Jon Sumrall hasn’t coached a game at Florida yet. He’s still getting his office set up, learning names, figuring out which players actually want to be in Gainesville this spring. But he’s already poking at something most coaches either ignore or just complain about off the record.
The college football calendar is a mess. And Sumrall said it out loud.
“But we still have this thing here in college football called school, all right,” Sumrall said on the Next Up podcast with Adam Brenneman, via Nick Kosko of On3 Sports. “Like, our guys, some of them are in class right now. I think the transfer portal window, when we finish the season first, when the second semester starts, is all kind of off. So, I think the counter, maybe move the start of the season up, maybe amend what the season looks like.”
This is a guy who just walked into a rebuild. The Gators fired Billy Napier last season after years of mediocrity. Sumrall is supposed to be the fix. And instead of just talking about recruiting rankings or quarterback battles, he’s asking why the sport ends its season in late January when students have already been back on campus for weeks.
The problem nobody wants to solve
The national championship game this year was on January 26. Think about that. College football, a sport built around Saturday afternoons in the fall, crowned its champion in what is basically February. Meanwhile, transfer portal windows are yanking kids out of school mid-semester. Spring practice starts before the weather even breaks. The whole thing is out of whack.
Sumrall isn’t the only one who’s noticed. Other coaches have whispered about moving the season up. But nobody’s done anything about it because the money keeps rolling in and the TV networks like the calendar spread. Twelve playoff teams now, with some people already calling for an expansion to 14 or 16. That would push the season even deeper into winter.
Sumrall’s idea is simple enough — wrap things up by January 5 or 6, not January 26. If that means fewer regular season games, fine. If the playoffs need to be rearranged, great. Just stop pretending this schedule makes sense for anyone who actually has to go to class.
He’s not wrong, but he’s fighting against the weight of an entire industry that benefits from the current chaos. Conferences have realigned. The transfer portal has turned rosters into revolving doors. And the season keeps getting longer while the NCAA pretends that student-athlete balance is still a thing they care about.
What this means for Florida
On the field, Sumrall has bigger problems. Florida hasn’t been truly relevant in years. The Swamp doesn’t scare anyone the way it used to. Getting back to being a top-tier SEC program will take more than fixing the schedule. But the fact that he’s already talking about structural issues instead of just saying all the right coach-speak things suggests he’s not afraid to shake stuff up.
The Gators are set to open the 2026 season in early September. That’s the only part of the calendar nobody’s arguing about. Everything after that? Up for debate, apparently.
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