Jim McElwain didn’t make it three seasons at Florida as head football coach, despite making it to the SEC Championship Game his first two years.
Such is life in the SEC these days.
That’s just the start. Get ready for maybe as many five or six openings in the league this season. It’s the price schools pay for their own mistakes.
McElwain likely won’t get the full $12.9 million reported buyout. As we’ve been told by agents, that number is really often the starting point for negotiations when they get ready to dump a coach.
As we said, that’s the start and usually the first coach to fall starts a domino effect that will begin affecting games all across the country in different conferences.
That’s nothing new. Bear Bryant claimed until his dying day that word leaking out early he was leaving Texas A&M for Alabama in 1957 cost the Aggies a national championship.
The SEC had one opening before the first game. Ole Miss has been in coaching limbo all season long and STILL nearly beat Arkansas after running up a 31-7 lead in the first half.
What no one in Arkansas wants to admit is that the Rebels basically helped the Hogs come back as much as they could without just blatantly switching sides.
Bret Bielema tried to spin it into his players making the comeback, but the reality is Ole Miss relaxed. Sure Santos Ramirez stayed with a play and knocked the ball out of a Rebels’ receiver on a long run, so take that one.
But there wasn’t much extra effort to be made on an interception that was caught by Josh Liddell as much by being in the right place at the right time on a serious overthrow.
Likewise, Kevin Richardson picked up an unforced fumble by the Rebels and took it into the end zone in the fourth quarter.
By then, Ole Miss has basically reverted to playing just to finish the game, which is what tends to happen with teams in the position they are in.
That win, combined with what should be a 50-point win over Coastal Carolina this week should be taken in context.
Bielema may think he’s off the hot seat, but in all probability he’s not. He may have bought himself some time but that’s probably about all. If he wins all four games left on the Hogs’ schedule he’ll be 32-31 after five years and, more importantly, 14-26 in the SEC.
Most Arkansas coaches in the SEC have hovered around .500 in the league, but above that overall. The only one that didn’t was Danny Ford and he was gone after five seasons.
Now the question is what will the powers that be for Arkansas do?
Don’t forget, with the new early signing period, nobody knows what the right thing to do is with a coach you know you’re going to dump at the end of the season.
With all of the openings in the SEC, if Arkansas decides to dump Bielema, where will it fit in the pecking order of jobs? Here’s the list of potential openings:
• Ole Miss (open)
• Florida (open)
• Tennessee (may be open by the time you see this)
• Auburn (expect this if the Tigers don’t win out)
• Texas A&M (losing to Mississippi State at home was likely the final straw for Kevin Sumlin’s tenure)
One of those two at the end will be determined Saturday with Auburn going to Texas A&M. For the second year in a row, Gus Malzahn will be in a winner-gets-fired type of game.
Outside of the Ole Miss job, coaching the Razorbacks is not considered a better gig than those other four.
While fans who love the Hogs and Northwest Arkansas consider it a top-tier job and the talking heads in the national media who don’t look very deep say it is a top job, most will tell you it’s not.
Oh, it has nothing to do with recruiting availability, facilities or any of that.
It’s coming up with an answer to what is becoming the biggest question coaches want the answer to. And you better have a pretty good one with some way to sell it.
The question?
What’s the commitment to winning?
That covers areas most don’t even think about. It’s why Kirby Smart walked out of an interview with Auburn in 2012.
One thing Nick Saban has drilled into folks in the coaching community’s heads is if you don’t have complete control and everybody — from the board of trustees to the janitor — isn’t committed to doing everything possible to win, then move on.
It’s a question Arkansas had better have a good answer for because it will come up.
It’s THE biggest question.
And nobody knows if there is that commitment in Fayetteville these days.
