You’ve Got Questions, We’ve Got Answers: From Why Your Search Is Taking So Long To SEC Expansion

 Send This Story To A Friend

Man, is the ol’ MrSEC.com inbox filling up this week.  Questions galore are coming in — and they’re appreciated — but it’s been tough replying to everyone (something we normally try to do).

So in the interest of answering your questions and saving some time, here’s a rundown of several questions we’ve been getting over and over and over again from fans all across the league:

What’s taking so long with my team’s coaching search?

The only folks who can legitimately ask this question are Arkansas fans.  And even they should be a bit more patient.

Kentucky fired Joker Phillips on November 4th.  By November 27th, Mitch Barnhart had hired Florida State defensive coordinator Mark Stoops.  That’s a 23-day process and — from what an industry source told us — clearly “Barnhart wasn’t swinging for the fences.”  That doesn’t mean Stoops won’t be more akin to brother Bob than brother Mike, Cat fans, just that UK wasn’t really in on successful, proven head coaches.  If you’re looking at up-and-comers and assistants, searches can move more quickly.

Note we said, “quickly.”  Well, quickly was 23 days.

Tennessee’s search is now just 11 days old.  (For those who believe the Vols offered their job to Jon Gruden after UT’s game with Mississippi State in early-October, I’ve got some land to sell you.)  Auburn’s search is all of four days old.

How many of you have ever been in the position to make an important hire for your company?  A hire that could cost you your own neck if you got it wrong?  A hire that could either bring in or cost your company millions of dollars?

If you were in that position, would you rush the hire because people on messageboards and Twitter are tired of waiting for you to make a move?

“They should have had a plan in place,” many are thinking.  Well, most schools aren’t going to be taking said plans to prospective coaches until the current coach is axed for fear of being caught in a Jetgate-like scandal and looking awfully darn bad.  So until Athletic Director X sits down face to face with Coaching Target Y, plans don’t mean a whole heckuva lot.

Arkansas has found that out.  A month ago we reported that UA officials — who had an interim coach on his way out, by the way — had spoken with representatives for Gary Patterson.  We’ve heard nothing to change our mind regarding what we reported.  Patterson himself has said that he’ll listen whenever someone calls, but that he’s happy at TCU.  Well, Patterson’s season doesn’t end until Saturday.  He is not going to risk losing a football game by spending so much as 10 minutes on the phone with anyone from Arkansas until after Saturday’s game.

UA fans are impatient because technically their search has been going on since Bobby Petrino was rubbished in April.  We understand those feelings, even though Long — like Dave Hart at Tennessee and Jay Jacobs at Auburn — will need to meet with candidates one on one before naming a coach.

So chill out, folks.  Instead of wanting a quick hire, fans should be wanting the right hire.  And if finding the right guy takes a while, so be it.  Tennessee fans, for example, should remember what happened the last time they rushed to save a recruiting class and announced, “We’ll have a coach by the end of the week!”  The rushed nature of their search turned off a number of candidates and the school wound up hiring Derek Dooley.

In 2007, Alabama fans didn’t get their man until January 1st.  Of course, his name was Nick Saban.

Who would you rather have?  To play off a favorite Southern saying, don’t step over a slow Saban (dollar) to pick up a fast Dooley (dime).

When will this all get done?

Here’s guessing that Arkansas, Auburn and Tennessee all have coaches in place by mid-December at the latest.  That’d be six weeks before signing day.

Misters Hart, Jacobs and Long will take their searches to New York this weekend for the National Football Foundation’s annual dinner and Hall of Fame banquet.  That meeting is to college football what the Final Four is to college basketball.

All the coaches and ADs get together in one or two hotels and go room to room meeting, greeting and interviewing.  That will be the first chance “name” coaches like Patterson, Florida State’s Jimbo Fisher, and Boise State’s Chris Peterson can actually sit down for a chat.

If someone moves before next week, we’d be surprised.  But if that were to happen, look for the quickie hire to be Petrino to Auburn.  The folks at AU already know from talking to coaches’ agents how marketable their job is.  From the increasing chatter about Petrino, it seems that a lot of coaches are passing on the Tiger job this time around (due to NCAA concerns, Jacobs’ job security status, and perhaps the crimson assembly line Saban has running at the other end of the state).  If AU were to decide that Petrino is the guy, he would and could sign on the dotted line today.

But we’d put our money on all three openings still being open after this weekend.

Who will Arkansas, Auburn and Tennessee wind up hiring?

Based on our sources and some gut feelings, as of this moment — and these things are fluid, to say the least — we believe Long at Arkansas is throwing cash around at big names everywhere.  The Hogs have already helped Les Miles get a raise (regardless of what Tiger AD Joe Alleva says).  Fans want to believe the Boise State’s Petersen is really in play, but he’s turned down too many jobs over the years for us to believe he’ll move (anywhere other than Oregon).  Don’t be surprised if the Hogs don’t make another run at Patterson once his season ends.  From there, you get into the B-level guys like Charlie Strong, Butch Jones or — and we’re telling you not to rule this out — Tommy Tuberville.  The Arkansas native has built up a pair of SEC programs at Ole Miss and Auburn and he wants out of Lubbock and back in the SEC.

Again, we’re just guessin’ and surmisin’ here, but we bet AU’s search will come down to Malzahn and Petrino.  Malzahn makes sense and he may be willing to move up from Arkansas State to a high-paying SEC job after just one season… NCAA cloud or not.  You know the drill with Petrino.  He’d kill for the job.  (Literally, perhaps.)

