The SEC has long held the reputation as being one of the most cutthroat and competitive college football conferences on the planet, with space at the top of the coaching ranks reserved for only the most shrewd minds in the football community. Here are the best of the best, as we present to you with the six coaches in the conference that aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
6) Dan Mullen - Mississippi State Bulldogs
Mullen doesn't have the track record of all the other names on this list, but the fact that he had the Bulldogs as the No. 1 ranked team in the country for a large majority of last season will be enough to keep him in Starkville for at least the next five years.
5) Gary Pinkel - Missouri Tigers
The Tigers just win and win and win under Pinkel. The Tigers have averaged 8.1 wins a season in Pinkel's 14 years at the helm and have won back-to-back East Division titles after posting a 5-7 record in their SEC debut three years ago. His recruiting classes may not exactly be filled with blue-chippers (Mizzou has ranked 39th over the past five years), but Pinkel knows how to put the right pieces in the right places to amass victories. Those victories, and his tenure, will keep him at Mizzou as long as he wants to be there.
4) Les Miles - LSU Tigers
Many have knocked Miles down a peg or two on their lists due to the team's slow downward trajectory over the past three seasons. However, while the Tigers finished outside the AP top 25 last season for the first time since 2008, LSU still has averaged a 6.8 finish nationally in recruiting rankings over the last five years. With that type of talent in the wings, Miles has plenty of ammunition - and the track record to prove he knows what to do with it.
3) Steve Spurrier - South Carolina Gamecocks
The Ol' Ball Coach is ranked 2nd amongst active FBS coaches with 226 career wins and he's a true legend of the sport, but his Gamecocks fell off the relevance map in 2014 after three-straight 11-win seasons. However, of the six times South Carolina has won at least nine games in its program history, Spurrier has been at the wheel for four of them. He still has some tricks up his sleeve, even if he may be entering the twilight of his career. Given his unparalleled success in Columbia, South Carolina will keep him until he retires.
2) Gus Malzahn - Auburn Tigers
Malzahn is 20-7 in his first two years with Auburn, including the team's rousing run to the last national championship game of the BCS era in 2013-14. An offensive mastermind in his second stint with the Tigers -- his first being as the program's offensive coordinator -- Malzahn's undeniable charisma on the recruiting trail and on-the-sideline smarts should have him as a top-tier fixture of the SEC's coaching ranks through this decade and beyond.
1) Nick Saban - Alabama Crimson Tide
Over Saban’s eight years in Tuscaloosa, Alabama has won 10 games or more seven times and has not dropped more than one game in SEC play in four years -- an incredible feat in the death conference to end all death conferences. Plus there's the matter of those three BCS National Championships within a four-year span, and the fact that he's lost 11 games in seven seasons since the team's NCAA sanction mess in 2007. He's the unquestioned #1 right now, and will be for as long as he wants to coach.
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