SEC Football in the late 2000s was the mecca of college football coaching.
Alabama hired Nick Saban in 2007. He’s currently 119-19 in 10 years there, including 4 National Titles.
Florida hired Urban Meyer in 2005. He won 2 national titles and went 65-15 in Gainesville.
Arkansas hired Bobby Petrino in 2008. We went 34-17 at the school, including 21-5 over his last 2 years.
Georgia had Mark Richt from 2001-2015 and went 145-51, Steve Spurrier went 86-49 at South Carolina (including three straight 11-2 seasons from 2011-13), and Les Miles won a national title in 2007 and went 114-34.
In 2010, all 6 of those SEC Football coaches were in the 12-team league.
Since those coaches left, this is who they’ve replaced them with:
Florida: Will Muschamp (28-21) / Jim McElwain (19-8)
Arkansas: John L. Smith (4-8) / Bret Bielema (25-26)
Georgia: Kirby Smart (8-5)
South Carolina: Will Muschamp (6-7)
LSU: Ed Orgeron (6-2* as interim coach)
Nick Saban is still at Alabama. With those coaches that were there in 2010, those programs went 444-166. That’s a 72.78% winning percentage. The replacements for them have not fared as well. Florida has gone 47-29. Arkansas has gone 29-34. Georgia is 8-5, South Carolina 6-7, and LSU went 6-2 without Les last year. That’s 96-77; a 55.49% winning percentage.
Now, obviously this isn’t including Vanderbilt, who brought in James Franklin in 2011, Ole Miss, who had Houston Nutt at the time and parlayed him into Hugh Freeze, Auburn with Gene Chizik (who won the National Championship in 2010 behind Gus Malzahn at OC and Cam Newton at QB), and many others, but you see the point.
With all the money that has been rolling into the conference… what happened? Why were so many big schools not able to hire good young coaches? Is it the idea that nobody wants to coach in the SEC against Nick Saban? Or is it a lack of good coaching around the country? Or could it be something else entirely… like other conferences catching up as far as paying big money for great coaches?
We break that down in the video below, or you can listen to it in Podcast 98.
