The pressure to win in the SEC has never been greater.
Case in point: Six SEC teams won 10 games during the regular season and are ranked in the top-10 of the latest BCS standings. However, four coaches have already been fired.
Of the five coaches that didn’t qualify for a bowl game, only Missouri’s Gary Pinkel made it past Sunday, but there are still rumblings in Columbia, Mo., that Pinkel’s job security could be in jeopardy.
“Feel great about our program, but this isn’t the time to talk about the whole season and feelings and not going to a bowl game and everything,” Pinkel said after the Tigers’ 59-29 loss to Texas A&M Saturday. “I just don’t feel comfortable talking about it right now.”
But the other four weren’t so lucky.
Tennessee’s Derek Dooley and Kentucky’s Joker Phillips were fired before the season was even over, Auburn’s Gene Chizik was let go Sunday and Arkansas’ John L. Smith was “relieved of his coaching duties” – meaning he is still on the staff but no longer in a coaching role.
“I think it is what it is,” Alabama head coach Nick Saban said. “There is a lot of attention to what we do. I think there is a high expectation of what we do.
“Whether I like it or not, it is the world that we live in, and I fully understand that two years from now, if we don’t continue to have a good team, that I will be in the same seat that other people are in now. It’s the nature of the beast in our profession.”
Tennessee finished with a 5-7 record in 2012, and one of those wins came after Dooley was fired. Tennessee fans are clamoring for former Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Jon Gruden, but it is looking less and less likely that Gruden will leave his current job as a color commentator on ESPN’s Monday Night Football.
There were high hopes for Phillips when he took over at Kentucky in 2010 after serving as an assistant since 2003. But he compiled just a 13-24 record and consistently let the top high school talent either get out of the state or to cross-state rival Louisville.
Smith took over an Arkansas program that was two years removed from a BCS bowl berth but was in turmoil after former head coach Bobby Petrino’s scandalous motorcycle accident and subsequent firing. Kristen Capolla, sports editor of the Arkansas Traveler, said Smith’s struggles were due to him trying to coach like Petrino, rather than make it his own program.
“The problem is not the guy who came in,” she said. “The problem is the mess that was made by the guy who left.”
Auburn was the biggest anomaly of the four vacancies. Chizik led the Tigers to a BCS National Championship in 2010, but two years later went winless in the SEC and lost to rivals Georgia and Alabama by a combined score of 87-0.
“I don’t know if Gene was a dead man walking or a live man limping,” said AP sportswriter John Zenor. “He had chances — the Vanderbilt game, the Arkansas game — to make it happen and didn’t.”
The Tigers’ replacement could come from a number of different places. Names like former Auburn offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn and Florida State head coach Jimbo Fisher have surfaced, but the most interesting name is Petrino, who would certainly cause a divide in the fan base should he be hired.
“For PR-wise, a splash hire looks good for a few days, few months,” Zenor said. “But I think they want somebody stable that can build and sustain. That’s more important to them than making a good PR hire.”
