Is there a more tenuous job than that of an assistant football coach? They move around with seemingly reckless abandon, jumping from school to school looking to land the job and position themselves for the next move up the proverbial ladder within the ranks.
It comes with the territory. Rarely can an assistant coach be found with any real longevity at one place. Add that to the competitive nature of the SEC, and it makes for a very volatile situation. It is not surprising, therefore, that the revolving door of assistant coaches in that conference would swing just a little bit more freely.
Texas A&M brought in Noel Mazzone to be the Aggies’ fourth offensive coordinator in five seasons under head coach Kevin Sumlin. He hopes to pump new life in an offense that struggled under former OC Jake Spavital, who took over when Cliff Kingsbury took the head coaching job at Texas Tech.
Spavital spent two years trying to maintain the magic the Aggies enjoyed in 2012 and 2013 with Johnny Manziel under center. Funny how that works. The offense suffers when the Heisman Trophy talent is no longer calling signals.
At Auburn, it’s the defensive coordinator position that keeps turning over as of late. Kevin Steele is Auburn’s third defensive coordinator in three years.
It’s also Steele’s third job in three seasons. He was the linebackers coach at Alabama in 2014 before becoming the defensive coordinator at LSU in 2015, replacing John Chavis who had a falling out in Baton Rouge and bolted for Texas A&M.
Yes, folks, you may need a scorecard to keep up.
Steele was Alabama’s defensive coordinator in 2007 and held the same position at Clemson from 2009-11. He takes over for Will Muschamp, who held that position for all of one year following his firing as head coach at Florida (we said it was a revolving door). Muschamp is now back as a head coach, replacing the legendary Steve Spurrier at South Carolina.
It seems as though Steele has nowhere to go but up with a Tigers defense that has ranked no higher than seventh in the SEC in average yards allowed per game since 2008.
Mississippi State is experiencing the same constant change at DC since Dan Mullen arrived as head coach in 2009. Peter Sirmon will lead the way in 2016, coming over from Southern Cal, where he served as linebackers coach the past two seasons. He was an assistant with Tennessee, so he knows a thing or two about SEC football.
This will be Mullen’s sixth change at defensive coordinator in his eight years as head coach of the Bulldogs. Sirmon replaces Manny Diaz, who headed for Miami to be on Mark Richt’s staff in South Florida.
Diaz served twice as Mississippi State’s DC, both one-year stints (2010, 2015). Geoff Collins (2013-14) and Chris Wilson (2011-12) were his predecessors at Mississippi State. Carl Torbush (2009) preceded Diaz’s first go-round with the Bulldogs.
Sirmon, who played linebacker for seven years with the NFL’s Tennessee Titans, hopes to return the Bulldogs defense to its 2013 form, when it ranked fourth in the SEC in average yards allowed per game (349.3), its best finish in quite some time.
And those are but a few of the cases involving SEC programs whose assistant coaching positions have suffered from instability in recent years.
Glenn Sattell is an award-winning freelance writer for Saturday Down South.
