A chaotic coaching carousel saw schools miss out on their top choices and pivot to other candidates.
Lane Kiffin left Ole Miss for rival LSU, prompting outrage from Mississippi fans.
Florida, Auburn, and Arkansas all hired new coaches from the American Athletic Conference.
If you’ve never been to the University-Oxford Airport, you’re not missing much. Small place, one building, looks like a bank.
So small, in fact, that you can yell from the fence line outside the airstrip, and if the props or small jet engines aren’t whirling, it’s not that difficult to hear it all.
Especially the four-letter words.
Welcome, everyone, to coaching searches in the SEC. Where things aren’t just different, they’re downright nasty.
Because when your school’s football coach leaves for one of your rival schools in the conference — in the middle of the greatest season in Mississippi history, no less — well, that just won’t stand. So you line up six or seven deep behind a chain-link fence, at a tiny airport that serves the Norman Rockwell painting of a bucolic southern town, and yell obscenities just as loud as you can to anyone remotely associated with formerly beloved coach Lane Kiffin.
His kids, his brother, his ex-wife. And then, of course, for the man at the center of the cratered world where you now suffer.
Listen closely, and hear one tortured soul scream, “You absolute scum of the earth” when Kiffin exits a black SUV and walks toward a private jet set to whisk him off to the safety of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Until he loses his first game as the LSU coach, that is.
But no, we’re not done yet. This beast is always hungry and never satiated.
Even when eating its own.
Let me introduce the fan bases of Florida, Auburn and Arkansas, three programs who believe in their heart of hearts that they’re truly something. When they’re really not — or haven’t been in years.
Follow along on this strange trip of three schools hiring three different coaches from the American Conference — apparently the new training ground for the SEC — and all three fan bases puking at the very thought of the three men now set to run the show.
Florida fans desperately wanted Kiffin, especially after the previous four swings at replacing Urban Meyer fell about as flat as Paynes Prairie, the ecological wonder that sits just outside Gainesville city limits. Or right about where the Jon Sumrall hire sits with the rabid Gator Nation.
Auburn, meanwhile, desperately wanted Sumrall, whose coaching career in the Group of Five conferences closely resembles that of Billy Napier’s before Florida blew four years on him. No matter, Auburn offered him the gig, promised to do whatever it took, and was turned down at the last moment — when it was clear Florida had lost out on the Kiffin sweepstakes, and was looking for a backup plan.
Hey, everybody needs a backup plan, right?
So Auburn — this is just so juicy — hired South Florida coach Alex Golesh, who had arguably the best Group of Five job with the most powerful NIL collective in the G5 (I see you, Fowler Avenue Collective), and didn’t come close to winning the American. He did, however, beat Florida in Gainesville this season.
Although to be fair, that wasn’t exactly a heavy lift with Napier leading the charge.
Arkansas, meanwhile, had its sights on Golesh, and nearly had a deal before negotiations stalled earlier this Thanksgiving weekend while some i’s needed dotted and t’s needed crossing — and the next thing you know, Auburn needs a coach because it lost out on Sumrall.
So Golesh pulls back from Arkansas, and says hello to the Loveliest Village on the Plain. Until he loses his first game, that is.
Back at Florida, the fan base was losing its mind over losing out on Kiffin. Because had athletic director Scott Stricklin fired Napier last season when Napier should’ve been fired, he could’ve had Kiffin without a fight — and for much cheaper than the reported $12 million annually Kiffin was currently fetching this time around.
He who waits, ends up begging glorious heroes of the past to help make it right. Or something like that.
In a mater of an hour after hiring Sumrall, Florida had public declarations from Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer about Sumrall, and his ability to lead the Gators back from nearly two decades in the college football hinterlands. Even Danny Wonderful himself, Gators legendary quarterback Danny Wuerffel, implored all Gators to get behind Sumrall and support him as he leads the program in the most competitive conference in all of college football.
Then there’s this overwhelming irony: if Napier is fired last season, none of this crazy happens. Florida has Kiffin, Ole Miss has Pete Golding one season earlier than it does now, and LSU probably doesn’t even fire Brian Kelly and pay him the second-largest buyout in the history of the sport.
Auburn gets Sumrall, Golesh does’t beat Florida in Gainesville with Kiffin coaching the Gators, and stays at South Florida to enjoy a new stadium and a growing NIL beast. And Arkansas eventually finds its way to Silverfield.
Easy breezy.
The only school that got its first choice this time around was LSU, which flew into University-Oxford airport as soon as Kiffin called and said it’s time to get, and flew out with its high-stakes booty just as fast as humanly possible — a trail of four letter words in its wake.
Welcome to the SEC, everyone. Where it’s downright nasty.
Without a ball being snapped.