Adams: Spurrier has top credentials in SEC : govolsxtra.com

The big news at last year's SEC football media days was Alabama's new $4 million coach, Nick Saban. This year's big news is every SEC's team coach.

The conference has never had so many proven coaches. Five have won national championships, and another has gone 13-0 through the nation's toughest conference.

The only problem with trying to rank the best of the best is that somebody finishes last. Being the 12th-ranked coach in the SEC means you still could be a top-40 coach nationally.

Even last year, the SEC probably had more good coaches than ever. And now, the league has said goodbye to Ed Orgeron and hello to Bobby Petrino. That's called "improvement."

In fact, the coaching is so impressive, one column doesn't do it justice. It takes two - one to rank them according to their accomplishments and a second to gauge their value on the open market.

Here how I would rank them based on their accomplishments as college head coaches:

1. Steve Spurrier: He might not win so much as a division championship at South Carolina, but that doesn't obscure what he did elsewhere.

He won an Atlantic Coast Conference championship at Duke. That's worthy of Ripley's recognition.

Then he went to Florida, which had never won an SEC championship, and won six conference titles and a national championship as well. Not even Urban Meyer can match that.

2. Urban Meyer: Maybe this guy could win at Duke, too. He has won everywhere else.

He won 17 games in two seasons at Bowling Green, and 22 games - including 16 in a row - in two years at Utah.

In his second season at Utah, he went 12-0. In his second at Florida, he won a national championship.

3. Nick Saban: There's a reason Alabama broke the bank to hire him, and it wasn't his smile. He has never had a losing season in 12 years of college coaching.

Saban went 9-2 at both Toledo and Michigan State before he turned underachieving LSU into a national power.

The Tigers were 7-15 in the two years prior to Saban's hiring. They won a national championship and two SEC titles while averaging almost 10 victories per year in Saban's five seasons.

4. Tommy Tuberville: He rebuilt Ole Miss despite being hamstrung by NCAA sanctions and has dominated arch-rival Alabama at Auburn.

I'm putting him ahead of two coaches who have won national championships. But for an SEC team to go 13-0, as Auburn did in 2004, is comparable to winning a national title.

5. Les Miles: He averaged eight victories per year his last three seasons at Oklahoma State before picking up where Saban left off at LSU.

Last season's national championship gave Miles 34 victories in three years at LSU. But you have to remember that Saban recruits figured prominently in that success.

6. Phillip Fulmer: Although he hasn't won an SEC title since 1998, he has had only one losing season in 15 years at Tennessee. And his 1998 team not only won a national championship against a difficult schedule, it went unbeaten.

But unlike the coaches ahead of him, Fulmer has been a head coach at only one school. And there was no rebuilding necessary. When he succeeded Johnny Majors as coach at the end of the 1992 season, the Vols had won 38 games in four years.

7. Mark Richt: Like Fulmer, Richt has been a head coach at only one school. And like Fulmer, he didn't exactly take over a downtrodden program.

Georgia had won 35 games in four seasons before Richt arrived. But there's no question the program has reached new heights under Richt, who has led the Bulldogs to two SEC titles and 73 victories in seven seasons.

By comparison, Fulmer's first seven teams won 72 games and two SEC titles. Fulmer gets the edge over Richt with his national championship.

8. Bobby Petrino: He ranks this high on winning percentage alone. Petrino won 41 of 50 games in four seasons at Louisville, which was twice ranked No. 6 nationally.

Having proved he could win with talent, Petrino will get a chance to prove he can win with less at Arkansas. The Razorbacks could be the worst team in the SEC West in 2008.

9. Houston Nutt: He started his head-coaching career by taking Murray State from four to 11 wins in four seasons. He was 5-6 in one season at Boise State before beginning his 10-year run with the Razorbacks.

Nutt won three West Division titles at Arkansas, which was a significant improvement over his predecessors. The three coaches before him all had losing records.

10. Rich Brooks: Never mind that he has a losing record in 23 seasons as a head coach. Look where he has coached.

For 17 years, he was the head coach at Oregon, which was a Pac-10 bottom feeder when he took the job. He won at least six games in nine different seasons and was national coach of the year in 1994.

He signed on with Kentucky in 2003. Five years later, he has led the Wildcats to back-to-back eight-win seasons and two bowl victories.

That's heady stuff for Kentucky, which last won eight or more games in consecutive seasons in 1976-77.

11. Sylvester Croom: You don't have a lot to go on since this is his first head-coaching job.

But his rebuilding job at Mississippi State has been similar to Brooks' at Kentucky. After struggling initially in a difficult situation, Croom won eight games last season.

12. Bobby Johnson: Ask almost any other coach in the SEC and he will tell you Johnson is a good coach. If so, then it's about time someone hired him away from the Commodores.

Although Vanderbilt hasn't had a winning season in six years under Johnson, it has been more competitive.

Johnson also won 30 games in his last three seasons at Division I-AA Furman.

Monday: How the SEC coaches might rank on the open market.

Sports editor John Adams may be reached at 865-342-6284 or >adamsj@knoxnews.com.