Tulane head coach Jon Sumrall has his program in the heat of the American Conference title race as the calendar turns to late November.
Sumrall, who is one of the top coaches rumored to be involved in the carousel this go around, has had his team prepared to play despite his name being brought up frequently in coaching searches.
The Green Wave entered the AP Top 25 at No. 24 this week, and Sumrall was asked whether he believed that his team was worthy of that ranking. The up-and-coming coach gave a motivating answer that was certainly directed at his team through the media.
“I don’t know, you know, I haven’t watched that many other people play,” Sumrall said. “I watch us play and I watch whoever we’re getting ready to play, play. And after that, I don't really know who else is out there, I’ll just be very candid. There's some days I feel like we’re one of the bottom 25 teams in the country watching us play. So if we want to start feeling comfortable or feeling casual about somebody wanting to vote us in the top 25 teams. There must be a lot of bad football going on if we’re one of the top 25 teams. I mean there must be some really bad football played right now in college football. We’re average. We’re an average team. We get every six or seven days depending on the schedule that week to promote ourselves or embarrass ourselves. And we’ve done that before. So we better get ready to play.”
The Green Wave travel on the road to Temple on Saturday before hosting Charlotte in the regular season finale. Standing at 8–2 overall and 5–1 in conference play, Tulane needs to win out to make the conference title game and have an outside chance of making the College Football Playoff.
And Sumrall is making sure his program is locked and ready to go.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Tulane's Jon Sumrall Is Not Letting His Team Get Comfortable Despite Top 25 Ranking.
