Tulane Football Coach Plays Strong Role in Washington Huskies Landing Quarterback
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Tulane Green Wave head coach Jon Sumrall has one of the better mentalities in college football: humans over hardware.
His approach to relationship-building played a role in former Tulane football quarterback Kai Horton finding a new home with the Washington Huskies.
Horton was part of a three-man quarterback competition, and he and Ty Thompson lost out to Darian Mensah. Despite Mensah departing for the Duke Blue Devils and Thompson converting to tight end, Horton elected to enter the transfer portal.
Sumrall makes it clear to his players that he will always have their backs, and he proved that in utilizing past coaching connections to find the right fit for Horton.
One of those past stops was with the San Diego Toreros, where Sumrall coached the defensive line and linebackers and eventually became defensive coordinator from 2007 to 2011.
In that time, Jimmie Dougherty was a tight ends and quarterbacks coach and was the offensive coordinator in 2008, his final of a four-year stint.
Dougherty is now in his second season as quarterbacks coach and is the new offensive coordinator for the Huskies. He shared with Washington on Sports Illustrated how that prior stop in San Diego helped find him a quarterback in the portal.
"One of my best friends in this business is Jon Sumrall, the head coach at Tulane, and he spoke really highly of Kai and his character and who he is as a person," Dougherty said. "He's somebody I felt really comfortable about bringing into the quarterback room and letting him go out there and compete."
Horton joins a crowded room with returning starter Demond Williams and will compete to back him up alongside Shea Kuykendall and incoming freshmen Ashton Beierly and Trenton McMillan.
With that level of inexperience, Horton provides necessary veteran presence with credible game snaps as backup to Michael Pratt over his career with the Green Wave. Dougherty confirmed the intent of the move while the younger players get situated at the college football level.
"That just had to do with bringing in some depth," Dougherty said of Horton. "He's a guy who has played some in the past."
Horton only spent one season with Sumrall, who initially coaxed him out of the portal following Willie Fritz’s departure to the Houston Cougars. While he lost out on the starting job to Mensah, Sumrall ensured that Horton would land somewhere with a quarterbacks coach he trusts.
It endears all players on Sumrall’s roster to see an example of him going out of his way to help out a former Tulane football player he had a short relationship with.
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Maddy Hudak is the deputy editor for Tulane on Sports Illustrated and the radio sideline reporter for their football team. Maddy is an alumnus of Tulane University, and graduated in 2016 with a degree in psychology. She went on to obtain a Master of Legal Studies while working as a research coordinator at the VA Hospital, and in jury consulting. During this time, Maddy began covering the New Orleans Saints with SB Nation, and USA Today. She moved to New Orleans in 2021 to pursue a career in sports and became Tulane's sideline reporter that season. She enters her fourth year with the team now covering the program on Sports Illustrated, and will use insights from features and interviews in the live radio broadcast. You can follow her on X at @MaddyHudak_94, or if you have any questions or comments, she can be reached via email at maddy.hudak1@gmail.com