HOUSTON – Kevin Sumlin wears a black Houston Gamblers hoodie and a ballcap on a quiet afternoon inside the lobby of a hotel off I-610. Just 90 miles from here, Sumlin once coached Texas A&M to a No. 5 national ranking during a season in which he beat Nick Saban.
Not that he expects the players on his United Football League team to remember that.
Led by a redshirt freshman quarterback turned Heisman Trophy winner who’d become known as Johnny Football, a player as talented as he was rebellious, Sumlin’s Texas A&M Aggies toppled mighty Alabama in the Aggies’ first season in the SEC.
Nowadays, Sumlin coaches a team filled with players in their mid-20s who harbor NFL aspirations.
Do those players know their coach once beat Saban, in a game played in front of 101,821 fans at Bryant-Denny Stadium?
And, do the Gamblers’ quarterbacks ask Sumlin about his experience coaching Johnny Manziel?
“Not as much as (other) people” ask about it, Sumlin says good-naturedly.
As I join the list of “other people” to ask Sumlin what it was like coaching Manziel, he wants to make one thing clear: Manziel was “a great teammate” at Texas A&M.
Coaching Manziel “was certainly different, but he’s a great talent,” Sumlin said in an interview with USA TODAY Sports. “As much as people want to talk about his actions or anything else, he’s a great teammate. The players love to be around him on a practice field, because he loved to play football.
“When it came to football for him, he was as unselfish as there was, and the players respected that, and so did I.
“Now, the other part, you can’t deny that, but, as a teammate, we didn’t have any problems. Once he got on the field, he was great. Once he got in the building, great.”
Sumlin’s career crescendo occurred while Manziel played for him, more than a decade ago. After Texas A&M won 20 games in two seasons with Manziel at the trigger, Fox Sports published a story under the headline, “It’s Kevin Sumlin’s World, Y’all.”
Sportswriter Clay Travis wrote of Sumlin achieving a “dynasty win” after the Aggies trounced a top-10 South Carolina team in their 2014 season opener, their first game after Manziel departed for the NFL.
Turns out, it was the start of an 8-5 season. No dynasty.
Sumlin never had a losing season at Texas A&M. He also never matched the comet ride of 2012, when his Aggies went 11-2 and Manziel won the Heisman.
Eight years later, Arizona fired Sumlin after he went 0-5 in the 2020 season. He’s become something of a journeyman since then.
Sumlin, 61, doesn’t sound as if he’s itching to pivot back into college football.
“I don’t really like the direction” of college football, Sumlin says, although he adds he’s not closed that door entirely.
For now, he’s focused on helping Gamblers players turn their UFL performance into a spot on an NFL roster.
“It’s one of those deals where, you’re just trying to help these guys,” he said.