Six coaches were hired in roughly 36 hours. A whopping 38% of SEC teams got new leadership during a window shorter than the window many of us take between showers.
To say that it’s a new era of the SEC would be an understatement.
Alex Golesh, Ryan Silverfield, Jon Sumrall, Will Stein, Pete Golding and Lane Kiffin, who becomes the first person to ever coach 3 different SEC schools, represent the new wave of the SEC. Time will tell if the cycle will be remembered fondly, or if it’ll be considered a slew of head-scratching decisions. We’ll play the results on that. For what it’s worth, the last time that the SEC had a major coaching shakeup with 4 moves after the 2019 season, it gave us Eli Drinkwitz, Mike Leach, Sam Pittman and of course, Kiffin. Technically, Pittman was the only coach in that group who was fired, and that didn’t happen until Year 6.
The post-2025 SEC coaching carousel yielded a ton of takeaways. Here are some wild stats about the new SEC coaching fraternity:
Mark Stoops’ firing means Eli Drinkwitz is the second-longest tenured coach in the SEC
Maybe you’ll disagree, but I think that’s more of a revelation than Kirby Smart being the new elder statesman of the SEC. While it’s strange to process that a 49-year-old is the longest-tenured SEC coach, Smart has been the obvious top dog in the conference since Nick Saban‘s retirement. It’s not breaking news to suggest that Smart has the best — and now longest — résumé among SEC coaches.
But think about that with Drinkwitz. He started in 2020 as part of that aforementioned post-2019 cycle. That means Smart is now the only SEC coach who can say he was with his team in the 2010s decade. Drinkwitz and Smart are the only current coaches who were leading their respective teams during the COVID seasons, which feels both recent and distant. At the end of Year 6, Drinkwitz just got an extension to stay in Columbia after his name was being linked to vacancies at Florida and LSU.
That also means if there were a podium of the longest-tenured SEC head coaches, these guys would share the last spot (all of them were hired after the 2020 season):
None of those coaches feel like they’re flirting with “SEC elder statesman” territory. But alas, it’s a new world.
Only 25% of current SEC coaches have 17 conference wins
Our guy Chris Wright pointed this out. Smart has 69 SEC wins, which is the clear leader among the current coaches. Kiffin is No. 2 on the SEC wins list with 36, Drinkwitz makes the podium again with 26 victories in conference play and Heupel is right behind him with 24 (he had 1 less season).
But look at how few conference wins there are between the other 75% of the current SEC coaches:
- 1. Kirby Smart, 69 SEC wins
- 2. Lane Kiffin, 36
- 3. Eli Drinkwitz, 26
- 4. Josh Heupel, 24
- 5. Shane Beamer, 16
- 6. Steve Sarkisian, 13
- T7. Kalen DeBoer, 12
- T7. Mike Elko, 12
- 9. Clark Lea, 11
- 10. Brent Venables, 8
- 11. Jeff Lebby, 1
- T12. Alex Golesh, Pete Golding, Will Stein, Jon Sumrall, Ryan Silverfield, 0
Sure, part of that leaderboard is skewed a bit by Sarkisian and Venables spending 2-3 seasons in the Big 12. Still, though. Getting to 17 SEC wins is something that Brian Kelly did, and he didn’t even reach November of Year 4. Shoot, Saban technically had a 2-year stretch in which he did that in 2020-21.
The good news for all parties is that a 9-game conference schedule is on the way and they’ll get ample opportunities to climb a wide-open leaderboard.
The oldest SEC coach is now 54-year-old Brent Venables, AKA the psycho that runs stadiums in his spare time
Nothing about Venables screams “oldest guy of the bunch.” He works out like someone 30 years younger, and his in-game persona is as high-energy as anybody in the sport. Venables being the oldest coach in a 16-team conference is the byproduct of all these coaches getting fired/retiring since 2023:
- Nick Saban, retired at 72
- Brian Kelly, fired at 64
- Sam Pittman, fired at 63
- Mark Stoops, fired at 58
- Jimbo Fisher, fired at 58
- Hugh Freeze, fired at 56
Just for a little comparison, the Big Ten has 5 coaches who are older than Venables, including 55-year-old Bret Bielema. That’s right. If Bielema were in the SEC again, he’d return as the conference’s oldest coach.
What does that mean? The conference’s coaches are suddenly a bunch of Millennials.
The SEC entered 2025 with 3 head coaches born in the 1980s … now it has 8
Coming into this season, Lea, Drinkwitz and Lebby were the only SEC coaches who were born in the 1980s. All 5 of the new SEC coaches (excluding Kiffin) joined that club. That’s half the conference who has a coach that was born in the 1980s now:
- Ryan Silverfield, 1980
- Clark Lea, 1981
- Jon Sumrall, 1982
- Eli Drinkwitz, 1983
- Jeff Lebby, 1984
- Pete Golding, 1984
- Alex Golesh, 1984
- Will Stein, 1989
Drinkwitz was the first 1980s-born coach in SEC history when he was hired in Dec. 2019. It’s weird to think that in all likelihood, the next coaching change in the SEC will lead to more than half the conference having birthdays in the 1980s. Shoot, we might not ever see another SEC coach born before 1970.
Well, I suppose we could get an even more bizarre thing to process that nearly happened this cycle. That is, an SEC head coach born in the 1990s.
Speaking of that …
36-year-old Will Stein is the youngest SEC head coach since … Lane Kiffin
All roads lead back to Kiffin. You knew this.
Yes, Stein was born in 1989, so he nearly just missed out on being the first 1990s-born SEC coach ever. But it’s strange to think that someone who is in the same school year as his Oregon offensive coordinator predecessor Kenny Dillingham (a 1990s-born Big 12 coach) and Travis Kelce (along with a certain significant other of his) is now an SEC head coach. Stein beat out Zach Arnett, who was previously the youngest SEC head coach since a 33-year-old Kiffin got the Tennessee job in Nov. 2008. Go figure that both Arnett and Kiffin were 1-and-done when they got their respective SEC head coaching gigs as 30-somethings, albeit for different reasons.
Stein doesn’t figure to be 1-and-done at Kentucky. AKA the school that just had the longest-tenured coach in the SEC … who they also paid $37 million to go away. Both of those reasons should make Stein’s leash a bit longer than most who are joining the SEC coaching fraternity.
Also, the only SEC coaches who are older than Kiffin are Venables (54), Sarkisian (51) and DeBoer (51). We’re living in a world in which the 50-year-old Kiffin is now on the Mt. Rushmore of the oldest current SEC head coaches.
How easy it is to forget that.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
