Chaos in the SEC, Calm in Stillwater: How OSU Threaded the Coaching Carousel Needle

BY Marshall Scott | Pistols Firing Blog

Sunday was one of the most college football days in college football history.

Oklahoma State could have been a side story to the Lane Kiffin saga coming to its dramatic end, but Cowboy fans went into the hectic Sunday at peace, knowing their future coach had already put pen to paper.

If you went dark on internet consumption Sunday, Kiffin chose LSU over Ole Miss and Florida, which set off a string of dominoes that saw Jon Sumrall (Tulane) get hired at Florida, Alex Golesh (USF) get hired at Auburn, Ryan Silverfield (Memphis) get hired at Arkansas and Pete Golding (Ole Miss DC) get hired at Ole Miss.

Then there were some other Power Conference searches just getting started, as Michigan State parted ways with Jonathan Smith after two seasons and Kentucky canned Mark Stoops after 13 years in Lexington.

News started tumbling out quickly after Kiffin finally made the move. Most of the national attention remained on Kiffin from his lengthy meetings with Ole Miss brass to the moment he stepped on a private jet with Rebel fans booing him at the airport before he jetted away from his team that is about to be put in the College Football Playoff field.

As a rack of Kiffin’s clothes was sitting out in the Oxford streets with chaos happening all around the southeast, the waters in Stillwater were … well, still.

Sunday was a perfect example of how smooth OSU’s process was.

For starters, Chad Weiberg got things done early. OSU didn’t have to wait out the Kiffin drama. It didn’t have to jockey for a spot in the Sunday domino tumble. The Cowboys had their guy, and the fanbase was almost universally happy about it — what a W.

That’s not the case everywhere. Justly or unjustly, there’s a portion of the Arkansas fanbase that isn’t stoked about the Silverfield hire. There’s a portion of the Florida fanbase that is getting Billy Napier deja vu by hiring another Group of Five coach from the state of Louisiana.

OSU also smoothly stepped around this ridiculous calendar, college football is currently on by allowing Morris to coach out the rest of the season with North Texas.

That’s something that was a sticking point in the Kiffin chaos. It’s obviously different in that Ole Miss and LSU are SEC rivals, but Kiffin not being able to coach the College Football Playoff seemed like a major hurdle in the past few days — a sticking point that made an already dramatic situation all the more dramatic.

Although there are downsides for OSU that Morris isn’t in Stillwater full-time yet, Morris is fighting for a CFP spot this week, and perhaps being in the CFP could be good marketing for the OSU program — a program that hasn’t had much good marketing over the past 24 months.

From a football standpoint, there wasn’t a ton for Oklahoma State fans to be thankful for about a week before Thanksgiving. But by the Sunday after Thanksgiving, OSU fans could finish off their leftovers in peace knowing they got their guy and didn’t have to ride the high-octane rollercoaster that went off the rails on Sunday.