call.\u2019 She said, \u2018I\u2019m not missing the game.\u2019 So, Mom is here tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the Playoff game didn\u2019t go Sumrall\u2019s way. His Green Wave lost 41-10 to Ole Miss<\/strong><\/a> on the road in Oxford. Still, having his family there made things better for Sumrall.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dad, he had had some battles health-wise for really since March is when it got severe. Man, it\u2019s been hard. But I loved my dad. I\u2019m a lot of who I am because of how he raised me, and I can smile knowing that I\u2019m going to live a life that\u2019s going to honor my dad. He watched us today. He\u2019s probably got some questions about how we played, just like I do. I just don\u2019t have to hear them tonight from him. I\u2019m sure I\u2019ll hear them from my mom, though. But man, it\u2019s been hard. I\u2019ve been very grateful that my family was here tonight. My brother was here, my wife was here, my mom was here. Makes it a little bit better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, Jon Sumrall is set to turn over to a new chapter in his life. He\u2019s moving on from Tulane to take over as the head coach at Florida<\/a><\/strong>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a difficult lead-up to the College Football Playoff for Jon Sumrall. While incredibly busy, balancing two…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":478872,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[1318,159736,1317,1315,1316,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-478871","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-jon-sumrall","10":"tag-ncaa","11":"tag-ncaa-football","12":"tag-ncaafootball","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115805777042243382","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}