What if I told you …

That we’d start off the weekend with Nick Fitzgerald getting carted off the field in the Egg Bowl. That a day later, Bret Bielema would get fired before he even stepped off the field in Arkansas’ final game of 2017. That the following afternoon, Jordan Jones would go full street-fight mode on the Heisman Trophy winner. That later in the day, we’d watch Tennessee cap a winless SEC campaign with a home loss to Vanderbilt. That early Saturday evening, we’d watch Jordan-Hare Stadium get taken over by field-rushing Auburn fans after Nick Saban was handed his first regular season loss in over 2 years. That all night long, we’d debate if 1-loss Alabama was about to miss the Playoff for the first time while Auburn and Georgia battled in the SEC Championship for the first time.

What if I told you … that was all old news by Sunday afternoon?

They might actually make a “30 for 30” on the Sunday that was in the SEC. It had everything. It had #Grumors, a coach firing, a blockbuster coach hiring, a protest-fueled prefiring and even a feel-good hiring. Pushed to the back burner on the national scene were the reports about Jimbo Fisher’s potential interest in Texas A&M. After all, those were only rumors.

The day that was proved to be about more than tracking planes or retweeting anonymous sources. It was more edge-of-your-seat entertainment than any game-winning field goal or Florida-Tennessee Hail Mary. In what turned out to be perhaps the wildest Sunday in the SEC on record, anything seemed possible.

Well, except Jon Gruden accepting the Tennessee job.

Credit: Aaron Doster-USA TODAY Sports

When the early signing period was introduced over the summer, many expected it to ramp up the coaching search process. It’s safe to say that it didn’t just “ramp up.” It was put on speed.

But while Sunday felt like a warping tornado on its own path of destruction, perhaps we should’ve spotted the storm long ago.

After all, we knew this coaching search wasn’t going to end well for Tennessee. Once reality sank in that Gruden was officially off the table — there were somehow still early-morning Grumors that he spoke with the Vols about the position — it was going to get ugly. Of course nobody knew that #VolTwitter would take it to that level of ugly.

When Greg Schiano was reportedly “close” to signing a deal with Tennessee to become its next coach, the Twitter police came out in full force. The #SchiaNO hashtag was everywhere. Former players chimed in on how they didn’t want him to take over their program. And when a few Vols fans hopped on Schiano’s Wikipedia page and saw the words “Controversy” followed by “Jerry Sandusky,” all hell broke loose.

Headlines were read, assumptions were made and protests were formed. A line in the sand was drawn by Tennessee fans. Rather, spray-painted.

Twitter essentially became a political debate. Some defended Schiano and cited that his lack of knowledge and/or action in the Sandusky case was so insignificant that investigators didn’t even use the hearsay allegation as legitimate evidence. Others claimed that any association with child abuse was enough of a reason to protest him as Tennessee’s next coach.

In the end, Tennessee athletic director John Currie reportedly canceled the Sunday night press conference and Schiano’s representatives backed out of the deal after being “spooked” by the overwhelming public protest of the hire.

Who wouldn’t be spooked by a mob of protestors? From former players to state representatives, it seemed like anyone with Tennessee ties threatened to boycott the program if it hired Schiano. Even coffee shops were saying that Schiano wouldn’t be welcome in their establishment.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Where else but Tennessee would that have happened? The answer is nowhere because that’s NEVER happened before. It’s one thing for a coach to get cold feet and back out of a deal at the last minute. It’s another for public and Twitter protests to prevent a hiring from happening. Madness.

Meanwhile in Gainesville, Florida hit a home run on an 0-2 count. After whiffing on Chip Kelly (oh, I forgot to mention his UCLA move in the “30 for 30” script earlier) and Scott Frost, the Gators had no choice but to swing for the fences with Dan Mullen. The man who helped engineer Tim Tebow’s glory agreed to return to Gainesville, this time to run the show. After years of speculation that Mullen would eventually leave the comfortable confines of Starkville, he finally pulled the trigger.

On a normal day, that would’ve been the stunning development of the entire offseason in the SEC. Rarely do intra-conference head coaching changes occur, especially just 3 days removed from a coach assuring his loyalty to his current program. Mullen was indeed the big splash that the Gators were hoping for, and while the move might not have been universally loved by fans, it got the best endorsement possible.

Spurrier was, of course, the last Power 5 coach that the Gators hired. Lord knows the Mullen believers have already linked those 2 coaches in about every way possible. Florida fans have to be eager to see what Mullen can do with Florida’s resources in the SEC East.

Mullen’s former West counterpart, Kevin Sumlin, didn’t exactly jump from one SEC ship to another. Texas A&M made one of the more-expected moves of the weekend, which was firing Sumlin after his 6th season in College Station. Reports even surfaced that Sumlin was the top candidate to get the job at Arizona State after it parted ways with Todd Graham on Sunday.

For now, though, that’s still just speculation. Sunday couldn’t have ALL of the juicy developments.

It did have one more juicy, late-night development that caught some off-guard. Ole Miss announced that it shed the interim tag from Matt Luke and named him the program’s full-time coach. That marked the second straight year in which a West team elected not to make an outside hire and to reward the interim coach.

But unlike Ed Orgeron at LSU, Luke will likely face an uphill climb at Ole Miss with NCAA punishments looming. Was the quick move to keep Luke a sign that the NCAA is going to bring the hammer down on the program? Perhaps it was, perhaps it wasn’t. All we know for now is that one of the more interesting Power 5 openings we’ve seen in recent memory is filled.

And for all the hate that was flying around on social media in regards to the Tennessee debacle, one couldn’t help but feel good for a guy like Luke after he got the opportunity he spent his career working toward.

The question is, how did Sunday make you feel? Like this?

That’s where we’re at.

A guy who won 76 percent of his games will receive an 8-figure buyout in 60 days not to coach. Someone with nearly a decade of SEC head coaching experience turning around one of the conference’s perennial bottom-feeders was considered by many fans as a “questionable hire.” A man who was never involved in anything more than 3rd party hearsay was publicly accused of allowing child rape by fans that prevented him from getting his first big-time college coaching job.

It was the SEC in a nutshell. A day when sky-high expectations were on full display reminded us all that the fun doesn’t end when the regular season ends. For one day in November, we weren’t talking Playoff rankings. The coaching carousel provided all the entertainment we could’ve ever asked for.

How many people forgot about that Gus Malzahn-to-Arkansas chatter from a few days ago? I forgot to even mention that we don’t know if Kerryon Johnson, arguably the SEC’s best offensive player, will play in the conference title game after he suffered a shoulder injury in the Iron Bowl. Those stories seemed like distant memories on Sunday.

Nothing could’ve prepared us for the day that was in the SEC. We might not ever see another one quite like it.

We’ll just have to wait for that “30 for 30” to come out.