Read & React, Vol. 10
Don't look now, but the Missouri Tigers are the picture of stability in the Southeastern Conference. Just two years ago (almost to the day), the Tigers had temporary System President and Chancellor, a football coach about to retire, an athletic director who would leave eight months later and a basketball coach who lived on a flaming hot seat until it finally burned up a year-and-a-half later.
Now, those jobs have all been filled. And the football and basketball coaches are on solid ground. I bring this up because of a tweet I saw on Wednesday morning.
Arkansas also seems incredibly likely to fire their football coach in a little more than a week. Same goes for Texas A&M. So that's six schools in the league that are without a football coach, an AD or both by the end of the month. Throw in the constant speculation that Dan Mullen is going to be wooed away from Mississippi State and that's half the league that could be looking to fill one of the two most important jobs in the athletic department.
LSU, Vanderbilt, Florida, Tennessee and Alabama have all hired new basketball coaches in the last two years (as well as Missouri obviously). We're now up to ten (and potentially eleven with Mississippi State) schools that have turned over either the AD or one of their two major coaches (or some combination of them) in the last 31 months. And if you're Bruce Pearl, you can't be feeling great about your future.
Tough business.
Andy Kennedy is now the dean of SEC basketball coaches. He was hired by Ole Miss prior to the 2006 season. After that, it's John Calipari and Mark Fox, both of whom enter their ninth years at their schools.
In football, Nick Saban was hired in 2007. Mullen went to Starkville in 2009. Assuming Sumlin is out, Mark Stoops at Kentucky and Gus Malzahn at Auburn are about to be the third-longest tenured football coaches in the SEC (Tiger fans have been trying to fire Malzahn since about three minutes after he lost to Florida State in the national title game). They are in their fifth seasons. Derek Mason, in year four, will be fifth on the list if Sumlin and Bielema get the axe.
In other words, you better win and win pretty damn fast in the Southeastern Conference--or really anywhere else these days. There are 15 Division One head football coaches who have been at their current job for at least ten seasons. Gary Pinkel coached 15 seasons at Missouri. Kirk Ferentz at Iowa and Gary Patterson at TCU are the only coaches who have been at their current jobs for at least 15 years.
Once upon a time, Pinkel was under fire at Missouri. That was following the 2004 season, his third losing campaign in four years in Columbia. In his recent book, The 100-Yard Journey, Pinkel wrote of meeting with Mike Alden after that season:
"I was thinking, 'Are you kidding me, Mike?' Is Missouri going to do what it's always done? When things get tough, Missouri fires the head coach and brings in the next guy. It had been the cycle for decades."
Missouri didn't fire him. He did all right.
Just a piece down Interstate-70, there's a football program not doing so well. David Beatty is 3-31 at Kansas. Three wins. In three years. That's pretty tough to do. This week, the University Chancellor came out in strong support of the struggling coach.
I don't know if it will work at Kansas or not. I do know what they're doing in Lawrence isn't all that common these days. The heat on head coaches is unlike it's ever been before. Someone asked me last week, "If Twitter had been around in 2004, would Gary Pinkel have made it?"
I want to say yes. I want to believe that athletic directors are smarter than to base their decisions on the emotional outbursts of the lunatic fringe and the ranting foolishness of the hot take media. But I'm not sure.
There was a time around here where we were all asking if Missouri was going to be in the market for a new football coach. That time was about 13 days ago. Barry Odom was 7-13, his most impressive win in year two was on the road at Connecticut and the fanbase was, ummmm, how do you say, displeased?
That time is gone now. Odom's team has beaten Florida and Tennessee by a combined score of 95-33, is favored to beat Vanderbilt, will be favored to beat Arkansas and should be in a bowl game for the first time in three years. Barring a complete collapse in the final two weeks (and maybe even with one), Odom is safe. For now.
But in this business, how safe does anyone feel? Odom is 3-9 in the first half of seasons at Missouri. What if he's in the same situation next year? Is he going to feel good? I doubt it.
The hire of Bielema in Fayetteville five years ago was lauded as a coup. The Razorbacks had stolen a coach from a Power Five program who had been pretty successful. Sumlin was hailed as the savior in College Station where the Aggies have spent 15 years cycling through three guys trying to find the next R.C. Slocum...who they fired after a 6-6 season in 2002. Slocum coached at A&M for 14 years. He never had a losing season. He was 6-6 twice. He won ten games or more five times.
So maybe this whole lack of patience thing isn't new. The year after A&M fired Slocum, Nebraska ran longtime Tom Osborne assistant Frank Solich out of town. He'd gone 58-19 in six years in Lincoln. Not good enough. He was hired at Ohio in 2005. He's still there. He's gone 96-70. In the same time span, three Nebraska coaches have gone 107-62. I guess it's better, but it's still not good enough. We'll find out who the fourth one is and how he does some time next month.
Patience may be a virtue, but it's not one exercised in big-time college sports. Maybe it should be. Stoops has Kentucky playing better than it has in a long time. Will Muschamp is about to take South Carolina to a second straight bowl game while Florida is looking for its second coach since firing him.
What's the lesson here? I don't know. Hiring a coach is a crapshoot. Blah hires hit and home runs miss. All the time. If you've got a guy who's winning, hold on to him. If you don't, maybe wait a week or two and give him a chance to. It won't be popular on Twitter, but it might just work out in the long run.