Tulane's Jon Sumrall addresses LSU coaching vacancy after Brian Kelly firing

Tulane coach Jon Sumrall is fully focused on the Green Wave's mission to win the American this season. All of the LSU buzz and his name being attached to other vacancies can sit right where it lays -- in speculative la-la land -- as far as he's concerned.

Sumrall was succinct in his messaging this week when asked about the Tigers' vacancy following their firing of Brian Kelly.

"I get those questions because we're having success. The coaching carousel isn't even a thought," Sumrall said Tuesday. "We're in the midseason phase. Whatever people want to speculate, they can do that. UTSA has 100% of my focus."

Unbeaten in the American with its lone loss coming to Ole Miss earlier this season, Tulane battles UTSA on Thursday before a showdown with Memphis next month. The winner of the American likely earns the Group of Five's auto-bid to the College Football Playoff given the breadth of good teams within the league.

The Green Wave are on the cusp of the top 25 despite losing star quarterback Darian Mensah to Duke this offseason and several other key contributors in the transfer portal. Sumrall was a part of coaching staffs at Kentucky and Ole Miss before leading the show with success at Troy and Tulane. 

He's a Kentucky alum, but that job still belongs to Mark Stoops for the time being. 

"No distractions are going to come up with this football team," Sumrall said Monday night on Aaron Torres' podcast. "And what I mean by that is when things are going bad, there may be fans or people on like Twitter or whatever the heck it's called now, they're calling for me to get fired, right? And when things are going good, they may try to speculate, like, 'Hey, Coach could go here or do that. Do something else.' 

"Same thing with the assistant coaches. We play a great offensive game, everybody's gonna talk about, '(Offensive coordinator) Coach (Joe) Craddock should be on this watch list for a job.' Or if we play a bad offensive game, we're talking about, 'How do we get him out of here? Let's run him out of town.'"

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Sumrall said he's "micro-focused" on the task at hand and end-of-year conversations about other job opportunities will be had at the end of Tulane's season.

"If my ultimate goal is just to be a Power Four head coach, I wouldn't be at Tulane. I've had those opportunities," Sumrall said. "If my ultimate goal was just to make the biggest paycheck, I wouldn't be at Tulane. Other people have offered me more money than I make here. I love where I'm at. I love what I do. 

"I love what I do with ... I told my team, 25 years from now, can I tell you I'm gonna be sitting here coaching? I don't know that, but I wouldn't be mad about it. I'm cool. Like, I wouldn't be pissed about that. It'd be cool, I love New Orleans. I love everything about my job.' I'm so freaking micro-focused on going 1-0 every week that, all that speculation, I don't pay attention to it. When people bring it up to me, I'm like, 'Get away from me. Don't even talk.' Like, I ain't got no time for it."