- LSU reeled in Lane Kiffin. Mostly, though, SEC schools hired unproven up-and-comers. Big Ten schools like Michigan and Penn State landed veteran winners.
- Kyle Whittingham, Matt Campbell and Pat Fitzgerald have a lot of notches on the belt.
- For SEC to claim victory in this hiring cycle, coaches like Jon Sumrall and Alex Golesh need to prove they’re up to the challenge.
The Big Ten is thriving so far this postseason. (OK, so maybe Southern Cal’s tackling isn’t thriving, but the rest of the B1G is doing just fine.)
With a couple of exceptions, the SEC is wilting.
And what of the coaching carousel? Did the Big Ten club the SEC there, too? You could make that case.
LSU scored the big fish by securing Lane Kiffin. Mostly, though, SEC schools hired promising but largely unproven up-and-comers, while Big Ten schools like Michigan and Penn State landed veteran winners with solid resumes.
On this edition of ‘SEC Football Unfiltered,’ a podcast from the USA TODAY Network, hosts Blake Toppmeyer and John Adams evalute which conference did it better in this hiring cycle.
They also debate which conference has the better complete roster of coaches. And they discuss which SEC schools would have been well-served by hiring Kyle Whittingham, who wound up at Michigan.
Coaching hires in the SEC
- LSU: Lane Kiffin (Mississippi)
- Auburn:Alex Golesh (South Florida)
- Florida: Jon Sumrall (Tulane)
- Arkansas:Ryan Silverfield (Memphis)
- Kentucky:Will Stein (Oregon offensive coordinator)
- Ole Miss: Pete Golding (promoted from defensive coordinator)
Overview: LSU made the splashiest hire of this coaching cycle, plundering Kiffin from a conference rival and luring him away from a playoff team. Elsewhere, three SEC schools hired coaches from the American Conference, while two schools went the coordinator route.
Coaching hires in the Big Ten
- Michigan:Kyle Whittingham (Utah)
- Penn State: Matt Campbell (Iowa State)
- Michigan State: Pat Fitzgerald (formerly at Northwestern)
- UCLA:Bob Chesney (James Madison)
Overview: This marks a sharp pivot from the SEC’s strategy of raiding the American. UCLA went the Group of Five route with Chesney, but the other three Big Ten schools making hires turned to veterans. Whittingham is the winningest coach in Utah history. Campbell is the winningest coach in Iowa State history. Fitzgerald is the winningest coach in Northwestern history.
Which conference hired better?
Advantage goes to the Big Ten. Bravo to LSU for securing Kiffin, but the rest of the SEC hired less proven coaches than Whittingham, Campbell or Fitzgerald. That doesn’t mean someone like Sumrall or Golesh won’t succeed, but any of the SEC’s hires not named Kiffin seems riskier than someone who’s as accomplished as Campbell.
Which conference has better roster of coaches?
Toppmeyer: The Big Ten has the better full roster of coaches. At the top, the SEC is just as good. I’d put an SEC five-pack of Kirby Smart, Kalen DeBoer, Kiffin, Steve Sarkisian and Josh Heupel up against the Big Ten’s Ryan Day, Curt Cignetti, Dan Lanning, Whittingham and Campbell.
In the middle of the conferences and in the lower-third, I give the nod to the Big Ten. Consider, Bret Bielema (Illinois) probably ranks somewhere in the No. 8 range of the Big Ten’s pecking order of coaches. Bielema beat South Carolina and Tennessee in bowl games in the past two seasons. He’s won 19 games with the Illini the past two years. That’s no small feat, and he’s just one example of the Big Ten’s solid collection of down-ballot coaches.
A few years from now, we might say the SEC’s coaches are as good or better than the Big Ten’s, but we can’t say that now. Too many unproven figures.
Adams: Toppmeyer is right. The Big Ten enjoys the edge.
The SEC remains strong at the top, but it can’t match the Big Ten’s quality in the middle or lower ranks. The Big Ten upgraded its roster of coaches in this hiring cycle. The SEC took ambitious shots on younger candidates. That might work, so we reserve the right to re-evaluate this in a couple of years. For now, I’d take the Big Ten’s coaching roster.
Later in the episode
∎ The hosts unpack the College Football Playoff quarterfinal matchups, including what’s at stake for Kalen DeBoer in Alabama-Indiana and whether Mississippi plays with house money in a rematch with Georgia.
Where to listen to SEC Football Unfiltered
- Apple
- Spotify
- iHeart
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s national college football columnist. John Adams is the senior sports columnist for the Knoxville News Sentinel. Subscribe to the SEC Football Unfiltered podcast, and check out the SEC Unfiltered newsletter, delivered straight to your inbox.
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