Finebaum ranks the SEC coaches...

You can view the list here.

The SEC lost a little bit of coaching star power with the departures of Phil Fulmer and Tommy Tuberville. That being said, the SEC still has the best collection of coaches in the country.

Numbers 1 and 2 are obvious.

I think numbers 3-6 are interchangeable. I still have no idea how good Les Miles is as a coach. I thought we would know for sure after this season, but it's kind of hard to blame Miles for going 7-5 when he had no starting quarterback, was breaking in new defensive coordinators, and had to replacemost of his defensive backfield. It looks like he has the defensive coordinator thing figured out and the QB situation looks like it will be under control for next season. The romp over a good Georgia Tech team in LSU's bowl game was certainly impressive. Mark Richt looks like he will go down as one of the best SEC coaches to never win a national championship. Petrino had some impressive wins this season and his Arkansas teams will only get better. In two or three years I think he will solidify himself as the #3 or #4 guy (if he sticks around that long). Houston Nutt will do well with Orgeron's players... once they are gone Ole Miss will go back to being Ole Miss.

I am not sure I would put Spurrier higher than Bobby Johnson or Rich Brooks at this point. Both Johnson and Brooks have produced similar records to Spurrier, but with less overall talent. Spurrier has wasted some pretty good defenses with his terrible offenses. South Carolina has also put some RBs and WRs in the NFL draft, so it seems that the real problem is QB, which is supposed to be Spurrier's specialty. It looks like Urban Meyer will easily surpass Spurrier's accomplishments at Florida, so a little bit of Spurrier's legacy has also taken a hit.

And that leaves us with the new hires. I think Dan Mullen screwed up big time taking the Mississippii State job. If he would have held out another year or two (especially with Tebow coming back) he would have been able to get himself a top tier job. I am not even old enough to remember the last successful Mississippii State head coach. Has there ever even been one? Mullen will need to recruit his ass off to turn the program around. Unfortunately, that is not one of his strong points. He was regarded as one of the weak links on Florida's otherwise strong recruiting staff. According to Rivals.com, Mullen was only responsible for bringing in 1 or 2 recruits a year. Still, though, he was a part of Meyer's staff and that has to count for something. If he is only half as good a coach as Meyer, that will still be better than what MSU is accustomed to.

At first glance, Lane Kiffin and Gene Chizik look like very questiobale hires. Luckily for Tennessee and Auburn both guys put together tremendous staffs. I'm not sure you can rank either guy ahead of the other one at this point.