Why Florida Head Coach Will Muschamp's Seat Is Hotter Than Michigan's Brady Hoke

Michigan head coach Brady Hoke and Florida head coach Will Muschamp: a pair of dead men walking.

Each man's firing went from likely to inevitable in Week 4, but Muschamp's fate seems especially sealed.

This is true despite the fact that Hoke's team has been worse than Muschamp's team in 2014. Neither has looked good, but Florida has one loss to Michigan's two and has at least managed to score some points against power-five competition. The Wolverines have redefined stagnant.

Hoke is in a similarly dismal position to that of Muschamp, as outlined in thorough detail by Bleacher Report's Phil Callihan, who wrote that Hoke has "fumbled his chance to rebuild Michigan and it will cost him his job." His assessment is frank and, in all likelihood, true.

Regardless, Muschamp's grim outlook is grimmer than Hoke's grim outlook, in large part because of where he plays, whom he plays and how long he's been playing there/against them.

If four years isn't enough to get things right, the SEC will eat you alive.

Muschamp and Hoke are in kindred situations—and not just because of their impending expiration date.

Both were weened on the defensive side of the football. Both have made a BCS bowl. Both have done a pretty good job recruiting, and both replaced a scapegoat offensive coordinator with a splashy addition this winter.

Those splashy additions, however, have not made much of a difference. Or at least they have not through four games. Doug Nussmeier's offense has looked a lot like Al Borges' at Michigan, and Kurt Roper's offense has looked a lot like Brent Pease's at Florida. Big, Dumb and Ugly from the shotgun is still Big, Dumb and Ugly. The only thing that's changed is the potential for an airmailed snap.

Michigan's two games against power-five competition have been a 31-0 loss at Notre Dame—the program's first offensive shutout since 1984—and a 26-10 home loss to Utah. Florida's two games against power-five competition have been a 36-30 overtime win at Kentucky and a 41-21 loss at Alabama.

Both teams are 0-2 in the "did we not get embarrassed?" department, and neither coach can afford for that to drop to 0-3. They need to make tangible progress, and they need to do it soon.

Which brings us to the upcoming schedule:

	Date	Florida Opponent	Date	Michigan Opponent
	10/4	at Tennessee	9/27	vs. Minnesota
	10/11	vs. LSU	10/4	at Rutgers

Florida gets a bye this week, and the Tennessee team it plays in Week 6 will be coming off a road trip to Georgia.

However, it will also be playing in the Vols' SEC home opener…in Neyland Stadium…against a team that, at this point, might actually have more upside than the Gators. It's younger, sure, but it's also untainted by the pock of Muschamp's coaching.

Butch Jones knows how to develop an offense.

A loss at Tennessee would extra-seal Muschamp's fate. A loss at Tennesee followed by a loss to LSU would end his tenure. If the Gators start the season 2-3 overall and 1-3 in SEC play, Muschamp will not be the coach against Missouri on October 11.

Even 3-2 and 2-2 might wrap things up.

Hoke, meanwhile, gets winnable games against Minnesota and at Rutgers before hosting Penn State in Week 7. The Gophers and Scarlet Knights are playing better ball than Michigan right now, but they are an easier pair of opponents than Tennessee and LSU.

And if Hoke enters a night game against Penn State with a 2-0 Big Ten record—especially if Penn State is ranked at that point, as it very well might be—he'll get another last-ditch chance to save his job.

Muschamp eluded being fired last offseason because of his defense, which finished No. 17 in the F/+ ratings at Football Outsiders despite his team's 4-8 record. The year before that, when Florida went 11-2 and played in the Sugar Bowl, it finished No. 2 in the same metric.

This year's defense let up 450 yards to Kentucky—Kentucky!—and a school-record 645 yards to Alabama. Career backup Blake Sims looked like future Heisman candidate Blake Sims, and career punchline Lane Kiffin looked like future head coach (again) Lane Kiffin.

With no defense to hang his hat on, what does Muschamp have left? The depth he's built along the offensive line? The development of Jeff Driskel? The camaraderie he's fostered in the locker room?

No. 

Nope.

And quite literally the opposite:

"We feel like we're as talented a football team as anybody in the [SEC] East," Muschamp said after the loss to Alabama, per OnlyGators.com.

And in this case, he's exactly right.

Florida is as talented a football team as anybody in the SEC East. It's as talented a football team as just about anybody in America. But talent has never been the issue. That's exactly why his job is in such jeopardy to begin with: Coaching is the reason this team stinks.

The same can (and should) be said about Hoke and the fiasco at Michigan, but playing in the Big Ten is a benefit Muschamp doesn't have. You can hide a mediocre team against the Rutgers' and the Minnesotas of the world, and you can spin that hiding as improvement over the course of the season.

It takes a person with clouded judgement to fall for such an obvious ruse, but the "He's a Michigan Man!" defense has clouded plenty of peoples' judgements in the past.

Muschamp doesn't have a card like that to play.

The only defense he has just got abused on national television.

Follow Brian Leigh on Twitter: @BLeighDAT