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Imitation is the highest form of flattery, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the SEC.
Schools with head coaching vacancies have flocked to the nation’s most dominant football conference in recent years, looking for coordinators at some of the nation’s most successful programs to duplicate the magic at their respective schools.
As a result, the majority of this SEC’s offensive coordinators are relatively new to the job. Ole Miss co-coordinators Matt Luke and Dan Werner and South Carolina’s tandem of Steve Spurrier Jr. and Shawn Elliot are the deans of the league’s offensive coordinators as they enter their respective fourth seasons charged with that responsibility. Six schools – Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Vanderbilt – are set to start the 2015 season with new faces calling the plays.
Overall, 12 of the league’s 14 schools list offensive coordinators in their third year on the job or less.
The mass changing of the guard is indicative of the changes going on within college football as a whole, as many of the new young offensive coordinators come with a background in the spread offense that has become the rage.
Former Georgia offensive coordinator Mike Bobo was a dinosaur of sorts when he left to assume the Colorado State head coaching job last December after eight years as the Bulldogs offensive coordinator and 14 years overall on coach Mark Richt’s staff.
The league’s success in the last decade has made the job of an SEC offensive coordinator high-profile to an extreme. It comes with a lucrative salary and equally-as-real pressure from rabid fans bases eager to win.
But it can be worth the trouble. Brian Schottenheimer, who left an offensive coordinator job with the NFL’s St. Louis Rams to come to Athens, and Doug Nussmeier, picked up after he left Michigan following the Brady Hoke era, will be making salaries approaching seven figures, according to a USA Today report.
It will be challenging, but succeeding as an SEC offensive coordinator is almost a guaranteed ticket to a major head coaching job. Four former SEC offensive coordinators have been lured away to head coaching jobs within the last two years, including the most recent defections by both Bobo and Kentucky’s Neal Brown, who is now guiding the program at Troy. Three other conference position coaches were similarly rewarded with head coaching gigs over that same span.
The conference’s sterling national reputation is only aided by the experience its coordinators bring with them. Both Alabama coordinator Lane Kiffin and LSU’s Cam Cameron came not only with previous NFL work on their resumes, but NFL head coaching experience. The two are among the four SEC coordinators with previous stops in the NFL, along with Georgia’s first-year offensive coordinator Schottenheimer and first-year Volunteers play-caller Mike DeBord.
Kiffin, Cameron, DeBord, and first-year Arkansas offensive coordinator Dan Enos all list previous head coaching experience, making them all the more attractive to potential suitors.
Mississippi State (Billy Gonzales and John Hevesy), Ole Miss (Luke and Werner) and South Carolina (Spurrier Jr. and Elliot) are the three SEC schools with co-offensive coordinators.
Here’s a look at each SEC school’s offensive coordinator and how long they’ve been on the job.
Alabama: Lane Kiffin, 2nd year
Arkansas: Dan Enos, 1st year
Auburn: Rhett Lashler, 3rd year
Florida: Doug Nussmeier, 1st year
Georgia: Brian Schottenheimer, 1st year
Kentucky: Shannon Dawson, 1st year
LSU: Cam Cameron, 3rd year
Mississippi State: Billy Gonzales/John Hevesy, 2nd year
Ole Miss: Matt Luke/Dan Werner, 4th year
Tennessee: Mike DeBord, 1st year
Texas A&M: Jake Spavital, 2nd year
Vanderbilt: Andy Ludwig, 1st year
South Carolina: Steve Spurrier, Jr./Shawn Elliott, 4th year
Missouri: Josh Henson, 3rd year
John Hollis is a contributing writer for Saturday Down South. He covers Georgia and Florida.
