Bret Bielema and Butch Jones have been SEC head coaches for four full years. Are their teams any closer to contending or have they missed the boat entirely?
Back in 2013, the SEC welcomed four new head coaches to their college football conference. Gus Malzahn was brought in to help turn a struggling Tigers team around. He took Auburn to the 2013 National Championship Game and the Sugar Bowl this past season. Auburn will probably be a top-10 team to start the 2017 season.
Mark Stoops left the Seminoles to take over a long-suffering Wildcats team. After a few trying seasons, Stoops took basketball school Kentucky to the TaxSlayer Bowl last year. Kentucky isn’t an upper echelon SEC football team by any means, but Stoops can at least keep the Wildcats bowl viable for the foreseeable future.
To some degree, both of those coaches have already reached major goals at their respective programs. Sure, both schools want more, as they should, but Malzahn and Stoops have brought stability after inheriting essentially chaos upon arrival.
However, there are two other first-time SEC coaches from that 2013 class we need to do some further investigation on, Razorbacks head coach Bret Bielema and Volunteers head coach Butch Jones.
Both dominated in their previous jobs before coming to the SEC. Bielema went 68-24 (37-19) in seven years with the Badgers (2006-12), going to three Rose Bowls. Jones went 50-27 (33-12) split between the Chippewas (2007-09) and the Bearcats (2010-12).
Taking over two certain blue-blood programs wasn’t going to be easy, but the Bielema and Jones hirings were far more celebrated than the Malzahn and Stoops ones were. Yet, why have these two coaches failed to live up to the hype of coaching championship-caliber football in the SEC? Will they ever fulfill their promises or have they missed the boat entirely?
Arkansas cratered after the Bobby Petrino motorcycle scandal but had been viable under his leadership and Houston Nutt’s before that. The Razorbacks were going to SEC Championship Games and routinely a top-10 team in AP Polls.
People suspected that recruitment would be hard at first for Bielema in coming to the SEC, but many suggested his strong offensive mind would eventually win at a high level in Fayetteville. In four years with the Hogs, Bielema has gone 25-26 (10-22) and never won more than eight games in a season.
Yes, he coaches in the superior SEC West. However, every other division rival of his but the Aggies have won at least 10 games once since 2013. Keep in mind that Texas A&M won 11 games during its first SEC season the year before in 2012. The Aggies have hovered around eight wins annually under head coach Kevin Sumlin.
Tennessee became a complete grease fire after firing long-time head coach Philip Fulmer after the 2008 NCAA season. The Volunteers haven’t been to an SEC Championship Game since 2007. Since Jones’ arrival in Knoxville in 2013, the SEC East has never been worse.
Jones has gone 30-21 (14-18) at Tennessee. His Volunteers have never done better than 5-3 in SEC play in any season. A 5-3 mark in SEC play is considered average at best, not good enough to play for championships. Not once did he get to Atlanta in December. It’s the price to pay for being a champion in life.
Both SEC coaches have had four years to pop and haven’t done so. Bielema’s teams get housed at least once annually on defense to the point it looks like a Big 12 game out there. Jones’ teams seem to get a couple of gimmicky wins annually which grossly overvalues the team’s national perception.
They’ve had ample opportunities to exert coaching dominance during a major down period in that department in the SEC and haven’t done so. The problem for both Bielema and Jones is that they may have run out of time.
As Nick Saban isn’t going to do this forever with the Crimson Tide, Bielema hasn’t proven that he is the heir apparent in the SEC West. Malzahn has aligned himself with a great defensive mind in Kevin Steele. Auburn should be strong for the rest of the decade if they get the quarterback right.
LSU has promoted Ed Orgeron to head coach. He may have his issues with the offense, but he is a great recruiting in a talent-rich state of Louisiana and an outstanding defensive line coach. Even if he doesn’t get the quarterback right, LSU should be a ranked team the rest of the decade.
Texas A&M is at least consistent under Sumlin. Maybe the Aggies will put it all together here soon? Dan Mullen might be the next great coach in the SEC West. He’s moved mountains in Starkville for the Bulldogs. With that fat, new contract in tote, who’s to say he can’t win big once Saban retires?
The only program in disarray in the SEC West is the Rebels, but that mostly to do with sanctions due to unethical recruiting tactics. Arkansas should be better than the Rebels as long as Bielema is the head coach. Bielema may not have had much of a window of opportunity by being in the same division as Saban, but he hasn’t done enough to get that eighth year to make it all happen for the Hogs. 2019 is pretty far away.
As for Jones, he really blew it last year. How did the Volunteers not win the SEC East? Georgia had a rookie head coach in Kirby Smart. South Carolina was a complete mess when Will Muschamp arrived. Jim McElwain still hasn’t found a quarterback with the Gators. Missouri looks to be terrible for the foreseeable future after Gary Pinkel’s abrupt retirement. And Kentucky and Vanderbilt are historically irrelevant in SEC football.
Now Smart is crushing it in recruitment. It wouldn’t be shocking to see Georgia pop under him in 2017. Muschamp did the impossible and got South Carolina to a bowl game last year. Beating Tennessee made that farfetched dream possible for Gamecock Nation. Florida is the two-time reigning SEC East champion in McElwain’s first two years in Gainesville.
Even Derek Mason and Stoops are doing good things at their respective schools. Mason’s Vanderbilt Commodores got to a bowl thanks to beating Tennessee in a big rivalry game that Jones’ team overlooked at the end of the season.
At the end of the day, do the athletic directors at Arkansas and Tennessee need to can their head football coaches? Probably not, but both schools have to accept them for what they are: two coaches whose programs are inconsistent and lack attention to detail in big moments. Bielema and Jones aren’t getting better as SEC coaches.
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If they can’t contend when the conference is in a state of flux, how are they going to be when Auburn, Florida, Georgia, and LSU put it all together? One of those four schools is going to be really good here soon. Arkansas and Tennessee may not have the necessary firepower in place to catch the alpha of that wolf pack, whichever team that may inevitably be.