Well, that escalated quickly.
In a matter of hours, five job postings in the SEC were filled. Most notably, Lane Kiffin announced his departure from Ole Miss to take over at rival LSU, which reportedly offered him a seven-year deal worth roughly $100 million.
Florida, Auburn, Arkansas and Ole Miss also announced their new hires Sunday to further shake up the college football landscape, meaning that a quarter of the SEC’s teams are moving forward with a new head coach after today.
Now that the dust is settling, let’s take a look at what some of these moves mean for the SEC, the American Conference — aka the SEC farm league — and what must happen for each one of these hires to work.
What’s next for Ole Miss
Kiffin made a mess.
He dragged out his decision to stay or leave, resulting in a whirlwind weekend of drama. In doing so, he traded the chance to coach the Rebels to a national title for a program that fired its head coach in October, has the Louisiana governor setting the LSU athletic director’s agenda and hasn’t made the College Football Playoff in six years.
Shortly after Kiffin announced his departure, Ole Miss announced it had promoted defensive coordinator Pete Golding as his successor. The move fits. Golding is loved by players and has the same coaching pedigree, also having coached as a coordinator for Nick Saban. More importantly, Golding has acted as if he has always wanted a job like the one Ole Miss offered him, and that’s likely to be more important than almost anything else to Rebels fans right now.
They wanted to feel loved, valued and appreciated. In Golding, they have that — a hell of a coach, a chance to keep their staff, roster and recruiting class intact and a shot to go win the national title. Not bad, considering the destructive behavior Kiffin showed in the weeks leading up to this and his last 48 hours at the helm in Oxford.
LSU fired Brian Kelly on Oct. 26 in the middle of his fourth season with the program.
What’s next for Florida
Hiring Jon Sumrall doesn’t feel like an inspired choice for a program that is still chasing the highs it felt when Urban stalked the sideline at The Swamp. In fact, it feels quite a bit like Florida just made the same hire twice.
Like Billy Napier, Sumrall has coached in the SEC before (Ole Miss and Kentucky). Like Napier, who was fired on Oct. 19, Sumrall arrives with an impressive record at the Group of 5 level. With a 42-11 record, including four consecutive trips to conference championship games in four years as head coach, he coaches a Tulane program that has a chance to win not just the American Conference Championship Game but win a berth to the CFP.
If he succeeds in winning the conference title, he’ll have done what Florida hasn’t since 2008. If he succeeds in leading Tulane to the CFP, he will have accomplished a feat the once-proud Gator program has never. Those two possibilities have proven to be good enough reasons for Florida to turn to a former Kentucky linebacker to lead them into 2026. That said, Sumrall’s first bit of business needs to be retaining Florida’s three offensive stars in sophomore quarterback DJ Lagway, sophomore running back Jadan Baugh and freshman wide receiver Dallas Wilson.
What’s next for Auburn
Alex Golesh showed up to a South Florida program that had won just eight games in four years (8-37) and turned in a 9-3 season, including two ranked wins to start this season, and multiple weeks of being included in the AP Top 25.
Golesh has experienced success in the SEC as a coordinator, notably developing Hendon Hooker into a Heisman-caliber quarterback while helping Vols coach Josh Heupel return Tennessee to the upper echelon of the sport.
Now, he’s tasked with doing the same at Auburn, which fired Hugh Freeze on Nov. 2 in the middle of his third season.
In an age where many head coaches aren’t personally recruiting as often as they once were, Golesh is noted for his hands-on approach to bringing players to his program. That will pay dividends in a sport where players are getting paid on par with many position coaches and even offensive coordinators.
His first bit of business should be to retain quarterback Ashton Daniels, who was a revelation against ranked opponents Vanderbilt and Alabama this season after finally getting the chance to start. In those two games, he had 809 yards of offense and three touchdowns.
What’s next for Arkansas
Memphis coach Ryan Silverfield succeeds Sam Pittman, who was fired on Sept. 28, after putting together an impressive run for the Tigers that included five consecutive seasons of bowl game appearances, two 10-win seasons in the past three years and an elevation in the program to where an 8-4 regular-season record is a disappointment.
Silverfield takes over a program he whooped earlier this season and the challenge of turning Arkansas into the kind of team that can break into the rankings and reach the level of success enjoyed by Missouri since hiring Eli Drinkwitz.
Silverfield, who’s 29-9 since 2023 and led a Memphis program that scored at least 20 points in every game it played for 51 consecutive games, has never coached in the SEC. That will make him difficult to sell to Razorbacks fans, who are proud of their SEC heritage, so it’s important for him to start fast, recruit well and build quickly at a place that has been mediocre to bad for the better part of a decade.
