GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A young photographer roamed the sidelines Tuesday morning trying to get a good shot of Gators head coach Jon Sumrall on the first day of spring camp. When a nearby spectator pointed Sumrall out to her, she needed a second to adjust her camera and frame the photo. By the time she looked back toward the field, she couldn’t find him.

Welcome to the club.

After three months of non-stop movement to make the transition from Tulane to Florida, Sumrall oversaw his first official practice as Florida’s head coach. If you watched him in action, not much changes when he is on the field.

“Yeah, I’m going to interact with almost every player on our team, every day,” Sumrall said. “Maybe not all, but almost. And I’m definitely going to watch a little bit of every group in [individual drills] when we have as much individual time as we did today. I’m the head coach of the whole team, and so I need to know the roster top to bottom.”

There was a lot of newness as the 2026 Gators opened spring camp. Everywhere you looked, an unfamiliar face looked back.

Still, what was most unusual was the sense of urgency with which the Gators conducted their business. As soon as offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner began drills with his group, Faulkner’s intense voice boomed across the practice field while he scribbled notes. Nearby, special teams coach Johnathan Galante darted around like a rabbit, instructing players. Former Gators standout Bam Hardmon laced up cleats in his role as outside linebackers coach.

“He’s very, very hands-on,” edge rusher Jayden Woods said.

The renewed sense of energy and excitement around a program coming off a 4-8 season is to be expected. There’s a new coach in town, a fresh system and 50 newcomers on the roster. Several former UF players stopped by to see what all the fuss is about. Danny Wuerffel and Chris Doering were there. Ricky Nattiel watched closely. Mac Steen, a captain on the famous “Super Sophs” team of 1969, made the rounds.

For all the good former Gators coach Billy Napier did in leading the Gators into a new era of college football – and Napier deserves credit in bridging the past to the future despite his on-field record – the chatter at Tuesday’s practice was heavy on the obvious shift in intensity.

Yes, it’s true that sentiment is often the general tone after almost all coaching changes prompted by a lack of success. It’s a natural byproduct of change. But this was different. This felt like a program that had undergone a personality transplant.

If you have watched the Netflix docuseries “America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys,” or are of the age that you remember when Jerry Jones bought the team and made wholesale changes, including ousting beloved coach Tom Landry and replacing him with college coach Jimmy Johnson, you can relate to what has happened with the Gators.

Napier’s personality more resembles the stoic, fedora-wearing Landry’s. Sumrall is more like the fiery and bold Johnson, who turned the franchise around in his single-minded pursuit of championships.

Sumrall’s got a ton of work to reach anything near Johnson’s success or that of Urban Meyer or Steve Spurrier, two former UF coaches he has formed relationships with since he got here. But he’s got the right attitude.

“I love football from the jump. I don’t care if we’re practicing at the University of Florida or wherever, I was excited to be at football practice because I love football. That’s why I’m a football coach,” Sumrall said Tuesday. “I got into coaching, making, like, $12,000 a year. I thought I was the richest guy in the world, and I had a freaking blast every day. I actually love football practice as much as the games. Practice days, those are my days. That’s where I coach.”

Rusty Whitt, the team’s director of football performance, has been around Sumrall for the past four seasons, two at Troy and two at Tulane. They have formed a close bond since Sumrall nearly fired Whitt when Sumrall looked to put his stamp on the program when he took over at Troy in 2022.

Instead, he saw enough of Whitt’s blue-collar, get-down-and-dirty approach to keep him around.

Whitt knows what makes Sumrall tick. He got a reminder of that on Tuesday as the team went through practice and Whitt’s tactics threatened to slow down the controlled chaos.

“Coach Sumrall is drill to drill to drill,” Whitt said. “In the team event, the players gotta run to me. And I’ll break down and say, ‘Toughness on 2’ or ‘1-0,’ and we break down, and they go off to the sideline. And if they don’t run to me, I require two up-downs. And they came to me, the backside corner didn’t run. I said, ‘Hey, we got two. We got two.’ And I had them do two up-downs. And then they were trying to run a play in the next group. And Coach, ‘We got reps to go! Get them off the field!’ So, he’s trying to be urgent, and he’s digging in me, and he’s digging in everybody.

“So yeah, he keeps you on your toes.”

Forty-three-year-old Jon Edward Sumrall is passionate about the game. You can see it in his eyes. You can hear it in his voice. If a team is a reflection of its coach, the Gators are in the process of a 180-degree turn.

“I love the intensity,” junior linebacker Myles Graham said. “I love how engaged he is.”

Whitt, who led the way in the weight room and offseason conditioning drills, said it took several weeks for the players to fully invest in the renewed sense of urgency. But that has changed.

The Gators are growling in his ears.

“The ingrained urgency is on fire right now,” Whitt said.

Sumrall understands the program is on a winning streak off the field. He knows that won’t mean much after his first loss. But if the Gators are going to turn their offseason investment into wins on Saturdays, they need to replicate the mood on Tuesday.

Sumrall was so ready to get started that he woke up at 3 a.m., then 3:30, then 4, finally deciding to get up and get going for the start of camp. He wants his players to feel the same way as he does from start to finish.

“Everybody gets excited for day one,” Sumrall said. “I’ve never seen anybody, like, not excited about the first day of practice. The trick is, great football teams get excited about every day. And so, we got to sustain that type of energy, enthusiasm about what we’re doing.”

Same for anyone with a camera who is looking for a snapshot of the work in action.