The turnover rate among SEC coaches is so rapid that many don’t last long enough to see their first recruiting class graduate.

Just four coaches have been in their office longer than five seasons, and no doubt the coaching carousel will continue to turn in 2016.

Three candidates reside in the SEC West, where expectations are highest, salaries biggest and hurdles the tallest.

LSU Les Miles nearly lost his job last season. Some already have predicted he won’t make it through next season. He’s obviously in win now or hand in his keys mode. So obvious little else needs to be said.

Kevin Sumlin and Gus Malzahn can’t be far behind, however. Coacheshotseat.com, in fact, ranks their chairs as the hottest and third-hottest in the country, respectively.

Sumlin, in particular, not only has had to deal with unsourced reports about his job status but also turmoil inside his locker room. It seems he can’t keep his boosters or his quarterbacks happy — and both are essential to every coach’s long-term viability.

Sumlin’s best season at Texas A&M was his first season. Since going 11-2 and beating Alabama in 2012, he’s gone 11-13 in the SEC and watched others — most notably both Mississippi schools — zoom by. That development has been far more surprising than the 59-0 beatdown Alabama delivered in 2014.

How much more patient will A&M be with a coach whose program clearly isn’t showing signs of progress and will enter 2016 with another new quarterback after playing and losing both five-star recruits after last season?

Patience is not one of the SEC’s strengths, and few live with that more every day than Auburn’s Malzahn, who works in the shadow of the empire Saban has built at Alabama.

Like Sumlin, Malzahn’s best season was his first season, in 2013, when he went 12-2 and also beat Alabama en route to the BCS National Championship Game.

Since then, he’s plummeted to 6-10 in the SEC, finishing last in 2015.

The last time Auburn finished last in the SEC West? That would be 2012 — when they fired Gene Chizik just two years after he won their first national championship since 1957.

Chizik was hired because Auburn pushed out Tommy Tuberville after he finished tied for last in the SEC West in 2008.

Tuberville was hired in 1999, after Terry Bowden finished last in the SEC West in 1998.

Sense a pattern?

Malzahn and Sumlin know the score — and if they keep showing up on the wrong side of it, expect somebody else to be in their office in 2017.