In August, programs geared up for what they hoped would be a successful 2025 season. Programs like Penn State and LSU had national championships on their mind, while Auburn and Florida were looking to get over the hump and crash the College Football Playoff.
Dreams everywhere quickly died.
Following a double-overtime home loss to Oregon, the preseason No. 2 Nittany Lions appeared to have a “get-right” spot against a winless UCLA on the horizon. We could not have been more wrong. The Bruins jumped out to a 24-7 halftime lead and never looked back, taking down Penn State 42-37.
After another disappointing loss the following week to Northwestern, Penn State’s brass fired head coach James Franklin.
On the surface it looks like LSU cut ties with coach Brian Kelly for similar reasons — spending millions on retaining talent and transfers just to have playoff hopes quickly dashed. However, the reality of the divorce is founded in Kelly’s lack of social awareness.
When Kelly arrived in Baton Rouge from Notre Dame, he quickly made staff moves that cut ties with the heart of the program, including long-time and Louisiana native staffers. This played into a year-by-year regression and then getting fired.
Brian Kelly fits the narrative of faulty coaching hires in the SEC — guys from outside of the South with no SEC coaching experience simply do not win.
Former Auburn coach Bryan Harsin is another example of this. Harsin, like Kelly, was from outside the SEC circle, spending the majority of his coaching career at Boise State. Harsin didn’t mesh well with his superiors, in turn not recruiting well which led to a 9-12 record in two seasons.
Auburn breached from its usual “Auburn man” hire to make Harsin the guy, and it crashed famously.
Kelly and Harsin are not the only “outsiders” to fail in the SEC, but they are the poster-children that scare athletic directors and GMs all over the league out of looking outside of the South.
The reality of the situation is that having SEC or Southern experience does not matter to a successful coach.
Nick Saban. Yes, arguably the greatest head coach to ever do it, who won seven national titles in the SEC, was an outsider.
Saban was a West Virginia native who got his coaching start as a graduate assistant at Kent State in Ohio. He later got his first major head coaching gig at Michigan State. There was certainly doubt when LSU hired the young Saban, and again when he finished 7-6 in his first season at Alabama. Doubts were quickly put to bed on how good of a coach Nick Saban was.
So how did Saban complete the impossible task of being a winning SEC coach from outside the league’s bubble? He read the room and worked tirelessly until his team succeeded, and then all over again.
Current Crimson Tide coach Kalen DeBoer is following a similar blueprint, starting by making sure he keeps important staffers, followed by tireless work. That’s why DeBoer is 19-6 in two seasons at Alabama, with recruiting classes constantly seated inside the top five nationally.
Early in DeBoer’s tenure in Tuscaloosa, critics attacked him based on this narrative.
“South Dakota native who had never seriously recruited the SEC now thrust into one of the most pressurized jobs in the sport,” CBS Sports John Talty said. “You have to be wired a certain kind of way to really succeed in the SEC the way Saban, Kirby Smart and others have.”
Where a coach is from doesn’t determine competitive character, DeBoer has proved that in his short tenure at Alabama just as his predecessor did.
In fact, only six current SEC head coaches had no experience in the league prior to being hired. This list includes DeBoer, Ryan Silverfield (Arkansas), Mark Stoops (Kentucky), Brent Venables (Oklahoma), Josh Heupel (Tennessee) and Clark Lea (Vanderbilt).
Outside of Silverfield, who was hired by the Razorbacks Sunday, the rest have all achieved a great deal of success at times in their career. Stoops is the winningest head coach in Kentucky history, Venables and Lea are in the thick of the playoff hunt, and Heupel has resurrected Tennessee from the bottom of the league.
The narrative that you must be an “SEC man” to win in the league is vastly untrue, but grew in popularity during the Harsin and Kelly eras at their respective programs. Saban, as well as the current coaches who came from other conferences have proven it untrue.
