SEC Football Coaches on Hot Seat Heading into 2016 Season

In this day and age of massive coaching contracts and what-have-you-done-for-me-lately fan bases demanding championships, there are big stakes that go along with the big money.

There's no larger shark tank in the country than in the SEC, either.

So, which SEC head honchos in the league are swimming with blood in the water? You actually may be surprised.

Two years ago, two of the guys on this list were among the hottest young up-and-comers in the country, one was the quirky gambler who everybody loved and the other was making waves as a first-year coach.

That should show you just how quickly things can change in the cutthroat world of SEC football.

Just ask Mark Richt, who was fired following the 2015 season after 15 seasons at Georgia where he won 74 percent of his games and was the longest-tenured league coach.

The move was enough to baffle Alabama coach Nick Saban, the gold standard among coaches who is the guy that—fair or not—is the measuring stick for other coaches around the conference. Saban told CBSSports' Jon Solomon:

"

I don't know what the world's coming to in our profession. Mark Richt has been a really good coach and a really positive person in our profession for a long, long time…I hate to see people that have character and quality and ability to affect young people like Mark Richt not be part of our profession…We all get it. We know we have to win games. But winning nine games is not bad.

"

But year after year of nine wins when your program expects a championship or two sprinkled in simply isn't good enough. If you can't win big, schools will pay big money to cycle in the next hopeful.

These days, cell phones last longer than college coaches.

It's inevitable that coaching moves will happen following the '16 season as well. So, who could be the next conference coach to get the hook? Let's take a look at four guys whose bottoms may become a little toasty if the losses start piling up.

Kevin Sumlin

Joe Robbins/Getty Images

How did we get here?

When Sumlin left Houston following a 12-1 season and followed that up with an 11-2 campaign in 2012 that featured the birth of Johnny Football Madness, he was thought of as one of the hot, young innovative offensive minds who had the chance to dominate college football for years.

Recruits were flocking to College Station, and the Aggies looked like they were being built for the long haul.

But Johnny Manziel didn't have nearly enough weapons around him as a putrid A&M defense saw the Aggies drop to 9-4 the following year. Consecutive 8-5 seasons followed, and then there was the bizarre quarterback controversy of a season ago that saw both blue-chip quarterbacks leave.

Kyler Murray transferred to Oklahoma, and Kyle Allen left for Houston. While Sumlin was able to convince Sooners senior transfer Trevor Knight to play his final season for the Aggies in '16, the drama hasn't ended.

Highly-touted prospect Tate Martell decommitted earlier this month, via Twitter, leading to even more questions about Sumlin's ability to lure (and keep) a high-profile signal-caller. 

"

After talking with my family about
what is best for my future, I have
decided to reopen my recruiting
process.

— Tate Martell (@TheTateMartell) May 5, 2016"

Martell's father told Rivals.com's Adam Gorney it was partly because of A&M's hiring of offensive coordinator Noel Mazzone.

Then things got worse when receivers coach Aaron Moorehead tweeted something seemingly directed at Martell following the decommitment, though he later tweeted it wasn't related.

"I feel sorry for ppl who never understand loyalty. I can't really even vibe with u. At the end of the day trust is 100& everything else is BS," said the tweet Moorehead later deleted (via B/R's Barrett Sallee).

Mannie Netherly decommitted from the Aggies shortly thereafter, and the 4-star prospect referenced the tweet when he did. Other recruits bristled, too.

Simply put, things are a mess for Sumlin right now. The only real way he can quell the concerns is win football games. 

Question marks abound, and the issues are making some of the Aggies fans restless. If you can't recruit, you can't compete in the SEC, and it wouldn't be surprising to see a lot of prospects take a wait-and-see approach with this season. 

The good news for Aggies fans is there's still a ton of talent in College Station, led by some elite defenders and receiving corps, so there are some pieces in place. Sumlin desperately needs to put everything together for double-digit victories, or he may find himself coaching elsewhere in 2017.

Gus Malzahn

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Basically, the first few paragraphs of the Sumlin section could be rewritten here, too. 

The Gus Bus was chugging along merrily downhill during his first season on the Plains when Auburn went from the forgettable final frame of the Gene Chizik era to coming within a tomahawk chop of beating Florida State for the national championship.

Folks began thinking Malzahn was Saban's kryptonite, and that his funky, innovative offense was taking the archaic cloud-of-dust SEC by storm.

Then, 8-5 happened, followed by last year's 7-6 season that started with the Tigers as a dark-horse national champion contender and quarterback Jeremy Johnson on the short list as a Heisman Trophy hopeful. That ended quickly and decisively, and now Malzahn needs to rekindle the magic.

In each of the last two years, the Tigers were in the preseason top 10, yet they have a combined 6-10 SEC record during that time.

When you aren't winning, the quirky offense looks like a gimmick, and replacing defensive coordinator Will Muschamp (who left to be the head coach at South Carolina) with Kevin Steele was quizzical, at best. Malzahn's moves need to pay off.

The best news for Auburn? As Saturday Down South's Chris Wuensch stated perfectly: 

"

Working in Malzahn’s favor is that Auburn often seems to come up big when expectations are small. The Tigers might need a quick turnaround, somewhere in the neighborhood of, at minimum, eight wins, to keep detractors at bay. And while that’s easier said than done, especially for a team coming off a last-place finish in the SEC West, it won't be a quick fix.

