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Every season, fans and media laud the SEC for its top-notch players. The championship-winning head coaches earn heaps of praise, too. The assistant coaches the prowl the sidelines, though, don’t get as much love.
The SEC has more than its share of former head coaches filling assistant roles. Five teams have former head coaches on staff, several with multiple former head men.
While there’s the potential for chafing with a coach used to running his own ship working under someone else, there haven’t been any reported issues like that in the SEC this season. In fact, one school even went out and replaced a former head coach with another former head coach.
Let’s run down which staffs have former head coaches on the sidelines.
Alabama
The Crimson Tide have the most loaded staff in college football. Nick Saban employs four former head coaches on his staff: Mario Cristobal (offensive line), Lane Kiffin (offensive coordinator), Kevin Steele (linebackers/special assistant to head coach) and Bobby Williams (special teams coordinator/tight ends). Saban spoke in the preseason about how having so much experience on his staff allows him to learn and take pieces from each of his experienced assistants.
Arkansas
Bret Bielema has one former head coach on his staff: Randy Shannon, former coach of the Miami Hurricanes. Shannon led the Canes through one of their rougher periods in recent history, but before that was a Broyles Award-winning defensive coordinator for Miami. Shannon coaches Arkansas’ linebackers, helping form a unit that was third in the SEC in run defense.
Auburn
You may have heard: Auburn recently hired former Florida head coach Will Muschamp to run its defense, bringing back the man who led two top-10 defenses at Auburn in the mid-2000s. Muschamp was 28-21 over four years running the Gators. In 2014, Auburn had Ellis Johnson in the same role, who’d had three previous head coaching stops.
LSU
Cam Cameron is one of the assistant coaches in the SEC with both NFL and NCAA head coaching experience. Cameron ran the Miami Dolphins in 2007, and prior to that was the head coach at Indiana from 1997-2001. Cameron was also an offensive coordinator for the San Diego Chargers (2002-06) and the Baltimore Ravens (2008-12). Also on staff is administrative assistant Steve Kragthorpe, who was a head coach at Tulsa (2003-06) and Louisville (2007-09), as well as special teams coordinator Bradley Dale Peveto, who left LSU earlier in Les Miles’ tenure to coach at Northwestern State for four seasons, returning in 2014.
Tennessee
Steve Stripling, Butch Jones’ associate head coach and defensive line coach, served stints as the interim head coach at Central Michigan and Cincinnati; he held the associate head coach title at both schools prior to taking over short-term. Stripling has gone 2-0 as a head coach, both in bowl games.
A former freelance journalist from Philadelphia, Brett has made the trek down to SEC country to cover the greatest conference in college football.
