If last year was any indication, the SEC is going to continue looking quite different without the behemoth that is Nick Saban patrolling the sidelines. For the first time since 2013-14, the SEC has gone 2 straight seasons without winning a National Championship. Sacrilegious! We won’t pour one out for the league though, they’ll be fine. However, with their “doth protest too much” statements in the media recently about their conference strength we do ask that the league settle down a little bit.
In case you missed it we’ve published the first 3 installments from the power conferences so far:
New Coaches
A year after bringing in 3 new coaches to the land of It Just Means More™ we enter 2025 without any coaching changes. While you could’ve argued for maybe one firing (stares directly at The Plains) it was a relatively quiet off-season for the SEC on the job front. As always, it won’t stay that way for long, though.
Hanging Around
Sam Pittman – Arkansas
Mark Stoops – Kentucky
Eli Drinkwitz – Missouri
Shane Beamer – South Carolina
I didn’t realize Sam Pittman had been at Arkansas for such a long time–he’ll be entering year 6 this season and we’ll get an up-close look at things when the Irish visit Fayetteville in late September. He’s been a bit all over the place with the Razorbacks highlighted by a no. 21 overall finish in the AP back in 2021 but the results overall have been a bit underwhelming. Arkansas have lost 14 out of their last 19 SEC games, for example. They have been more competitive than that record may suggest, I suppose. Recently, some retirement rumors have popped up for the 63-year old coach and Pittman has said he’d like to see out his 2021 extension that lasts through the 2027 season.
No one has coached at Kentucky longer than Mark Stoops. He’ll enter his 13th season with the Wildcats and is currently enjoying one of the best, if not the best, contracts relative to expectations in the history of college sports. My dude is hanging around, lavishly. Following an extension in November 2022, Stoops has a deal that runs through 2031 (7 more seasons!) and pays him $9 million per year. Kentucky does beat one ranked team per year, give them credit. Still, Stoops’ buyout is around $40 million right now and he averages under 6 wins a season. His agent Jimmy Sexton must be readying a whole chapter in his future memoir about this contract.
The record for Eli Drinkwitz is looking up (21-5 over the last 2 seasons, not bad!) and for that reason he should be in another category. Although I’ll pump the brakes because Missouri went 10-3 last year with a terrible resume and only ranked 29th by FEI. Still, the Tigers have to be happy with where they are right now within the SEC and that’s in the conversation. Drinkwitz signed an extension at the end of the 2023 season that boosted his pay up to $9.25 million per year with a deal that ends in 2028. If Missouri is half decent in 2025 I would expect another extension coming sometime in the next 12 months.
Drinkwitz looks different in every photo taken of him.
The current stock for Shane Beamer has him looking a lot rosier than hanging around as he’s coming off a 9-win season and top 20 finish from last year. Expectations are high for 2025 as another top 20 finish is projected in a lot of corners. Still, Beamer is a more humble 29-22 overall through 4 seasons in Columbia and 2 games under .500 in the SEC. He did sign a lucrative extension this past January that bumped up his annual salary over $8 million and will reach $9 million by the end of the contract through the 2030 season. He has the looks of a coach who should be at South Carolina for 4-5 more years but maybe jumps to a bigger job before then.
Wheel Spinning
Billy Napier – Florida
Brent Venables – Oklahoma
Mike Elko – Texas A&M
We’re still in a dark period for Florida football. Since 2010, they’ve won 10+ games only 4 times and are 114-76 (.600) over that period. Billy Napier heads into year 4 with the Gators coming off an improved 8-5 record but he’s only at .500 overall since joining the program. As expected, he has not signed an extension since coming to Gainesville and his current deal has 5 more seasons remaining on it. His buyout stipulates 85% of his remaining salary so if Florida moves on after the 2025 it’ll cost the program around $25 million given his annual payment of nearly $7.5 million.
Brent Venables can go in the poor early returns category although he’s already through 3 mostly disappointing seasons at Oklahoma. Wheels, entirely spinning now. His 17 losses through 3 years is the most since the late 1990’s John Blake era and that coach didn’t make it to year 4, for comparison. Venables did win 10 games back in 2023 and signed an extension that off-season (Jimmy Sexton strikes again!) taking his deal through 2029 at nearly $9 million per season. His buyout will be a healthy $34.9 million following the 2025 season–this looks like a job that won’t be coming open for a while unless things get really, really bad on the field.
Skeletor has been hoping for better days at OU.
It’s early days for Mike Elko at Texas A&M as he comes off a 8-5 debut last year, featuring a 1-3 record against ranked teams and a 6-way tie for 4th place in the SEC. They were favored to make the SEC Championship Game in November but a 1-3 finish and then a bowl game loss to USC put a damper on a solid start to 2024. Elko has 5 years and $35 million remaining on his deal that he signed after leaving Duke for College Station.
