Randy Smith
We are four full months away from the start of the college football season. That's 120 days or so, or one-third of an entire year. Putting it in those terms......we're still a long way from the opening weekend of play. Yet, some of the conversation on sports talk shows has been, " Which coaches are on the hot seat as we begin the 2016 season ?" When you think about it, every coach in the SEC is on a very hot seat. That's simply the way it is in college football's best conference.
We'll start with the SEC East.
At Tennessee, Butch Jones has steadily improved since taking over a very bad Tennessee team in 2013. The Vols have gone, 5-7, 7-6, and 9-4 in his three seasons in Knoxville. Add in the problems with the law some of his players have had, and things have not gone as well as can be expected. After the first few games of the 2015 season, Big Orange fans were ready to get rid of Jones after his team blew fourth quarter leads and lost games to some really good teams. The disheartened Vol faithful settled down when they realized that U.T. was still maybe a year away from being a first-class SEC team. They have every reason to expect that as we enter the 2016 campaign however. And if the Vols falter and do anything less than compete for the SEC East, Jones seat warms up quite a bit.
Missouri, Georgia and South Carolina are okay as those schools have new head coaches. Will Muschamp with the Gamecocks, Kirby Smart at Georgia and Missouri's Barry Odom have no heat at all, and neither does Florida's second year head coach Jim McElwain, who was the 2015 SEC Coach of the Year. There is some definite heat on Kentucky's Mike Stoops and Vanderbilt's Derek Mason. Each man enters his third season, and neither team has done very well competing in the east. Vandy has actually improved a bit under Mason, but the Wildcats took a step back in 2015 under Stoops.
In the SEC West, one coach under a very warm seat is LSU's Les Miles, who was almost fired at the end of last season. If LSU competes for the West title in 2016, he likely stays. An eight win season for the Bengal Tigers could send Miles out the door. Auburn's Gus Malzahn is also under a bit of heat after the Tigers were so disappointing in 2015. They played for a national title in 2013, but were just awful last year in Malzahn's third season. Coach Hugh Freeze is at least on a semi-hot seat after rumors of recruiting irregularities surfaced last winter at Ole Miss. The hottest seat in the SEC West could be under Texas A&M's Kevin Sumlin. The Aggies have struggled to do as well in the last couple of years as they did in their initial season in the SEC. Johnny Manziel's behavior after being drafted in the NFL has also dimmed the lights a bit in College Station. Sumlin needs to win big in 2016. Bret Bielema at Arkansas got a two year contract extension with a raise in pay a year ago, but rumors tell us he's unhappy in Fayetteville. There is also some pressure for improvement on the Hogs this fall.
There are a pair of coaches in the SEC West with absolutely no pressure at all. Mississippi State's Dan Mullen who has been a miracle worker with the Bulldogs and of course Nick Saban at Alabama. The second coming of "Bear" Bryant has a fourth national championship under his belt, and the only question surrounding him at the Capstone is how much longer does he want to coach?
As far as coaching turnover in the SEC following the 2016 season........there will be a couple of changes. Just exactly who is anybody's guess.
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Randy Smith has been covering sports on radio, television and print for the past 45 years. After leaving WRCB-TV in 2009, he has written two books, and has continued to free-lance as a play-by-play announcer. He is currently teaching Broadcasting at Coahulla Creek High School near Dalton, Ga.
His career has included a 17-year stretch as host of the Kickoff Call In Show on the University of Tennessee’s prestigious Vol Network. He has been a member of the Vol Network staff for thirty years.
He has done play-by-play on ESPN, ESPN II, CSS, and Fox SportSouth, totaling more than 500 games, and served as a well-known sports anchor on Chattanooga Television for more than a quarter-century.
In 2003, he became the first television broadcaster to be inducted into the Greater Chattanooga Area Sports Hall of Fame. Randy and his wife Shelia reside in Hixson. They have two married children, (Christi and Chris Perry; Davey and Alison Smith.) They have four grandchildren, Coleman, Boone, DellaMae and CoraLee.
He can be reached at rsmithsports@epbfi.com