Tulane Football Coach Candidly Opens up on Darian Mensah, Transfer Portal and NIL

Tulane Green Wave football coach Jon Sumrall sat down with Josh Pate to discuss the effects of NIL and the transfer portal on college football.

Credit: Tulane Athletics / Football

The Tulane Green Wave thought they found their starting quarterback of the future, but Darian Mensah is now with the Duke Blue Devils after one season as the successor to Michael Pratt.

As head coach Jon Sumrall traverses the college football landscape that is now dominated by NIL and the transfer portal, he learns a lot from losing his starting quarterback.

Sumrall sat down for an hourlong interview on Josh Pate's College Football Show, where he was candid about the departure of Mensah and how Tulane football plans to bounce back.

Pate joked that despite not knowing Sumrall personally or meeting him before the sit-down, he was mad on his behalf about what went down this past December, and if it were him in Sumrall’s position, he would’ve punched a hole in the wall.

“I think I've probably evolved some to get to this point,” Sumrall said. “Three or four or five years ago, if something like that had happened to me, I probably would've punched a hole in the wall. I've learned there's going to be things happening outside of your control. Do I want to lose our starters to other schools? No, I want to keep them all. I would like to keep all my starters here if possible. That would be preferred. That'd make having a good team next year a lot easier.”

Appreciate @CoachJonSumrall being very candid with us about losing his starting QB in the Portal pic.twitter.com/qKXlTNstXv

— Josh Pate (@JoshPateCFB) February 10, 2025

In today’s era of college football, there’s not much time to process these types of departures at all. Mensah left the program the day the team was selected for the Gasparilla Bowl against the Florida Gators. The December signing day was just days away.

Leadership starts at the top, and as Sumrall explained, he must set the tone for the team to move forward from the portal losses, which included Alex Bauman to the Miami Hurricanes, Makhi Hughes to the Oregon Ducks, and Parker Peterson to the Wisconsin Badgers.

“We have three team rules here,” Sumrall said. “They're really simple, and one of them is no energy vampires, which means no whining, no complaining, and no excuses. I can sit here and whine and complain and make excuses about losing Darian or losing our tight end Alex Bauman to Miami, or losing our running back Makhi Hughes to Oregon, or losing Parker Peterson to Wisconsin. We lost guys everywhere, but it's not going to do me any good or do them any good to whine and complain.”

Sumrall spoke with Mensah the day he left and wished him luck and meant it. He has a very mature perspective on how spending time getting angry is pointless and that the state of college football today requires a flexible mentality to succeed in the sport.

“I’ve tweeted out a couple of times the Moneyball ‘Adapt or die’ GIF with Billy Bean, or Brad Pitt as the character, or whatever it’s called, because I could sit here and whine and complain about it all day,” Sumrall said. “It doesn’t help me. It doesn't help Tulane; it doesn't help our staff. It doesn't help our players. What I really try to spend most of my time on is focusing on how I continue to build the best roster I can. Then, how do we develop the guys that are here to be the best they can be? We create value for people in a lot of different ways.”

It's a refreshing perspective from a head coach who has experienced the effects of the transfer portal perhaps more painfully than most who are openly complaining about it. Jon Sumrall has all the justification in the world to sound the alarm on tampering and poaching from Group of Five programs.

Smartly, Sumrall sees the trickle-down effect of that mentality on the culture and philosophy of his team and more value in the road forward that will always have a fork in it of NIL and transfer portal opportunities to handle.