SEC Football Q&A: Should Texas A&M Head Coach Kevin Sumlin Be on the Hot Seat?
The regular season is in the books, which means it's time for our favorite time of year—coaching silly season.
LSU's Les Miles almost was fired, Georgia's Mark Richt received his walking papers and coordinators around the country are tiptoeing around athletic complexes hoping not to run into the boss.
What are some of the hottest coaching questions in the SEC? Will any coach be on the hot seat in 2016? Just how strong was the SEC West in 2015?
.jpg?w=256 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
Those questions and more are answered in this week's SEC Q&A.
It's pretty darn hot.
Not Les Miles "tarmac hot"—as in, if the offense doesn't progress quickly, Miles could possibly be fired on tarmac somewhere like Lane Kiffin at USC in 2013—but there should be a significant amount of pressure on Texas A&M head coach Kevin Sumlin after another lackluster year in College Station.
Sure, the Aggies finished 8-4 and will land in a decent bowl game. But for the second straight season, the offense suffered a midseason nosedive, a quarterback switch was made due in part to ineffectiveness and play-calling was far too predictable by offensive coordinator Jake Spavital.
The Aggies averaged just 20.1 points per game in SEC play, which was tied for 10th in the conference with—gasp—South Carolina and was lower than Auburn, Georgia and Florida.
Sumlin needs to make a coordinator change because, as I wrote during the season, midseason quarterback downturns have become a trend for teams coached by Spavital. Whether that happens or not, the offense has to find some sort of balance.
With the talent on the Texas A&M roster, there's no excuse for the Aggies' struggling offensively. They have talent up front, at running back, outside and at quarterback, and many of those pieces will return in 2016.
This isn't "win or go home" for Sumlin. As long as the Aggies are contending for the SEC West in November of next year, that should be enough for Sumlin to stick around. But based on the last couple of seasons, even that seems more like fantasy than reality.
The sound you heard coming from the Palmetto State on Sunday afternoon around 12:30 p.m. ET was people panicking in the South Carolina athletic department.
The minute Georgia opened up, it completely changed the landscape of the Gamecocks coaching search. Word leaked late last week that Alabama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart was the top choice for the Gamecocks, according to Bruce Feldman of Fox Sports, but now it seems like Smart to Georgia is all but official, according to Chip Towers of DawgNation.
This isn't a debate. If South Carolina and Georgia are both after you, the pick is Georgia 10 times out of 10.
There's a much better recruiting base in the Peach State, slightly better facilities and more tradition.
Is there more pressure? Absolutely. The Bulldogs just fired a head coach who has topped the 10-win mark nine times, won two SEC titles and proved that 9-3 wasn't good enough.
For a prospective head coach, that should indicate that the athletic department will do whatever it takes to elevate the program from that mark to a point where it's not only contending for division titles, but national titles.
South Carolina has good facilities as well but has a recruiting monster in Clemson inside its state, doesn't have the same high school talent in the state as Georgia does and is forced to be more regional than local.
It has had some success in that department over the last few years, but a one-hour drive to Athens is much easier to sell to metro Atlanta high school stars than travelling three hours east on I-20 to play for a program that isn't as prestigious.
Yes, there's more pressure at Georgia.
That pressure is the cherry on top of what makes it a better job.
Not at all. In fact, the SEC West is vastly overrated as a division.
Yes, all seven teams will go to a bowl game for the second straight season.
Congrats to the SEC West. There are also 5-7 teams that will likely go to bowls this year. That's not meant to take anything away from bowl games. Bowl season is the best time of year and is a reward to players, and if you complain about there being too many, find something else to do on a random Tuesday night in mid-December.
With that said, let's stop with bowl eligibility serving as a measuring stick of conference power. It's not. It's a measuring stick of the back end of a conference's or division's not being horrendous.
That's all.
Is Auburn—which finished last in the SEC West at 6-6 (2-6 SEC)—some sort of power? Of course not. You put the Tigers in the Pac-12, Big Ten East or Big 12, and they'd likely finish with a similar record due to the offensive ineptitude they showed all year long and the inability to build a consistent defense around anybody other than "Buck" Carl Lawson.
Would Texas A&M's offensive struggles have existed if they were still in the Big 12? They struggled moving the football against air at times this year, and Big 12 defenses—while the punchline to a lot of jokes—are, in fact, better than air.
Stop it with the "SEC West power" narrative. It has one good team—Alabama—two decent teams in Ole Miss and Mississippi State, and then a whole lot of uncertainty.
Without a doubt, it's Auburn head coach Gus Malzahn.
The difference between a 7-6 season with momentum in the offseason is much different than 6-7 with two straight losses to close the season.
The big thing for Auburn, though, is finding some sort of play-calling groove in the bowl game. The absence of running back Jovon Robinson for long stretches, too much creativity in the red zone and poor clock management plagued the Tigers this year.
If Auburn's offense looks competent again—you know, the way it used to look—then Malzahn will have a much more pleasant offseason. If the bowl serves as a fitting end to a disappointing season, it will be harder for him on the recruiting trail in January and put more pressure on the staff to fix things quickly.
He's already coaching for his job in 2016, but going out on a high note will make the offseason more bearable for Malzahn and Co.
Quotes were obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted. Statistics are courtesy of cfbstats.com.
Barrett Sallee is the lead SEC college football writer and national college football video analyst for Bleacher Report as well as a host on Bleacher Report Radio on SiriusXM 83. Follow Barrett on Twitter @BarrettSallee.
.jpg?w=480 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
