GAINESVILLE, Fla. — To hear George Gumbs Sr. talk about his junior namesake’s current station in life is akin to a lottery winner, finally flush after years of devoted stops at the same corner store to buy exact numbers, marveling at his good fortune.
The elder Gumbs grew up on the South Side of Chicago and played a couple of years of football in high school, but the real world pulled him off the field and into other directions.
“I got caught up in the peer pressure,” Gumbs said.
By the time George Jr. came along, more than a decade younger than the family’s three older kids, George Sr. had carved out a career as a unionized sheet metal worker and spent much of his free time as a typical sports dad. He didn’t care what George Jr. played, but he insisted his athletic son get involved in something to stay active. George Jr. tried baseball, spent a few months taking karate lessons, and used his bruising style on the neighborhood basketball courts.
Nothing stuck. He eventually pleaded with his father to let him play football, inspired by the passion he saw on TV from former NFL linebacker Ray Lewis.
George Sr. signed him up for Pop Warner and watched his son become the team’s starting center.
“He was the only kid on the team that could hike the ball and come up and make a block,” George Sr. said.
Still, young George tired of the role quickly. He wanted to catch the ball, score touchdowns, make tackles and do everything people rave over after games.
George Sr., seeing his son’s interest fading, used the build-him-up strategy to keep him engaged.
“I had to calm him down. It was boring for him,” the elder Gumbs said. “I told him, ‘Look, you’re the only kid who can do this good, and everything starts with you. You are the first person that touches the ball. You are the most important person on the field.”
The pep talks worked for a while, but dad dipped deeper into his playbook for more encouragement by taking George Jr. to a Simeon vs. Phillips high school game, one of the marquee matchups each season in the Chicago Public League. He wanted the tall, slender, athletic George Jr. to see what offensive linemen looked like when they got to high school and college.
They didn’t look like him. The message hit home. He might be a center in Pop Warner, but if he continued to play, his future was elsewhere.
“Seeing that gave me some hope in the sport,” Gumbs Jr. said this week. “It gave me a lot of light looking down the tunnel.”
They didn’t know it then, but the lesson George Sr. passed on to his son in elementary school has paid dividends more than once in the years since. A redshirt junior defensive lineman, Gumbs made Gators fans pay attention in last week’s win over Samford with three tackles, including a sack.
Gumbs joined the Gators in January as a transfer from Northern Illinois, where he started his career as a walk-on receiver in 2021. He earned a scholarship the following season, moved to tight end, and had trouble cracking the lineup.
Gumbs was at a crossroads before his third season with the Huskies.
“I didn’t do well,” he said of playing offense. “They approached me and told me I probably wouldn’t be able to start as a tight end there. I was like, ‘I’m going to try to make things right.’ I felt I was still developing and could be a good player.”
The 6-foot-4, 250-pound Gumbs moved to defense and had a breakthrough season in 2023, finishing with 6.5 tackles for loss and 3.5 sacks. The road less traveled led to UF when Gumbs entered the transfer portal after the season.
Gumbs had never spoken to the Gators, and before Covid wrecked his senior season at Simeon High in 2020, the only Division I offers he received were from Western Michigan and Bowling Green. Those dried up during Covid, leaving him with only a preferred walk-on offer from Northern Illinois. Ready to challenge himself at a higher level, Gumbs committed to Cincinnati following a weekend visit with the Bearcats and had returned home to Chicago when Bird Sherrill, Florida’s director of college personnel, reached out.
“I didn’t believe they were serious,” Gumbs said.
“He had one foot in Cincinnati,” added George Sr.
Gumbs heard from Sherrill again while in Miami on a trip, and since he was already in Florida, he decided to stop in Gainesville to visit UF. He instantly felt at home, telling his dad that deep down, he had always wanted to attend college in Florida but never thought it would happen.
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