On Feb. 12, 2018, Ole Miss did something that caught SEC fans by surprise. They fired basketball coach Andy Kennedy, who had been in Oxford long enough to be the conference’s resident statesman. John Calipari couldn’t believe it. I’m sure plenty of SEC fans looked at Kennedy’s midseason firing and thought, who does Ole Miss think it is?

In fact, I wrote about this subject a year ago (almost a year to the day). It was related specifically to Kennedy and how it was a sign that the SEC was taking its basketball coach hires more seriously. The status quo was no longer acceptable. Not with tens of millions of dollars in TV revenue and new facilities across the conference.

A year later, I’d say that belief is more clear than ever. It’s not just that the standards have been elevated. It’s that it feels like SEC athletic directors are treating this like football.

Why do I say that? In the past 2 weeks, 3 SEC basketball coaches were fired. That’s not including Will Wade, who remains suspended indefinitely while he continues to plead the fifth instead of meeting with his bosses to discuss the FBI wiretaps that reportedly caught him discussing extra benefits he offered to a recruit.

Billy Kennedy is out at Texas A&M, Avery Johnson is reportedly negotiating a buyout with Alabama and Bryce Drew is gone after 3 years at Vanderbilt. None of those moves, I’d argue, were no-brainers. Kennedy and Johnson won games in the NCAA Tournament last year, while Drew signed an historic top-15 recruiting class.

Hmmmmmm. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say more SEC athletic directors are treating basketball programs like football.

Credit: Christopher Hanewinckel-USA TODAY Sports

The numbers back that up. Go figure that more SEC basketball coaches (3 so far) than football coaches (0) were fired in the 2018-19 school year.

Take a look at the basketball turnover per SEC school in the past 12 years (since Kennedy was hired at Ole Miss):

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So now, 3 SEC basketball coaches have been at their current school since 2013. How many SEC football coaches have been at their current schools since 2013? Three.

No basketball coach has been in the SEC longer than John Calipari, and no football coach has been in the SEC longer than Nick Saban.

If Wade is fired, it’ll tie the highest total of SEC basketball coaching changes (4) in the past decade. The difference between this time and the last time that happened (2015) is that all 4 coaches would be fired. Well, at the very least, it’d be a “mutual parting of ways” for roughly 29 percent of the conference’s basketball coaches.

And much like Kirby Smart was the grim reaper of SEC East coaches in 2017, it seems like Rick Barnes and Bruce Pearl are having that same impact on SEC basketball coaches. It’s no longer just Calipari getting it done. At football-crazed schools, both coaches have completely changed the identity of their programs and are now trying to make NCAA Tournament runs.

That’s what Alabama, Texas A&M and Vanderbilt all want. That’s what they all expected this year. Instead, they watched those other programs do things like earn a No. 1 ranking and win an SEC Tournament. And sure, Johnson, Kennedy and Drew were all in different situations, but they all paid the price for not making the NCAA Tournament (some of them were muchcloser than others).

Call it the conference’s new “no more Mr. Nice Guy” approach to the hardwood. Or just call it what happens when you can count on a $43 million check rolling in.

Programs like Alabama can afford to fire Johnson, who had an $8 million buyout put into his contract as recently as 2 years ago (Alabama is expected to settle with Johnson). Doesn’t that sound more like a football coach buyout? The highly-publicized Les Miles buyout in 2016 was for $9.7 million, though LSU ultimately paid $6.2 million of it after he was hired at Kansas (LSU paid him a lump sum of $1.5 million of the remaining $5 million).

That’s not to say SEC athletic directors are going to suddenly start handing out 8-figure buyouts for basketball coaches, but it speaks to the trend of football-crazed programs making serious investments in hoops. And you know what? They should. There are arenas to sell out, new facilities to pay for, and perhaps more important, there are fans who care.

It’ll be interesting to see how much these athletic directors are willing to spend on new coaches. And who will they get? Johnson, as you recall, was a big-time get for Alabama. That move wasn’t made by Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne, though.

Actually, every SEC basketball coach who was fired this offseason got the boot from a different athletic director than the one who hired them. They don’t want to be judged by underperforming coaches that they didn’t bring in. There’s a lot of money and exposure opportunities to be made in basketball.

Welcome to the new SEC.