Examining Recycled Assistants Across the SEC, From Cautionary Tales to the Gold Standard

Kirby Smart, Bobby Petrino, Dan Enos, Arkansas football, Georgia football
photo credit: Georgia Athletics / Craven Whitlow / Arkansas Athletics

Familiarity has been a theme of Arkansas football’s offseason hires over the past two seasons.

Back in the spring, the Razorbacks completed their 2024 football on-field staff by hiring Kolby Smith to coach running backs after the sudden departure of Jimmy Smith. Kolby Smith is already familiar with Fayetteville: he worked as a GA for the football program in 2012.

Smith is the fourth on-field assistant Arkansas has hired in the past two seasons who previously worked for the Hogs, and the third this offseason. And that’s not including Sam Pittman himself, who’s also on his second stint.

All this recycling begs the question – is rehiring old assistants a good thing or a bad thing based on how it’s gone for other programs? Given the bigger picture, what kind of expectations should we have for these rehires?

Hog fans may understandably be nervous given how the rehire of Dan Enos turned out. Good in his first run from 2015-17, Enos was an absolute disaster in 2023 and was fired after just eight games. Will the same fate befall Bobby Petrino, who previously served as head coach at Arkansas?

Rehiring Coaches: Pretty Common!

The good news for Arkansas fans is that rehiring old assistants is common. Some quick research revealed that at least nine of the 16 SEC teams (we’re counting Oklahoma and Texas, and it still feels weird) have at least one on-field assistant who previously worked for the school, left and came back.

Arkansas has had coaches serve multiple stints before, with David Lee being the most notable. Lee was an assistant for Ken Hatfield from 1984-88, serving as offensive coordinator in his final year. He returned as Houston Nutt’s quarterbacks coach in 2001 and 2002, and then for a third time as Nutt’s OC in 2007, when he popularized (or “took credit for,” if you prefer) the WildHog formation that was a defining part of Darren McFadden’s career.

Looking at the current list of coaches on their second stint, about half of these assistants followed the Mateos/Smith plan of serving as a GA in their first run and then coming back as a full-fledged assistant.

Oklahoma co-OC JJ Finley was a GA in 2012 and 2013, Georgia’s Todd Hartley was a GA in 2009 and 2010 and is now the tight ends coach, and the most hilarious has to be Charles Kelly, who was a GA for Auburn in 1993 and is now the Tigers’ new co-DC this year: a gap of 31 years.

A few more coaches were full-time assistants in their first stint, but their return came with a promotion of some sort. Pittman falls into this category, as does Shane Beamer, who coached South Carolina’s special teams (and a couple other roles) from 2007-10 before being rehired as head coach in 2021. LSU had Blake Baker coach linebackers in 2021, but saw him take over as Mizzou’s defensive coordinator for two seasons before hiring him back as its DC this offseason.

Relating it to Arkansas Football

Arkansas football fans, though, are probably wondering more about the coaches like Bobby Petrino and Enos, who had a fall of sorts (or at least a failure to promote) and ended up back at their old jobs in the same role or even a demotion. Can those guys succeed?

It’s likely Enos “achieved” the standard for cautionary tale status among SEC coaches when it comes to rehiring old guys to the same job, but don’t overlook Bret Bielema’s other offensive coordinator during his Arkansas days: Jim Chaney. His car-wreck of a boomerang happened in Knoxville: That story starts with Chaney doing a nice job as Tennessee’s OC in 2012, but Jeremy Pruitt’s decision to rehire him in 2019 proved disastrous. Chaney’s offense was poor both years and, as a result, Pruitt, Chaney and the whole Vol staff were shown the door after a 3-7 season in 2020.

On the flip side, Nick Saban had Kevin Steele coordinate his defense in both his first season (2007) and his last (2023) at Alabama, and Steele was solid both times. Steele is actually the only SEC coach we found in recent history who did three stints with one school (he also worked for Saban in 2013-2014, though not as DC) and to do multiple stints with multiple schools. He had cut his teeth as a GA at Tennessee before returning to Rocky Top later as a DB coach.

Another issue with Petrino is his personality. He already crashed the Arkansas football program into a ditch once, and can a scorpion who has stung once be trusted to not sting again?

Kentucky fans might say “no.” The Wildcats hired Sean McVay assistant Liam Coen to run their offense in 2021 and he did a good job… So good, in fact, that he bolted for the Los Angeles Rams OC job that offseason. But after Kentucky struggled in 2022, it hired Coen back as OC last year. Coen again elevated the Wildcat offense…only to leave yet again, this time for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. It’s probably a safe bet that Mark Stoops doesn’t hire him a third time.

Of course, Petrino is in a class by himself — a former head coach whose return came with a clear demotion. But Georgia’s James Coley has a somewhat similar situation: hired as wide receivers coach for Georgia in 2016, he worked his way up to co-OC and play caller by 2019, but that season was a disaster, leading to his dismissal. Coley spent time at a couple other jobs, but Georgia rehired him as wide receivers coach this offseason.

Learning from Kirby Smart

If you assumed Arkansas’ four rehires on this staff were alone for the most in the SEC, you’d be wrong!

Georgia is actually tied with Arkansas with four on-field assistants in their second stint this season, and between these two programs, we find all three SEC assistants who now work for programs that previously fired them: Bobby Petrino, James Coley and Georgia OC Mike Bobo, who spent 14 seasons as play caller for Mark Richt (2001-2014) before serving in several other roles and then returning to Athens, resuming play calling duties for Kirby Smart last year.

The head man of the Georgia football program has show a clear willingness to rehire coaches to old roles considering OL coach Stacy Searels, who held the same job from 2007-10, is the fourth rehire on staff. This “la familia” type approach, which John Calipari has used to great effect in basketball, appears to be tack taken by Smart so it wouldn’t be a surprise that it’s also influencing Pittman given his time in Athens, Georgia as the OL coach.

So is this a Smart strategy (pardon the pun)? It probably is for Georgia, but it’s less clear for Arkansas. The Bulldogs have a rich recent history to draw from, so it’s not going to raise any red flags to bring back assistants from 10-win teams in years past. But what is Arkansas drawing from?

Enos did a mostly fine job in his first stint, but those Arkansas teams finished 8-5, 7-6 and 4-8. Pittman was obviously a good line coach, but the Hogs were 3-9, 7-6, and 8-5 in his three seasons.

Nostalgia tends to play better when you’re recalling better memories. Arkansas as a program has been mostly stuck in the mud since Petrino’s motorcycle crash, so continually mining that era for assistants risks creating negative message board fodder and, more practically, risks failing to move on and grow as a program.

Georgia differs in that it has its pick of assistants, and on average their first stints were more successful than the Razorback counterparts. The Hogs, meanwhile, may not have as many options when it comes to the pool of available assistants. The national consensus is that Pittman is on one of the hottest seats in the country, and hiring Petrino could be seen as a pitiful desperation move.

What coach who doesn’t have some kind of connection to the university, Pittman or Petrino is going to want to come here? Coaches who had an enjoyable experience living in Northwest Arkansas, or have some sort of already-existing fondness for the success of the Hogs, are the ones most likely to take a job opportunity when there’s a decent chance it’ll end up a one-year stay.

With Pittman and Petrino together on the sideline, the college football world is expecting high drama. If the Hogs can go to Stillwater in September and upset Oklahoma State with a strong offensive performance, they’ll be the talk of college football. We’ll see if they can pull it off with a staff full of very familiar faces.

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