Florida is back. Jon Sumrall needed only four games to prove it | Opinion

GAINESVILLE, FL – It should’ve been much worse. There’s your takeaway from the biggest win at Florida in years, a statement that signaled, at the very least, the days of wilting in the moment are gone.

They’ve been replaced by bully ball.

Or as first-year Gators coach Jon Sumrall has been saying since the day he stepped on campus: toughest guy wins.

That was Florida flexing, everyone. Taking surging Ole Miss — the hottest program this side of Indiana — back a couple of decades to when these things were inevitable because Florida had the better team and the better coaches.

And wouldn’t you know it, we're back there again after a 52-28 whitewash of the Rebels. All it took was four games — and the right coach.

It wasn’t any of the four previous coaches who tried for 16 years to replicate what Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer accomplished. It wasn’t the guy Florida fans pined for at the end of last season, who was last seen skulking out of Oxford.

It was a tough, no-frills former SEC linebacker at Kentucky who showed up here and made it clear that he didn’t care how it got to this point…

Original source: https://www.usatoday.com/sports/