With kickoff to the 2010 college football season a little more than a week away, Mark Richt is about to embark on his 10th year as Georgia’s coach.
Alabama’s Nick Saban believes such longevity at the same Southeastern Conference school is worthy of recognition, yet recent history shows that SEC coaches who reach the decade milestone are on the verge of trouble. Of the past eight coaches in the league who lasted at least 10 years at one school, only Steve Spurrier left without being shown the door or under significant duress.
“He may have been the wisest of everybody,” former Tennessee coach Phillip Fulmer said Monday. “It’s human nature to think you can fix everything where quite often you may have become a product of your own success. I had two or three chances to leave and do other things, and it’s one of those things where loyalty doesn’t seem to go both ways sometimes.”
Fulmer and former Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville are the two most recent cases, as each went 5-7 in 2008 and did not return in ’09. Tuberville resigned after 10 seasons with the Tigers and now is in his first year at Texas Tech, while Fulmer was forced to resign in his 17th season with the Vols.
Even Spurrier’s announcement after the 2001 season that he was leaving Florida for the NFL was far from cheery, as he repeatedly pointed out that 12 years at his alma mater was long enough.