RANKING SEC COACHES
We got lots of great feedback from yesterday’s posting of that Cinncinati Enquirer article doing a ridiculously bad job of ranking SEC coaches for next season. I think we can all agree that they missed the mark entirely, so now it is our turn to look just as foolish. So here goes an EDSBS ranking of SEC coaches for the upcoming season.
1. Steven Orr Spurrier: Alright, there is a pick question mark here with the Ole Ballcoach coming off a less than successful NFL stint (although no less successful than Gibbs under the reign of Daniel Snyder) and a nice golf hiatus, but he has enough of a track record to give him his props until we see some evidence that the college game has passed him by. During the 1990’s, Spurrier took the SEC by storm turning it from conservative run first conference into the modern era of football involving the forward pass. He was the man the opposition loved to hate and he relished his role as the Evil Genius. Although Tennessee and Georgia both routinely out recruited Spurrier (who rarely finished in the top of the recruiting guru rankings nationally), he gave them both their annual spankings. Don’t get me wrong, the talent was solid at Florida, but the Spurr Dogg didn’t win with overwhelming talent. Although his Xs and Os were impressive, he didn’t really win with those either. It was his ferocious play-calling which had the ability to go for the jugular when exposed as well as the ability to set up miss matches. He was one of the best coaches to every put on a whistle at developing a game plan and executing it (which is good, because his achilles heal was always his inability to make significant half-time adjustments). Now, I don’t expect him to light the world on fire next season at South Carolina which is recovering from a brutal off-season and the loss of some of their best talent, but I expect him to get more out of his talent than any other coach in the SEC, if not the nation. And that is why he is still number 1.
