Miami and Missouri are among eight Power 5 programs already searching for a new head football coach, and I’m here to tell you that Missouri is the better job.

The Hurricanes dominated the collegiate landscape for the better part of a generation, winning five national championships in 19 years — with four head coaches, no less — and sending a seemingly limitless supply of first-round draft picks to the NFL.

The Tigers, on the other hand, haven’t so much as captured a conference crown since they won the old Big Eight in 1969.

But thanks in large part to coach Gary Pinkel, who announced Friday that he’s stepping down at season’s end after being diagnosed in May with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, Mizzou has more to offer going forward than The U.

When Pinkel arrived in Columbia before the 2001 campaign, Missouri was coming off a 3-8 dud in the Big 12 — teetering on doormat status competing with name brands like Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas — and hadn’t even been to a bowl game since 1998.

He will leave the winningest coach in Tigers lore and having gotten the best of premier programs like Florida and Georgia on his way to back-to-back SEC Championship Game appearances.

Pinkel made the decision to reassess his health during the team’s bye the week of Halloween, and ultimately his love for life trumped his love for the game.

“I want to make very clear that I’m not doing poorly and that this is a manageable disease, but it’s one that will never go away,” Pinkel said at a press conference. “I don’t know how many years I have left, but I want to turn my focus to life outside the daily grind of football.”

After defeating BYU on Saturday at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City to even his record at 5-5, Pinkel’s career mark of 118-71 at a school with next to no discernible pigskin history is nothing short of remarkable.

Before he got there, the Tigers had lost 10 games (1971, 1985) twice as many times as they had won 10 (1960) — the football program dates to 1901, by the way. Pinkel was responsible for five seasons of double-digit wins in an eight-year stretch from 2007-14, which is extra impressive after making the jump in competition from the top-heavy Big 12 to the loaded SEC in 2012.

Losing in the conference title game the past two years is no source of embarrassment, as Auburn went to the national championship game in 2013 and Alabama made the College Football Playoff in 2014, plus no experts picked Mizzou to be in Atlanta, anyway.

“Every time you thought the football program had grown stale or plateaued on his watch, Pinkel emphatically reminded us that you can never count it out under his watch,” Kansas City Star columnist Vahe Gregorian wrote Friday.

And his impact extends well beyond the gridiron.

Michael Sam came out to his Missouri teammates long before he was the first openly gay player to be drafted by the NFL in 2014, and his acceptance in the locker room said just as much about Pinkel as a coach as it did about the other 84 players on scholarship.

“It’s tough emotionally knowing that his fight with cancer is bringing his run to an end sooner than any of us thought,” Missouri athletics director Mack Rhoades said at Pinkel’s presser. “I want to commend Gary with how open he’s been with me the whole time, from the first day he came to my office in May and told me about the diagnosis, all the way to now and when he met with me personally on October 28 to tell me he’d made up his mind.”

Then this past week, when the players of color on his team decided to boycott all football activities as a sign of solidarity in the wake of recent racial tension on campus, Pinkel supported his young men at every turn.

How many coaches fighting for bowl eligibility would have done the same?

“This next line is, by no means, meant to diminish (former basketball coach) Norm Stewart,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Benjamin Hochman wrote Saturday. “But Gary Pinkel is the most important man in Mizzou sports history.

“Football is king, and he made Mizzou a national power. He coached in the Big 12 championship and, of course, in the past two Southeastern Conference championships. Really, he got Mizzou into the SEC, and that was historic.”

Prince William has been married to Kate Middleton longer than Missouri has been in the SEC, but it didn’t take long for Pinkel to distinguish himself as a man of character on and off the field in the best conference in America.

“Gary Pinkel has been a credit to the game of football and the kind of person we hold high as an example of how college athletics can make a difference in young people’s lives,” said SEC commissioner Greg Sankey in a statement.

Whether it’s an in-house candidate like defensive coordinator Barry Odom or a hot up-and-coming name, whomever takes over for Pinkel has his work cut out for him.

Nevertheless, despite being at an institution situated in the Midwest, Pinkel has proven that you don’t have to be a traditional Southern-fried football school to win in the SEC.

Especially in the East, where Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee and Vanderbilt are dealing with their fair share of questions — even division-champion Florida routinely struggles to score points.

Mizzou resides in the most high-profile conference in the country. The roster already has 15 players from Texas and 11 more from Florida, so the recruiting footprint is wide. Pinkel’s $4 million annual salary means the pockets are deep enough to lure a big-time coach.

Miami has failed to play in the ACC Championship Game in 12 years of membership, no longer controls National Signing Day in Dade County and never paid ex-coach Al Golden more than $2.5 million.

Missouri is the better job. But Pinkel doesn’t deserve all the credit. Just most of it.