Finebaum and the coaches

Paul Finebaum has his semi-annual review/ranking of the SEC coaches up, and, frankly, I can’t grasp his logic, at least after #1.

Here’s how he ranks the HCs:

1. Spurrier
2. Saban
3. Meyer
4. Tuberville
5. Fulmer
6. Richt
7. Miles
8. Nutt
9. Brooks
10. Johnson
11. Orgeron
12. Croom

He says it’s “not necessarily” a reprise of the last season, but more a “complete analysis” of where the coaches stand.  Ho-kay, but Saban at #2?  He’s hasn’t coached a down of football in college in a couple of years, he’s not the coaching innovator that Spurrier is and he won at a school that has a tremendous recruiting base (see #7 on the list).  Basically, other than being a highly paid hard ass and drawing 92,000 fans to a spring game, what’s on his resume right now that Urban Meyer can’t top?

And Richt at #6, behind Fulmer?  Because MR is another coach who needs a big year after last year’s “clunker”?  Georgia, in MR’s clunker year, went 9-4;  UT came off a 5-6 season in ’05.  Is this based on anything more that Tennessee winning in Athens last year?  It’s hard to point objectively to anything else.

And if someone can explain why he ranks Orgeron ahead of Croom, given his descriptions of each, I’d like to hear it.  That’s not to say that the ranking is wrong, just that it doesn’t jibe with what he wrote.

Strange list.