College football's biggest storylines for 2018

Fresh faces in the SEC

While there has definitely been a shift in the dominance of NCAA coaches by conference, as the Big-10 has put together a tremendous group of head-men, the SEC is on its way of catching up. Kirby Smart has led Georgia to levels they had not reached in decades and Auburn actually ended up winning the West last season, but Alabama is still the big bad wolf in this conference.

Behind those three programs, LSU had the fourth-best record and they look loaded on the defensive side of the ball. I already talked about South Carolina being a darkhorse candidate in the East, but all the other teams have looked more like bottom-feeders recently and I think a lot of that had to do with coaching. However, six SEC teams hired new, promising head coaches.

The biggest name would be Jimbo Fisher, who is coming over from a Florida State program, that won the ACC three years in a row, including a perfect season and National Championship under him, and now is taking over the reigns at Texas A&M. He inherits a sophomore QB in Kellen Mond, who showed major flashes stepping in as a freshman and snagged 13 four-star recruits to start things off.

Dan Mullen brought in the same number of four-star guys with his first recruiting class at Florida. Coming off his last gig at Mississippi State, who he led to their most successful eight-year stretch in school history, Mullen seems to be the perfect candidate to bring Florida back to relevance. The Gators have had some stingy defenses in recent years and Mullen is all about competition, but it’s the work he has done with quarterbacks in the past, such as Alex Smith, Tim Tebow, Dak Prescott and Nick Fitzgerald, that is desperately needed in Gainesville.

Taking over for Mullen at MSU is Joe Moorhead, who most recently worked as the OC under James Franklin at Penn State. As a long-time QB coach, Moorhead will help Nick Fitzgerald, who I just mentioned, win more through the air than with his legs and he has a monster duo of D-linemen with Jeffery Simmons and Montez Sweat. Chad Morris has had a lot success as the OC at Clemson and as the head-man at SMU.

He will bring a significant change to the Arkansas offense, which relied heavily on the power-run game and should be much more wide open with Morris calling the shots. Jeremy Pruitt is another descendant of Nick Saban, who has done outstanding work as a defensive coordinator, being part of three national championship, and is widely regarded as an excellent recruiter.

And finally, there’s Matt Luke taking over Ole Miss. The 41-year old stepped in as the interim coach last season once Hugh Freeze was pushed out and had the tag removed after some excellent moments. They played several of the bigger name teams very tough (not named Bama) and “positive vibes” are coming out of Oxford reportedly. He lost Shea Patterson to Michigan, which was foreseeable, but he has already counted some wins in the recruiting business.