Everyone is talking about the Florida Gators after their 4-0 (2-0 SEC) start. Jadan Baugh is being featured on ESPN, and prominent media figures are talking about the Gators as national championship contenders.
The Gators entered the season with relatively average expectations from Vegas and the media. Florida’s projected win total was 7.5 wins, while the Gators were picked to finish ninth in the SEC by the media.
Those expectations have changed drastically after Florida climbed to No. 8 in the AP Poll following a 24-point victory over previously No. 4 Ole Miss.
Florida’s projected win total now sits at 9.5 games. The Gators have the eighth-best odds to win the national championship and are currently betting favorites to make the College Football Playoff.
All of this has happened in just four games.
Head coach Jon Sumrall is focused on making sure his team blocks out all the positive buzz.
“You don’t hang a banner or get celebrated for where you’re ranked between game 4 and 5 in college football. The rankings mean absolutely nothing,” Sumrall said Monday. “It really doesn’t mean anything until after the last game is played.”
“I’ve helped block it out for them this morning by showing them all the bad stuff we put on tape, too. We showed our not-our-standard tape this morning.”
Sumrall knows there is still plenty for Florida to clean up. He doesn’t want the team’s fast start to prevent them from addressing its shortcomings.
“I realize in the public area, the fanbase, it’s exciting. There’s a lot of great, you know, morale, whatever, but here’s the deal, and I told the team this morning, you have to humble yourself or you will be humbled. Like, if we don’t look in the mirror and hone where we’re deficient still, somebody else will show it to us,” Sumrall said.
The Gators haven’t won anything yet and are still a long way from their ultimate goal: championships.
“I’m very happy that we won last week. I’m happy that we won each week so far. It beats the alternative. But I’m not, like, celebrating anything. Nobody in our building should be celebrating anything. If we are, then we’re totally off-base at how you find success over the long term.”
Too often in college football, complacency can take over. Teams coming off a huge, emotional win or a successful season can let their guard down. Sumrall knows how quickly that can happen and the impact it can have on a team.
“I think we have to keep a humble, hungry, gritty blue-collar mindset,” Sumrall said. “You know, tough teams win, selfless teams win. Like, teams that have an edge about them and hunger about them, they win. Complacent, soft, entitled, lazy, selfish teams, they lose.”
Florida is fresh off the program’s biggest win in years, but now the Gators have to turn the page to Missouri. Sumrall knows that if they don’t, trouble could be on the horizon. He doesn’t even want to hear his team mention Ole Miss for the rest of the season.
“Just be in the moment. You get one opportunity this week. Last week we had an opportunity; it’s gone forever,” Sumrall said. “I told our team this morning, ‘I don’t want to hear anybody talk about that game the rest of the year. If we get to the end of the year and after our last game, we want to talk about what happened in that game, great. But I don’t ever want to hear about it the rest of the year. If anybody brings it up in our building about what happened last week, I’m gonna be, like, livid because we have no control over that anymore. It’s gone. If it hadn’t gone our way, we’d have no control over it, it’d be gone. Move on. And so, really, all I’m worried about is how do we get ready to play the best we can play this week. So, that’s sort of the focus.”
Florida travels to Columbia, Missouri, this weekend, where the Tigers will celebrate homecoming. Sumrall isn’t concerned about the festivities. He’s more concerned about facing a Missouri team that has beaten Florida in three of its last four trips to Columbia.
“I have zero concerns about anybody’s homecoming, our homecoming. It’s a football game. I do know this, the last four trips we’ve gone to Missouri we’ve lost three of them. So if we think it’s gonna be a freaking cake walk, I don’t care if it’s homecoming or whatever, we’re in for a rude awakening. We’ve got to get ready to play a really good football team on the road in a place that’s not gone well for us a lot, recently, the most recent history. So I’m really worried about that. I don’t care who their homecoming king, or queen, or any of that is.”
No. 8 Florida takes on No. 25 Missouri at 3:30 est.