Poor Early Returns
Kalen DeBoer – Alabama
Hugh Freeze – Auburn
Jeff Lebby – Mississippi State
Is there a tiny bit of panic with Alabama fans regarding Kalen DeBoer? Probably not yet, anyone was going to be a step down from Nick Saban, this was a transition year, and his overall record across 4 programs remains an impressive 113-16 since he became a head coach in 2005. Still, starting 5th in the AP Poll last year and losing 4 games puts DeBoer under a lot more pressure for 2025. As you’d expect, he signed a mega-deal to replace Saban that has 7 more years remaining at $10.25 million per season–going up a quarter million every year in salary. The Tide would owe 90% of his remaining contract if he’s fired.
Things have gone extremely poorly for Hugh Freeze through 2 seasons with Auburn with only 11 overall wins and a bad 0-7 record against ranked teams. They even lost to California out of league play last year and New Mexico State the year before. With no extension signed to date, Freeze would only have 3 more years remaining on his contract after this upcoming 2025 season. I think he’s squarely on the hot seat and Auburn would have to debate paying his roughly $21 million buyout later this year if it comes to that end.
The aftermath of the illness and tragic death of Mike Leach continues to reverberate around Mississippi State who didn’t give Zach Arnett a full year with the interim head coach tag removed and moved on to Jeff Lebby last year in a 2-10 debut with a winless SEC record. The Bulldogs didn’t commit a ton of money to Lebby’s contract and he’ll have 4 years and $18 million remaining heading into 2025. Maybe he should get some patience but in the SEC they might pull the plug for $10 million and try something new soon.
The Headline Grabbers
Lane Kiffin – Ole Miss
Josh Heupel – Tennessee
Clark Lea – Vanderbilt
The blossoming of Lane Kiffin at Ole Miss is a real thing, including 39 wins over the last 4 seasons. At times, his teams can be shaky, however, Kiffin has won 10+ games in 6 out of his last 11 seasons dating back to his USC days. On the bad side of things, Ole Miss really hasn’t been a top threat in the SEC (11 league losses since 2021) and that is holding the program back. Kiffin hit an automatic 6-year extension clause at the end of 2024 with the deal running through 2030 at $9 million per season.
While it’s true Josh Heupel has more work to do to ascend into the top coaches in the country, in his relatively short career he has an impressive resume at 2 separate schools, and faint praise though it may be, has brought the highest level of consistently good teams at Tennessee since the last few seasons of the Phil Fulmer era. Heupel has finished ranked the last 3 seasons, including a pair of top 10 finishes, while making the playoffs last year and winning the Orange Bowl back in 2022. His refusal to negotiate with quarterback Nico Iamaleava certainly caused a stir throughout college football and could define the next couple of years in Knoxville. One area of improvement for Tennessee is becoming better in SEC play (20-12 overall, 6-2 last year) where they’ve yet to be one of the best. Heupel signed an extension at the end of 2023 and makes $9 million per year through the 2029 season.
This separation had the people talking this off-season.
Defeating Alabama with Vanderbilt is going to make headlines, and remember Clark Lea almost beat Missouri and Texas last year too. Of course, this won’t be an easy place to keep up the good vibes and remain competitive. Despite last year’s success, the Commodores did go 2-10 in 2023 with no wins in the SEC. Nevertheless, Lea is very secure in this job through 4 seasons signing an extension before the 2023 season. He’s reportedly making under $4 million though with a deal through 2029–just about any other power program job would be paying him more money.
The Proven Crew
Kirby Smart – Georgia
Brian Kelly – LSU
Steve Sarkisian – Texas
Georgia hit the biggest home run with the Kirby Smart hire and he won’t even turn 50 until the end of this calendar year. Since things took off in year 2 in Athens, Smart is a dominant 97-14 (0.873) with 2 National Championships and has never finished lower than 7th in the AP Poll. Prior to last season, he signed the most lucrative contract in college football history for 10 years and $130 million. He may be on the sidelines for the Dawgs for another 20 years.
The most basic thing that can be said about Brian Kelly’s time at LSU is that the school has been hoping for something better and it hasn’t been delivered yet. There have been some high points (back-to-back wins against Ole Miss and Alabama in 2022, a SEC Championship Game appearance that same year, an OT win against Ole Miss last year) but overall the Tigers feel stagnate compared to some of the top programs. Although, 29 wins in 3 seasons is far from disaster. Kelly still has 7 years remaining on his original deal paying him a little over $9 million per season. The buyout drops a little each year and is around $40 million heading into 2025.
I would’ve hesitated to put Steve Sarkisian in this section prior to 2023. If Texas cannot be Back™ unless they win a National Championship they’ve ticked up considerably on the national stage over the last 2 years with a 25-5 record and back-to-back top 5 finishes. The pressure will be extremely high now as Arch Manning takes over the quarterback job and I think it’s important to remind you that Sark was just 59-47 as a head coach prior to these last 2 campaigns. Has he truly made a breakthrough? A few months ago, Texas approved an extension to Sarkisian’s contract that runs through the 2031 season and pays him nearly $11 million per year.
