College Coaching Carousel: Three Openings in the SEC

It’s the Monday after the regular season and the Tennessee Volunteers are not looking for a new head coach. Instead, they’re waiting patiently to figure out where they’ll be bowling this season.

That’s a good feeling, isn’t it?

We’ll leave the coaching searches to other schools this year. So far, there’s been three firings in the SEC. Here are three situations to monitor over the next week.

Arkansas

The Razorbacks got way out ahead of the SEC field, firing Chad Morris before the season ended. Arkansas was the clear-cut worst team in the SEC, bad enough for the University to pull the plug on Morris in the middle of year two.

Of course this search started with Gus Malzahn rumors, but it has since shifted gears towards Lane Kiffin.

Arkansas has become an incredibly tough gig over the last decade with the dominance of Alabama — it got even tougher with momentum rolling with LSU and Ed Orgeron now. More so than any of that, this roster is in really bad shape. It will be interesting to see who takes the plunge here. Much like Tennessee was in 2017, this will be a multi-year rebuilding process.

Missouri

Missouri made a somewhat surprising move to fire Barry Odom after his program limped to the finish line this year. A 5-1 start was met by a 1-5 finish, which included an embarrassing loss to a really bad Vanderbilt team.

Odom wasn’t spectacular at Missouri, but ran a solid program. Missouri officials are now looking for more and it’ll be interesting to see if they can find it.

This job should be fairly appealing for someone out there. You don’t have to deal with Alabama or LSU in your division, but Georgia and Florida will be tough to knock off at the top.

Might Josh Heupel jump back to Missouri here? Mike Norvell is another name getting a lot of traction with each of these jobs.

Ole Miss

The Rebels moved on from Matt Luke after a 4-8 season, a move that several of the players firmly disagreed with. The scene in Oxford on Sunday wasn’t pretty. Luke was fired just 72 hours after his team, well, uh, literally pissed away the Egg Bowl against Mississippi State.

It’s going to be interesting to see if a new head coach can put out the fire that this administration started.

The Ole Miss job is much like the Arkansas job — tough. Playing in the SEC West isn’t a whole lot of fun right now for anyone not named Alabama, Auburn or LSU.

Mike Norvell is the most talked about name for this job early on. Louisiana Lafayette’s Billy Napier has also been connected.

The other situation to watch here is Florida State. If they aren’t able to land a big name, Norvell could end up in Tallahassee, which might set off a domino effect with these three SEC jobs.

We’ll leave you with a tough question to chew on.