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A reporter’s phone went off while new Florida coach Jon Sumrall was speaking at his SEC Media Days press conference. He didn’t much care for it.
You can tell because there’s video.
“You would be kicked out of our team meeting,” he informed the off-camera reporter who made the devastating mistake of not silencing their ringer. “You’re lucky I’m not going to throw this freaking podium right now. Drives me crazy.”
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Sumrall said he didn’t want to embarrass anyone after he embarrassed them. And a very charitable reading of the moment could conclude that he was merely joking.
See if you think he was joking.
I’ve circled back to this clip a few times during the day and it gets stranger and stranger upon rewatch. A football coach responding like this is not the end of the world and the reporter should escape with minimal damage outside the initial shock.
What I keep coming back to is the question of why on Earth this was the go-to response considering that doing almost anything else, including nothing, would have allowed the first-year Gators coach to check the box of talking to the media without a clip that could follow him around during trying times in Gainesville.
Again, there was nothing premeditated about it and it’s always best to give benefit of the doubt. I’m not even sticking up for the reporter because a mistake like that is rookie behavior—even if it’s a situation that’s befallen seasoned journalists.
But this is far from the first time something like this has happened. Sometimes the phone is recording audio mere inches from the coach’s face when it goes off. The typical response, even from the seemingly joyless wing of the coaching wing, is to make light of it and get a laugh at the situation, not an individual’s expense.
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Considering how fast the news cycle moves, most will forget about this if they haven’t forgotten about it already. The other side of the coin is that missteps now live forever and there’s an endless amount of Gators fans and rivals who will gleefully share this should the rebuild in The Swamp hit a speed bump.
More than likely, it will. Florida went 4-8 last year and won two conference game. The SEC is not exactly handing out conference victories. Giving rote answers to a bunch of reporters seemed like an easy win to chalk up before any players put pads on, but that didn’t happen.
