When Brian Kelly got LSU to an SEC Championship in Year 1, he became the 4th coach to make the conference title game in Year 1. Jim McElwain did it in 2015, as did Gus Malzahn in 2013 and who could forget Les Miles’ trip to Atlanta with LSU back in 2005.

Overall, Kelly became the 20th SEC head coach to make his first appearance in the conference title game.

Well, that’s excluding Year 1 of the game when Steve Spurrier and Gene Stallings led their squads in an instant classic in the inaugural game back in 1992.

That’s also excluding Terry Bowden making his first appearance as a Year 5 head coach with Auburn in 1997. Why exclude that? Because he would’ve actually made it in Year 1 in 1993, but Auburn was banned from postseason play for NCAA violations.

For today’s breakdown, it’s easier if we just scrap that instead of adding it with an asterisk and throwing off what 3 decades of SEC Championships suggests about a certain question.

That is, is there an expiration date on a head coach reaching the SEC Championship for the first time? And if so, what does that mean for the current crop of SEC head coaches?

Let’s tackle the former first.

Yes, history does suggest that if an SEC head coach hasn’t reached the conference title game by a specific year, their odds take a drastic hit. If it’s going to happen, it almost always happens in the first 3 years at a program.

Here’s the breakdown of the first-time appearances for head coaches:

(I included Gary Pinkel in there because even though he was in Year 13 at Mizzou in 2013, he reached the SEC Championship in the program’s second season in the SEC.)

  • Year 1: Brian Kelly, Jim McElwain, Gus Malzahn, Les Miles
  • Year 2: Kirby Smart, Gary Pinkel (Year 2 in SEC), Gene Chizik, Nick Saban (Alabama), Urban Meyer, Mark Richt, Saban (LSU), Tommy Tuberville
  • Year 3: Dan Mullen, Ed Orgeron, Mike DuBose, Danny Ford
  • Year 4:
  • Year 5: Houston Nutt, Phillip Fulmer
  • Year 6: Spurrier (SC)
  • Year 7:
  • Year 8: Jackie Sherrill (but 7th SEC Champ. opportunity possible)

Yep, that’s 16 of the 20 first-time conference championship appearances for SEC head coaches coming in Years 1-3. A whopping 80%. Here’s the list of current SEC head coaches entering Year 4 or later who haven’t been to an SEC Championship yet:

  • Eli Drinkwitz, Year 4
  • Lane Kiffin, Year 4
  • Sam Pittman, Year 4
  • Jimbo Fisher, Year 6
  • Mark Stoops, Year 11

Does that mean those 5 coaches have a 0% chance of ever reaching Atlanta? Of course not. The odds just aren’t in their favor.

You might also note that 90% of the first-time conference championship appearances for SEC head coaches happened in the first 5 years.

The lone examples of coaches who did so in more time than that were Spurrier, who reached Atlanta in Year 6 at South Carolina, and Sherrill, who was in Year 8 at MSU but he technically reached the 7th SEC Championship back in 1998. Both of those examples were coaches who took over programs who were previously SEC cellar dwellers. MSU had 9 consecutive losing seasons in SEC play prior to Sherrill’s arrival while South Carolina had 2 winning seasons in conference play in the 13 seasons since it joined the SEC.

That sounds a bit more like Stoops than Fisher. Before Stoops arrived, Kentucky hadn’t had a winning season in SEC play since the Jimmy Carter administration (1977), and after beating Florida in The Swamp last season, he’s now atop the program’s all-time leaderboard in career wins. A&M, on the other hand, was 51-27 overall and 25-23 in SEC play in the 6 seasons in the conference prior to Fisher’s arrival.

When Fisher was hired by A&M on a fully guaranteed 10-year, $75 million deal, there was an expectation that he would’ve already reached an SEC Championship by the time he was heading into Year 6. Shoot, when Fisher got his new 10-year, $95 million deal locked in ahead of the 2021 season, there was an expectation that he’d get there either in 2021 or 2022.

That well-documented buyout, which would pay Fisher $76.8 million if he’s fired at the end of the 2023 season (it doesn’t decrease to less than $50 million until after 2026), could actually have an alternative impact. Usually, most SEC head coaches who haven’t reached the SEC Championship by the end of Year 5 are either firmly on the hot seat, or in long-term rebuild situations like Sherrill, Spurrier (at SC) and Stoops. Usually, those coaches aren’t working with buyouts that’ll be north of $50 million for years to come … Fisher is.

Does that mean Fisher will get over the hump and actually reach an SEC Championship in Year 8? Of course not. That’d be an absurd thing to say about someone coming off a 5-7 season. It just means he’s not really operating on the same timeline as the vast majority of those head coaches.

Fisher is working against history already, though. The only 2 examples of a head coach who reached the SEC Championship for the first time in Year 6 or later were Spurrier and Sherrill, both of whom lost their respective conference title games. Fulmer is actually the only head coach who won his first SEC Championship appearance later than Year 3.

Think about that. There have been 31 SEC Championship games. That’s 62 instances of a head coach on the sidelines, and only 1 of them was a head coach who won in a first-time appearance that came in Year 4 or later. A whopping 1.7%.

Fisher is already a 1% coach based on his contract. Joining that other 1% will define his time in College Station.