Former SEC head coach admits he once turned down a college football job because the school's practice fields were only 80 yards long

Before Kevin Sumlin took over as the head coach of the Texas A&M Aggies in late 2011, he considered taking the head coaching job at UCLA. 

Sumlin, who was the head coach at Houston at the time, interviewed for the UCLA job. But during the interview, Sumlin discovered that UCLA's practice fields were only 80 yards long. 

The story was recounted during Sumlin's recent appearance on The Coach JB Show with Big Smitty. 

"Coach, you (Sumlin) told me a story one day, we were having another soda pop, and you said, 'JB, I went to UCLA and interviewed and I was ready to take that job, and I walked out to the practice field and the practice field was only 80 yards,'" said Jason Brown, the star of Netflix's Last Chance U. "And you mentioned something that stuck with me to this day. They said this is prime time real estate, in Westwood, and you were like, 'Do you ask Kobe Bryant to practice on a f--ing eight foot rim and then shoot on a 10 foot rim in the game?' That just stuck with me." 

"Yeah, I was at Houston and ended up going to [Texas] A&M after that situation (at UCLA)," responded Sumlin when asked it was true that he walked off the field at UCLA after seeing the size of the practice fields. "Since then things have changed (at UCLA). You see the facilities they have now. It was there, they had it, but they were just not ready to do that yet."