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Election special: Is your SEC East team better off than it was 4 years ago?
By Joe Cox
Published:
What’s a presidential election year without the overbaked rhetoric that goes with it? While we’re not here to talk politics, it does provide some occasional inspiration.
Politicians love to ask, as Ronald Reagan famously did in 1980, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” As college football fans, we might ask the same question about our favorite teams. The answer might go a long way toward persuading those who matter whether the head coach deserves another term or not.
Florida: Better
Florida approached 2012 coming off a 7-6 year in coach Will Muschamp’s first season. While Florida had recent national title history, the program had fallen back. The Gators, led by a talented defense, were slotted to finish third in the East in the preseason projections.
Florida surpassed that, 11-2 and tying Georgia for the division title (UGA went to Atlanta by virtue of its head-to-head win). But this was the sole highlight of the Muschamp era, as the next two years yielded an 11-13 mark.
On the other hand, Jim McElwain won the East in his first year, and has Florida in good shape to be competitive in the division for years to come.
Georgia: Slightly worse
After an 0-2 start in 2011, Mark Richt’s Bulldogs won 10 in a row to reach the SEC title game. They were crushed by LSU and lost their bowl game, but the 10-win season was a minor success.
The Bulldogs were the preseason favorite to win the East in 2012, led by first team all-SEC defenders Jarvis Jones and Bacarri Rambo. Indeed, Georgia won the East again in 2012, and came a few yards shy of upsetting Alabama in the SEC Championship for a spot in the national title game.
Since then, the spiral has gone slightly downward, with Mark Richt moving on after a 10-3 season last year. Kirby Smart seems like a solid candidate to return the Bulldogs to the top of the East, but things aren’t quite as pleasant as they were heading into 2012.
Kentucky: Better
In the small picture, it’s easy to wonder if Kentucky isn’t the same. They were 5-7 in 2011 and were 5-7 in 2015. But in the big picture, the Wildcats are definitely better now than four years ago.
The 2012 campaign was a hopeless third year of the Joker Phillips experiment, and expectations were low. Kentucky was picked to finish last in the East, and they did, with a miserable 2-10 season that got Phillips fired and resulted in the hiring of Mark Stoops.
Granted, three years under Stoops haven’t led to a bowl game, but recruiting has improved, and UK is picked fourth this preseason in the East. Admittedly, that pick probably has more to do with the fall of Mizzou, Vandy, and South Carolina than it does with Kentucky, but Stoops is reasonably likely to make a bowl game this year, and could be slowly steering Kentucky into better times.
Missouri: Worse
Mizzou was preparing to begin its SEC life four years ago. In their final six years in the Big 12, Missouri won 8, 12, 10, 8, 10, and 8 games. But the SEC is a different beast. The Tigers were chosen fourth in the East via the 2012 preseason picks, but they ended up fifth with a 5-7 record that kept them out of a bowl for the first time since 2004.
While Mizzou won the division title in 2013 and 2014, 2015 saw a school-wide political scandal, a losing season, and a coaching change (as well as multiple athletic department shifts). Missouri looks to be on a downward spiral, although as it showed in rebounding from that 5-7 2012 season with two East division titles, things can change in a hurry.
South Carolina: Much worse
Four years ago, USC was coming off an 11-2 season and a New Year’s Day Bowl victory over a Big Ten school. Their coach was Steve Spurrier, and in 2010, he had led USC to their first SEC Championship Game. Four years later, Spurrier is gone, South Carolina has lost two straight years to Kentucky, and is resting their hopes on Muschamp.
(Muschamp, incidentally, is the only coach from these seven schools in preseason 2012 who is still a head coach in the SEC in 2016 — albeit with two school moves and a demotion to coordinator in there somewhere.)
The problem is that Muschamp frankly doesn’t have much to work with. Spurrier became angry at times during his late years because other coaches were using his age against him in recruiting. Spurrier angrily emphasized that he wasn’t going anywhere. Ultimately, the other coaches were right, and it has hurt the Gamecocks in recruiting. Muschamp has his work cut out for him.
Tennessee: Much better
Four years ago, the Vols were coming off their second consecutive losing season, and Derek Dooley was their head coach. WR Da’Rick Rogers was a preseason All-SEC choice, but he ended up getting kicked off the team without playing a snap. The SEC media chose the Vols to finish fifth in the East in 2012, but Tennessee underachieved even to those meager expectations, going 1-7 in the conference and losing seven games for the third consecutive year.
Mercifully, it was Derek Dooley’s last year, and since the hiring of Butch Jones before the 2013 season, UT has been on a steady uptick since.
Vanderbilt: Much worse
Four years ago, James Franklin had completed his first year by leading an overachieving Vandy team to its second bowl appearance in a quarter century. Vandy was picked to finish sixth in the East in 2012, but they ended up fourth, as Franklin led them to nine wins and their first postseason AP ranking since 1948.
Four years later, things are not as rosy. Franklin left for Penn State, and Derek Mason has gone 7-17 in two seasons.
There is reason to think that Vandy might be turning the corner back toward bowl-eligibility, but there is every bit as much reason for Mason’s seat to be getting hot.
Joe Cox is a columnist for Saturday Down South. He has also written or assisted in writing five books, and his most recent, Almost Perfect (a study of baseball pitchers’ near-miss attempts at perfect games), is available on Amazon or at many local bookstores.
