Green Beret to Gainesville, Rusty Whitt Brings Military Intensity to Gators' Strength Program

Rusty Whitt is in his first season as the Florida Gators' Director of Football Performance. With him comes years of leading strength programs and a remarkable military career.

Rusty Whitt is in his first season as the Florida Gators' Director of Football Performance. With him comes years of leading strength programs and a remarkable military career. | Matt Pendleton-Imagn Images

GAINESVILLE, Fla.-- Jon Sumrall had made up his mind: He was going to fire Rusty Whitt.

Entering his first stint as a head coach, Sumrall was building his staff at Troy. Whitt, then the Trojans' strength and conditioning coach was not a part of his plans. As a result, there was some tension when the two first met after the 2021 season.

“You ever seen the movie Step Brothers? When they're in the front yard looking at each other, and he goes, ‘They call me dragon,’ And he goes, ‘I'm Nighthawk.' Well, that was like our first meeting, you know, kind of looking at each other, checking each other," Whitt, now the Florida Gators' Director of Football Performance, said.

Despite the initial hesitation, Sumrall said that after he did his homework on Whitt, a longtime strength and conditioning coach and U.S. Army veteran, he realized Whitt was "part of the solution," not "the problem."

The result, much like the aforementioned 2008 comedy film by Adam McKay starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, was Sumrall and Whitt evolving from hesitant step brothers to full-fledged brothers, at least figuratively.

"He's very, very close to me. I have a lot of confidence in him," Sumrall said. "... It's like that country song, 'you say it best when you say nothing at all'; that's me and Whitt. We don't say anything, we just look at each other like, I got it. I can pick up what he's feeling, and we're very aligned."

They still have their fights, though.

What happens when one of the most intense head coaches meets one of the most intense strength and conditioning coaches in a stressful moment? Just watch the sideline during a prolonged touchdown review in the middle of the American Conference title game against North Texas.

"They didn't have the pylon cam, so they were just taking forever, and we were losing momentum," Whitt said. "And I looked at the referee the wrong way, and he ‘Get that guy out of my face.' So it kind of caused a little snowball reaction like that.”

In short, Sumrall wanted to "kick my ass," Whitt quipped.

"It's genuine, and it's based on us both knowing how intense we have to be to make change and to drive these players," Whitt added.

That intensity to make change started long before he met Sumrall. It also led to a career change in the middle of a young career as a strength coach.

Calling Felt Leads to Career Change

Rusty Whitt was recovering from surgery after rupturing his ACL when the Sept. 11 attacks occurred. After which, he received a call from his grandmother, who gave him life-changing advice.

"She called me that morning and she said, ‘Rusty, this is your Pearl Harbor," Whitt recalls of his grandmother's message. "Ok. I guess you just drafted me. So rehab my knee, about a 10-month rehab and walked across the street to the Army recruiting office and joined the Army."

At the time, Whitt had a blossoming career as a strength and conditioning coach.

At Sam Houston State, he helped design the new weight facility and had a gig as an instructor in the kinesiology department. He also had a stint as an assistant strength and conditioning coach at William & Mary, was a graduate assistant at Midwestern State and Texas and had an internship in the strength and conditioning department at the U.S. Olympic Training Center.

All of that experience and any future prospects were put on the back burner as nearly 3,000 lives were taken from 19 terrorist hijackers who flew two planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, as well as one into the Pentagon just outside of Washington, D.C., and another into a field in Pennsylvania.

Whitt grew up in a military family.

His grandmother, 24 years old when Pearl Harbor was attacked, marking the beginning of the U.S.'s involvement in World War II, and the youngest of "like 12," Whitt said, saw all of her brothers join the military after the attack. His grandfather was in the infantry in Hawaii. His father was in the 101st Airbourne.

"So growing up with all these black and white pictures, I felt this like calling. And that didn't really push me over the edge until you saw towers crumbling on TV," he said.

Whitt's quick visit to the Army recruiting office turned into a stellar military career as a member of the U.S. Army from August 2003 until January 2009. A Special Forces Sergeant, Whitt built comprehensive pre-deployment conditioning program ahead of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) V and VI, both of which saw him deployed to Iraq. He received a combat infantry badge, two Iraqi campaign medals and an Army commendation medal with valor as a result of his service.

"Whitt is a special human," head coach Jon Sumrall said. "... He became a Green Beret at the age of, I think, 33. I don't know many people that have an interest in becoming a Green Beret at the age of 23.""

After his service, Whitt returned to his calling as a strength and conditioning coach. From 2016-18, he coached at Texas Tech before a one-year stint at Army. In 2020, he went to Troy, where he stayed until following Sumrall to Tulane in 2024 and, again, to Florida in 2026. His time in the military continues to be a source of inspiration in his coaching.

Mainly, the standards are higher, Whitt said. Player accountability is of the utmost importance. Whitt recalled an experience on the first day of basic training that he still carries with him to this day.

"We're standing in a company in infantry basic at Fort Bend in Georgia, there's 50 guys in each platoon, and there's four platoons, so there's 200 guys standing there," he said. "And I'm in the very front row, wearing our BDUs with a canteen between my legs.

"We're waiting for something to happen, and I hear, 'This mother-bleeper has a popped collar!' His collar was turned up. There was a guy across the corner in the other platoon -- one guy had his collar addressed wrong, and that was 8:00 in the morning. We bear-crawled until noon around a cinder track."

