Click
When you peruse college baseball coaching carousel over the past two years, only one school is listed twice: Alabama.
Turnover in the Southeastern Conference isn’t surprising. It’s commonplace. Two years ago, Auburn parted ways with Sunny Golloway and hired Butch Thompson from Mississippi State. Last summer, four changes were made in the SEC: Greg Goff, of course, was hired at Alabama, Mississippi State’s Nick Mingione headed to Kentucky, the Bulldogs, in turn, hired Andy Cannizaro after John Cohen accepted the athletic director post at MSU and Missouri hired Steve Bieser after parting ways with long-time head coach Tim Jamieson.
The SEC experienced winds of change again this summer. Tennessee parted ways with Dave Serrano, which was a stark reminder how brutal life in the conference can be. Serrano, after all, made a pair of trips to the College World Series in head coaching stints at Cal State Fullerton and UC Irvine. Meanwhile, South Carolina split with Chad Holbrook and hired USF’s Mark Kingston. The most dramatic summer, though, belonged to Alabama, thanks to the uncomfortable split between the Tide and Goff, combined with the Crimson Tide choosing Auburn’s Brad Bohannon as the successor.
After dealing with instability the past few seasons, Alabama aims for a sense of normalcy as fall classes begin this week. The Tide enjoyed times with minimal drama during the Mitch Gaspard era, but the administration expected to be more of a national contender, thus the change. The Tide underwent a rigorous coaching search after splitting with Gaspard that ended with “no” answers from prospective candidates such as East Carolina’s Cliff Godwin, while others such as eventual Texas head coach David Pierce, who tripped to Tuscaloosa to check out the campus, were too far down the road in other searches to be in consideration again once the Godwin ship sailed. That brought on Goff, who did an impressive job at Campbell, while also making incredible and immediate strides at Louisiana Tech. But coaching at UA and the SEC was a massive step up, as Goff realized during his short time with the Tide. On the flip side, Bohannon knows the lay of the land in the SEC.