Tennessee’s search is — in our view — targeting Fisher of FSU.  There are many reasons to think Fisher might jump, but typically, guys at Top 15 programs don’t leave them for rebuilding jobs in tougher conferences.  Also, we think Jimmy Sexton — Fisher’s agent — will play UT against Auburn and FSU in an attempt to make him one of the game’s five highest-paid coaches.  UT might be willing to go to $4 million for a proven recruiter from a top school, but would they go to $5 million if needed?  Would Auburn?  Could FSU even afford to match that if someone else went that high?

If you were running these searches, who would you hire?

Let’s make this one quick.  If we were handling the Razorback search, we’d make another strong run at Patterson.  If he balked, we’d run hard at Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy.  If that didn’t work, the most proven fallback option is Jones of Cincinnati who is a Brian Kelly protege and has had success at two programs over a six-year career as head coach.  Louisville’s Strong — an Arkansas native — might be the next best thing in college coaching, but he’s only got three years under his belt.  With the Cardinals he’s gone 7-6, 7-6, and 9-2 in a watered down conference.  If it drops to the second-level, we’d take Jones over Strong.

If we were running the Tigers’ search, we’d gauge Fisher’s interest.  The guy’s a proven recruiter and he’s recruited the same zone AU needs to dominate.  If he weren’t interested in the AU mess, we’d just hire Petrino and lock him into a contract that gave him zero outs.  The guy wins games.  All the anger over Gene Chizik’s hire faded when he was holding up that crystal football in 2010.  If Petrino won games he’d be forgiven of his past issues.  Malzahn and Bama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart would be fallback options on our board.  For those who say Petrino couldn’t beat Saban, do you really think Malzahn or Smart — who’s never been a head coach — are surer bets to do so?

If we were handling the Volunteers’ search, we’d target Fisher and go til he said no.  As one source told us the other day, “If UT fans can’t see the improvement of going from Derek Dooley to Jimbo Fisher then they wouldn’t know a football if they sat on it.”  Agreed.  If, however, Fisher and Sexton just wanted to use UT as leverage for a better pact or more power at FSU, the fallback would be North Carolina’s Larry Fedora.  Fedora wasn’t happy to learn that Carolina’s issues ran deeper than he’d been led to believe when he moved from Southern Miss and he’s already put out some feelers toward Knoxville.  The ex-Florida offensive coordinator left USM last year when they were 12-2.  Without him they finished 0-12 this year.  That’s a Petrino-esque crash and that should tell you something.

Who should win the Heisman Trophy?

We aren’t really big on the Heisman because the criteria for the honor changes from voter to voter and from year to year.  One year the thing will go to the best player on the best team.  The next year it will go to the guy with the best stats.  Sorry, Aggie fans, but we wouldn’t be sweating this one because it’s a crapshoot over a trophy that means exactly bupkes.

That said, we’d hand the award to Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel.  He’s got the stats, yes, but take him off of that Aggie team and who knows what their record would be.  How many plays has he made completely on his own this season?  Plus, the kid’s a freak to watch.  He’s not a Tim Tebow/Cam Newton bull, he’s a Doug Flutie jitterbug.  I’d rather watch the jitterbug than the bull.

A lot of TAMU fans have been emailing us about the lack of numbers put up by Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o.  Fair enough.  But he’s also the heart and soul of a team that unexpectedly went undefeated.  He dealt with the deaths of his girlfriend and his grandmother on the same day back in September.  And he happens to play for the school that’s produced the only Heisman winner to ever come off a losing team (Paul Hornung back in 1956).

So it comes down to stats versus the best player off an undefeated team.  We’d vote Manziel.  But actual Heisman voters may feel they can reward Manziel in the future.

Is the SEC going to expand again?

Probably.  Because all hell is breaking loose across the country.  Matt Hayes of The Sporting News this week wrote that one ACC source told him that Duke and North Carolina have been “chased,” (Hayes’ word) for “the last three years,” (source’s words) by the SEC.

Everyone knows that the SEC would want into the Tarheel State for television purposes if/when the age of superconferences truly dawns.  And — as we’ve shown you on this site dating back three years — Duke and North Carolina would help the conference in terms of cash (thanks to those cable households), in terms of academic reputation (SEC presidents would love to add two more AAU institutions), and in terms of basketball reputation.

Carolina and Duke are the cream of the ACC crop in terms of having it all — great academics, nationally-known brand names, and regional drawing power.  Any league landing UNC and Duke would own North Carolina.  No offense, NC State, Wake Forest and East Carolina fans.

All that said, we still believe the SEC would prefer things stay as they are for a bit longer.  We’ve heard that from sources across the league and from one school to another.  And that wasn’t the case when the SEC added Texas A&M.  Everyone whispered that A&M made sense and that’s one reason we stated so forcefully in 2010 — when A&M re-upped with the Big XII — that the Aggies would eventually land in the SEC.  We’re not hearing that kind of chatter this time around.  Instead, we’re hearing a bit of worry.  People realize that leagues and schools are making moves now solely because everyone else is making moves.  Reacting is never as good as acting.

But as long as everyone else continues to act, we suspect the SEC will react with a full-court press to grab North Carolina and Duke.  If those two could be split up, North Carolina and Virginia would accomplish the same goals.  From there, who knows?

Who’s going to win the SEC Championship Game and why?

Patience, folks.  We do our SEC Game Previews on Friday around here.