That standard of accountability, both in the sense of holding yourself accountable and holding those around you accountable, is a necessary component to survive Whitt's strength and conditioning program, headlined by "The Gauntlet."

The Gauntlet

Throughout his time as a strength and conditioning coach, Rusty Whitt has become known as a no-nonsense, consistent and sacrificial coach. Those qualities are best seen and best brought out during the offseason "gauntlet," an intense offseason workout program players must pass before spring break, or they will keep doing it

"I've seen it passed four times with Coach Sumrall. So we're going for the fifth one," Whitt said. "We completed the fourth one (Friday), and they got closer than last time, so we'll see how it goes."

Physical growth is a goal. Mental fortitude is the ultimate reward.

"I think there's a certain culture in today's young man where they think that if we just keep doing it, they'll give it to us, and it's not going to happen," Whitt said. "They have to beat the Gauntlet the right way.”

The gauntlet began as Whitt's take on former Nebraska head coach Tom Osborne's "culture of the mat room," before it was refined by former Georgia Tech and Navy head coach Paul Johnson, who called it the "Fourth Quarter Warrior." Johnson passed it on to Army coach Jeff Monken, who Whitt worked under in 2020.

"I thought it was just awesome for preparing a team to grow together and face adversity, and then I took the idea from him and added some penalties to it, some time penalties, and made it even a little more difficult," Whitt explained. "(Monken) would require his West Point players to pass it three or four times in a semester."

As a result of transfer portal windows and an ever-changing calendar in college football, Whitt refined his own gauntlet at Tulane under Jon Sumrall. Sumrall, Whitt said, granted him fewer gauntlets so he could have more time with playbook install for new players.

"I made it harder to pass. They just got to pass it once," Whitt said, who adjusted the gauntlet with time penalties, harder workouts and other aspects.

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The penalties are another focal point. Whitt noted that there are "about 50 different penalties" that can happen on the field during a game. Adding penalties in the gauntlet helps replicate some of those, while helping the players build the mental strength to avoid them in critical moments.

"We've tried to get the team prepared for all the different pitfalls in a football game, and being disciplined when you're fatigued," he said.

Sumrall and Whitt both admitted this year's Gators team has the right energy and is receptive to Whitt's coaching. Still, the gauntlet has yet to be passed. On Friday, the failure led to a heart-to-heart from Whitt.

"This morning after the gauntlets, an hour long, I asked them, ‘Can we break you as a man in one hour? Can you get broken in one hour?’ ‘No!’ ‘Well, we just did. You failed. You broke. You didn't pass’" he said. "These guys are so used to being successful that they don't understand what failure really means.

"I mentioned this today: I said there's the old Aerosmith song, ‘Dream On.’ I can't hit that note. ‘Dream On,’ and he goes, ‘Sometimes you got to lose to know how to win.’ They lost, and they got to learn how to win.”

Year One

Jon Sumrall has a big task ahead of him: turning an historic program in the midst of its worst stretch in modern history back into a title contender.

Since Urban Meyer's departure after the 2010 season, Florida has only four 10-win seasons with zero conference titles and has had six losing seasons, four of which have come in the last five years. The program has also had four fired head coaches, none of whom have survived past their fourth season.

Sumrall, a career winner with three conference titles, has made it no secret that his goal at Florida is to win immediately as he did at Troy and Tulane. That doesn't happen and didn't happen at his previous stops without Whitt.

"Rusty is pivotal to what we do," Sumrall said. "I'm very fortunate that he's been with me my entirety as a head coach. I'm very confident in what he does and how he does it."

The resources at Florida have elevated Whitt's coaching, as well. On multiple occasions, Sumrall has noted the benefit of not having to share the weight room with other athletic programs.

"I'm not having the book the weight room around sailing now. That's kind of fun," he quipped.

Whitt noted that Florida, between the spending, facilities and equipment, is on the same level as the Olympic training center he interned at. Having a standalone facility has also allowed about 10 minutes of extra time for workouts he didn't have at previous stops.

"The thing that blows me away about the resources here is the nutrition and the supplementation that we have. That is, it's so expensive, and we care enough here to do it the right way," Whitt said. "... We have close to 14,000-square feet for football only, so we are right there with the premier SEC schools, the best in the country. So we should be able to produce that.”

Facilities do not mean anything without the players, though. As much as Sumrall has emphasized winning, he has emphasized the program needing to be player-led. Whitt carries that into his strength program. In addition to the gauntlet, Whitt has installed a finisher workout that must be player-led.

If the players do it wrong, they start over. If they do it right, the workout is over. Nonetheless, it is up to them to see it through. Soon enough, one leader grows into a team of leaders.

"We call it force multiplier," Whitt explained. "I coach you, you coach him, he coaches two, they coach two, and pretty soon you have 115 players that are pretty good at leading themselves. You know, the first thing about being a leader is leading yourself. So we're starting to get that going. And it's only week four."

Florida is less than a month away from opening spring camp on March 3 and less than seven months away from the season opening on Sept. 5 against FAU. While the Gators are far from game-ready, Whitt likes the early returns.

"You never know what you're going to get into with a new team. 
And the players that were here understand the history of this program and the expectations," he said. So we have really received no pushback. They want to go. They want to do hard things together. So it's been good so far."