GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) — Florida coach Jon Sumrall has a new appreciation for the gator chomp.
Sumrall got hissed at and snapped at while posing for promotional pictures with a live alligator last week. It was enough to prompt Sumrall to backpedal like his college playing days at Kentucky.
“I’m pretty certain I’d look like Chubbs from Happy Gilmore if the alligator had gotten close to my hand,” Sumrall joked Tuesday following his first spring practice at Florida. “Yeah, that was cool, man.”
A little nerve-racking, too.
“In my mind, I had this visual image of we’re going to have like a little baby alligator, like a 1-foot alligator you might see on a riverboat cruise in Louisiana, mouth’s taped,” he said. “I walk up and there’s this 7-foot alligator.
“I’m like, ‘Hang on. What am I doing here?’ They’re like, ‘We’re going to take some pictures. You can get this close.’ I’m like, ‘Look, during COVID I wasn’t allowed to get this close to people. I don’t know about an alligator.’"
The alligator was named Helena and was from a nearby gator farm. She may have been relatively friendly, but she was far from trained. She walked in and out of shots while Sumrall flipped a football — and eventually turned on the former Troy and Tulane head coach.
“As soon as I started to get kind of comfortable … I’m like, ‘All right, this thing isn’t going to do anything crazy, I don’t think.’ I get 4 or 5 feet away and it starts to kind of hiss a little and it snaps," he said. "I’m like, ‘What the hell is going on? I’m out of here.’”
He didn’t actually bail. Helena simmered down, and they got the photos done. But it was an experience Sumrall won’t soon forget.
“I’m not necessarily looking for when that’s coming up on my schedule again,” he said. “But it was a fun experience.”
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