"

The Tigers have some weapons, especially at running back. They also recruited extremely well at receiver, which was a major position of need. But expecting freshmen to turn your team around is a risky proposition, at best. And while there's talent on defense, adjusting to a new coordinator isn't easy.

Then, there's that quarterback conundrum where Johnson, Sean White and transfer John Franklin III will battle it out. If AU doesn't have a signal-caller who can make plays, it's going to be a long season in the rugged SEC West.

Will eight wins be enough to save Malzahn? Well, that depends. What if the Tigers win eight but get blown out by Alabama in the Iron Bowl. Again, Saban and the Tide will always be measuring sticks for Auburn and its fans. Lose that game badly, and things could get very shaky.

Malzahn has to turn things around in a hurry.

Mark Stoops

Mark Zerof-USA TODAY Sports

There are 12 million reasons why the fourth-year Kentucky coach shouldn't be on his list, as in that's how much it would cost the Wildcats to can him after this season.

But if Stoops really stinks things up, athletic director Mitch Barnhart may put all that basketball money Big Blue generates toward finding another football coach.

Stoops' story, like the two coaches above him on this list, is odd. He's recruiting better than any Wildcats coach in recent memory, but those prospects simply haven't translated into wins. How UK is losing is all the more frustrating.

Last year, UK started the season 4-1, and in 2014, the Wildcats began 5-1 with their only loss being a 36-30 overtime setback at Florida. Both years, they failed to make a bowl game, going a combined 1-11 afterward. It seemed the team just ran out of gas as depth became an issue later in the year.

The Wildcats' schedule is always back-loaded with quality opponents, and they just can't hang. If they keep banging their head against the ceiling, it wouldn't be surprising to see Barnhart make a change and see if somebody else can win with Stoops' recruits.

While he wouldn't say Stoops' job is contingent on a bowl game, Barnhart told the Courier-Journal's Kyle Tucker just how important the postseason is to the development of the program:

"

You know me well enough to know I'm never going to say 'have to' do anything. What we want to do is we want to get to postseason play. That's the goal. There is no mystery in that. We talk about that all the time: What do we have to do in all of our sports to get to postseason play? Postseason play in football is bowls. We want to get to a bowl game.

It is a real important part of the growth of this program. It's extra practice for our guys. It's our young guys getting reps. It's being able to see your physical effort rewarded in other areas off the field. Those pieces are really, really important to us. Getting to a bowl, it's absolutely important. So is it bust (if not)? No. But we've got to find our way through.

"

That doesn't exactly sound like an ultimatum, but it's not far off. Basketball is a massive moneymaker for UK, much more than at most programs. But Barnhart knows that football is the big-revenue sport, and getting it healthy could mean taking the school's athletics to the next level.

Given Barnhart's history at Tennessee during part of the Vols' gridiron heyday from 1986-98, you know football is very important to him. So, Stoops needs to find a way to get his Wildcats into a bowl game, especially considering he's just 12-24 so far in Lexington.

There are defensive gaps yet again this year, but with Drew Barker at the helm under center and Boom Williams still in the backfield, there are some nice building blocks. They'd better build toward a bowl game, or UK could be looking at yet another regime.

Les Miles

Thomas B. Shea-USA TODAY Sports

After a regular season-ending win over Texas A&M last year, LSU football players carried Les Miles off the field on their shoulders for what most (including Miles) thought would be his final game as the coach of the Bayou Bengals.

There had been so many reports he was going to be fired throughout the week.

LSU president F. King Alexander told CBSSports.com's Tom Fornelli the decision to keep Miles was made, amazingly, at halftime of that game against the Aggies.

So, what happens next? Miles signed one of the best recruiting classes in the country, ranked third overall by the 247Sports Composite. He returns more starters than anybody in the country, led by the nation's most freakish talent in running back Leonard Fournette and star safety Jamal Adams.

Noted sports analyst and handicapper Danny Sheridan said on the Paul Finebaum Show on Thursday that LSU should be the top team in the SEC, and Tennessee should be 1B. 

In other words, there are a slew of expectations riding a pontoon boat to the bayou. A lot of analysts, including FOXSports.com's Aaron Torres, believes the Tigers will pass Alabama this year.

That Saban barometer has been mentioned a couple of times, and there's no bigger glare off those national championship rings than in Auburn. But a close second is LSU, where Saban used to roam the sidelines and where the fans of the Tigers demand matching the legendary coach.

Miles has been stuck in that shadow for a lot of his career unfairly after carving a nice little legacy of his own. But LSU fans believe their team is going to be really, really good in '16, and if the Tigers aren't, what almost happened last year actually will this season.

Is he safe? Not a chance, says B/R colleague Barrett Sallee via Paul Finebaum:

No coach is safe, really. You're one awful season away from feeling the pressure. With all the hype surrounding Tennessee this year, what if Butch Jones lays an egg? Bret Bielema is facing some offensive uncertainty following the departures of Brandon Allen and Alex Collins, too.

Vanderbilt's Derek Mason made some positive steps last year, but what if the Commodores are horrible again? Even a first-year coach like Muschamp may fall out of favor if he is back to his offensively impotent ways dating back to his head-coaching tenure at Florida.

In the SEC, you've got to win; as in, right now. If not, your head will fall firmly on the chopping block.

All information gathered firsthand unless otherwise noted. All recruiting information gathered from 247Sports unless otherwise noted. All stats gathered at CFBStats.com unless otherwise noted.

Brad Shepard covers SEC football and is the Tennessee lead writer for Bleacher Report. Follow Brad on Twitter @Brad_Shepard.