Coaching carousel spins again, and that's nothing new in the SEC. Let's review.

The college football coaching carousel season is about over. Texas A&M and Mississippi State made the only SEC hires, neither of which generated intraconference agitation.

Like, say, Auburn hiring Hugh Freeze did last year. Or Ole Miss choosing Lane Kiffin in 2020.

Or Steve Spurrier showing up at South Carolina in 2005. Or Doug Dickey jumping from Tennessee to Florida after the 1969 season.

The list of men who have coached at two SEC schools is longer than I thought. And it looked like it might grow when, for a few hours, Texas A&M flirted with Kentucky’s Mark Stoops. Nothing came of it.

When the opening in Starkville arose, some suggested Dan Mullen return for an encore. After all, he had been more appreciated there than he was subsequently at Florida. No dice.

I’d be surprised if other conferences have passed coaches around from one school to another like the SEC has. And we’re not just talking Houston Nutt, here. We’re talking icons.

Here’s my Mount Rushmore of SEC football coaches: Bear Bryant, Steve Spurrier, Nick Saban and Robert Neyland.

Neyland is the only one who stayed put, a column for another day.

Bryant built Kentucky into a power from 1946-53, then left for Texas A&M – which I’m not retroactively including as an SEC school.

In 1958, Bryant went home to Alabama, his alma mater. He won six consensus national titles before retiring in 1982.

Spurrier is the winningest coach at two SEC schools. At Florida from 1990-2001, he won six SEC titles, one national title and frustrated Tennessee to wit’s end.

After a fling in the NFL, he resurfaced at South Carolina in 2005, where he won 86 games, produced 11-win teams from 2011-13, then quit in 2015.

Saban’s first national title was at LSU in 2003. When the NFL wasn’t fun, he landed at Alabama in 2007. Six more national titles later, Saban has the Tide playing for another.

Maybe every SEC school that hires a conference retread is hoping for a Bryant, Spurrier or Saban. It usually doesn’t play out that way.

Dickey, for example, was a hero at Tennessee, winning SEC titles in 1967 and ’69. At Florida, from 1970-78, Dickey was 28-28-1 in SEC play and got fired.

Bill Curry was a splash hire at Kentucky in 1990. Leave Alabama for a basketball school? Curry’s Wildcats went 14-40 in SEC play. The best team was 6-6.

Tommy Tuberville left Ole Miss for Auburn, where he went 13-0 in 2004. But no one lasts forever at Auburn.

While Spurrier was great at Florida and South Carolina, Will Muschamp was mediocre at both.

Ed Orgeron had a curious arc. He bombed at Ole Miss (2005-07), landed at LSU (in 2016), won a national title in 2019 and was fired two years later.

The most curious hire was Gerry DiNardo. A couple 5-6 seasons at Vanderbilt (1991-94) impressed LSU enough to hire him. DiNardo flamed out after five years, winning – Vandy-like – four and then two games the last two seasons.

Auburn hiring Freeze last year wasn’t controversial just because he had previously been at Ole Miss. It was the epic scandal there that got him fired in 2016.

Freeze rehabilitated at Liberty. A 6-6 debut season at Auburn means the jury is still out.

As for Kiffin, there’s no question that Ole Miss got a more experienced and mature version than the guy who went 7-6 at Tennessee in 2009 and bolted for his “dream job” at Southern Cal.

Kiffin just produced his second 10-win team in his four seasons in Oxford. Whether Ole Miss is his dream job remains to be seen.

Mike Strange is a former writer for the News Sentinel. He currently writes a weekly sports column for Shopper News.

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Even for the greatest SEC coaches, the carousel has spun