It’s not as pronounced as it is in basketball.

But in a sport where the best players typically spend three years at a university, and entire athletic budgets are dependent on its success, coaching hires are crucial.

Even more so when you’re replacing the all-time wins leader at your school, as Missouri and South Carolina both did.

Three head coaching jobs came open in the SEC East, and each school promoted a defensive coordinator within the conference.

One of them is a retread from 2014 (Will Muschamp). One has never held a job larger than Memphis defensive coordinator until this year (Barry Odom). One is stepping out from a cushy coordinator job in Tuscaloosa to one of the highest-profile head coaching jobs in the country, without a single year of experience as a head coach.

So it’s understandable why the SEC isn’t winning headlines like the Big Ten did last year when Michigan hired Jim Harbaugh or like the ACC did this year in hiring three high-profile, already-known head coaches.

But, of the 13 head coaching hires among the power conference schools, ESPN has ranked the three from the SEC in the bottom three spots.

Missouri at No. 11, Georgia at No. 12 and South Carolina at No. 13.

MISSOURI: BARRY ODOM

ESPN’s Travis Haney seemed to reveal that athletic director Mack Rhoades tried to hire Temple head coach Matt Rhule, but failed in that endeavor.

Although Odom is 39, he has worked beneath Justin Fuente, who just got hired at Virginia Tech, and Gary Pinkel. Some level of continuity is a positive in Columbia at this point in program history.

The biggest concern among the FBS head coaches that Haney polled? Former Oklahoma offensive coordinator Josh Heupel, whom the team officially hired this week.

“Heupel was dismissed at Oklahoma after struggling as its playcaller from 2011-14, so it doesn’t add up to many why he would be an obvious choice for an SEC program,” Haney wrote.

GEORGIA: KIRBY SMART

The industry insider’s feeling about the hire is that it could work. Smart is an unknown as a head coach, but he is as ready as any first-year man, having coached beneath Nick Saban at LSU, with the Miami Dolphins and at Alabama.

But Georgia replaced a good known quantity — Richt won 145 games in 15 years, an average of 9.7 wins per season — with the unknown. UGA is considered by many to be a top-10 job. Any hire risks not being able to surpass Richt’s results. But it will look worse for the administration if it’s an inexperienced coach hired mostly because Georgia is his alma mater.

“Shouldn’t there be a slam-dunk candidate lined up if you’re going to make a bold move like dismissing Richt?” Haney wrote, citing interviews with coaches, athletic directors and agents.

“Instead, Georgia went with the good-ol’-boy network … New OC Jim Chaney was well-liked personally and professionally during SEC stops at Arkansas and Tennessee, but the fact that Smart didn’t automatically know who would run his offense also says something dubious about the hire.”

SOUTH CAROLINA: WILL MUSCHAMP

The narrative that Muschamp must counter is obvious even to casual fans. He coached and failed at Florida, which has better resources, is located in a better recruiting area and has better tradition. How, then, is he going to follow Spurrier’s legend at South Carolina?

We saw how Spurrier went from winning a national title in Gainesville as an annual SEC favorite to clawing out three 10-win seasons in Columbia. Muschamp can’t afford to follow a parallel drop, lesser resources be darned. And the fact that he got the band back together, at least at offensive coordinator, furthers that narrative.

Wrote Haney:

Coaches I talked with last week in New York were mystified by this hire. They especially wondered why Muschamp would again hire Kurt Roper as his OC.

“Even if [the final season at Florida] wasn’t Roper’s fault, it just doesn’t give the appearance that anything has changed, that he learned anything,” one AD told me.”

BOTTOM LINE

The SEC East does not have a great reputation. Purely from a resume standpoint, it just downgraded three of its head coaches.

So of course Haney and others are going to to be skeptical about the hires. Sports on Earth also ranked South Carolina’s hire of Muschamp last out of the 22 hires it graded, explaining it thusly:

In making his first football hire, South Carolina athletic director Ray Tanner had all the time in the world. Spurrier abruptly retired on Oct. 12, giving Tanner a big head start to target a coach and find the right fit. It did not work out that way. The Gamecocks were unable to pry away Herman from Houston, Smart went to his alma mater and Rich Rodriguez very publiclyclaimed to have turned them down. In the end, South Carolina ended up hiring an SEC East retread in Muschamp, a respected defensive coordinator who failed in four years as head coach at rival Florida.

These coaches all will get a legitimate shot to prove themselves on the field. Butch Jones (Tennessee) and Jim McElwain (Florida) have head starts on each of the new guys. But the final outcome of their tenures will not be decided through the media, but on the field in 2016 and beyond.