Jon Sumrall, Alex Golesh and the Florida-Auburn showdown shaped by a chaotic SEC coaching carousel

A wild set of events sent Sumrall to Florida instead of Auburn and Golesh to Auburn instead of Arkansas, and now the old American Conference rivals open SEC play against each other

Sep 17, 2026 at 11:49 am ET • 3 min read

Less than a year ago, Auburn officials met at Jon Sumrall's home in New Orleans to discuss the details of a future they believed was nearing reality. 

On Saturday night, Sumrall walks into Jordan-Hare Stadium as Florida's head coach.

On the other sideline stands Alex Golesh, the coach Auburn hired after talks with Sumrall collapsed, partly because of Lane Kiffin, whose decision to leave Ole Miss for LSU affected five SEC schools. Florida had interest in Kiffin, then swooped in on Sumrall after Kiffin's decision. Golesh was supposed to be somewhere else, too. During the final week of the 2025 regular season, he was trending toward a deal at Arkansas.

Two coaches who nearly landed at different SEC schools. Now they each lead 2-0 teams as they open conference play. Both on the sidelines that they didn't expect to be last November. 

The hypotheticals get fans talking. After all, Sumrall was close to being Auburn's coach. Asked this week if he wonders what it would have been like to coach in his home state, at his wife's alma mater, Sumrall told CBS Sports: "Never.".

On Monday, a reporter asked Sumrall whether his extended family is rooting against him this week.

"If I do, they're not family to me," he said. "Yeah, there's ties, but Florida pays my mortgage, so any family that is pulling against us, they ain't my family. I mean, I don't care what their last name is."

The rematch

Golesh and Sumrall came up in the SEC as assistant coaches (Sumrall at Ole Miss and Kentucky; Golesh at Tennessee) and were rivals in the American Conference as head coaches. In their only head-to-head meeting, Sumrall's Tulane blasted Golesh's South Florida 45-10 in 2024. Auburn studied film from that game on Sunday.

"If you wanted to have a really, really rough morning, you could've sat with me and watched that yesterday, again, for maybe the 200th time -- and again, wanted to throw up," Golesh told reporters Monday.

Tulane won the American Conference, finishing 11-3 with a loss at Ole Miss in the College Football Playoff. USF was 9-3 and ranked as high as No. 18 in the polls after a road win at Florida. Several players from that USF team, including quarterback Byrum Brown, will suit up for Auburn against the Gators again on Saturday.

"I don't know that game has anything to do with this game," Sumrall said. "... But there's not like a revenge game."

Sumrall said he has "a lot of respect for Auburn" and referenced his wife's history at the school. He also called Golesh a friend.

"He said we were friends?" Golesh responded. "Not this week, we're not."

The two coaches still respect each other. Though their careers have run on parallel tracks for years, Saturday marks only their second head-to-head meeting.

Domino effect

The American Conference has increasingly served as a talent pipeline for power-conference coaching positions. In the last cycle alone, four AAC head coaches were poached by major programs, including three who landed in the SEC.

That hiring cycle ended in a frantic final week. By the Sunday morning after the regular-season finales, Arkansas, Auburn and Florida had each secured new leadership — even though all three coaches were widely expected to land elsewhere just days earlier.

North Texas' Eric Morris kicked off the wild domino  by departing for Oklahoma State, taking key playmakers along with him. Meanwhile, as Jon Sumrall began to have more questions about the job late in Auburn's process, communication cooled, and Sumrall pivoted toward Florida. 

Once news broke midweek regarding the opening in Gainesville, Alex Golesh redirected his focus from Arkansas to Auburn, drawn to the prestige and assets of a program that captured two SEC crowns and a national title in the 2010s. Consequently, Arkansas pivoted back to Memphis head coach Ryan Silverfield, an option explored earlier in their search process.

Every school insists it landed its primary target. Saturday is the first test for two of these programs in a classic SEC matchup from yesteryear: Florida vs. Auburn. It's the Gators' first game at Jordan-Hare Stadium since 2011 -- and the first SEC game for its two head coaches.

"SEC play, they count different. They count twice," Sumrall said.