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By now, the upcoming college football season has been previewed and projected in just about every imaginable way -- but not this one. Over the next five days, starting today with the SEC, we’ll go conference by conference and look at the 2015 season through the lens of each league’s coaches. What’s the situation for each one? Who stands to gain the most this fall? Who could most use a winning season? Who could be gone? Here is how the coaches below are ordered: from least to most likely to still be coaching at his current school in 2016. The SEC East has the bottom three in the league. Who’s No. 1 in terms of stability? And where’s Nick Saban?
 14. Derek Mason, Vanderbilt Commodores
Record at school: 2-10 (second season) I was talking recently with an athletic director about how difficult it can be for a first-time head coach at a Power 5 school. In reality, some guys are equipped and ready -- and others are not. Vandy is a fascinating case study of that contrast, considering James Franklin did so well that he quickly turned success into the Penn State job. On the other end of that, Mason and his staff seemed overmatched in their first season. Mason had to change both coordinators after one year, which is never a good sign -- and he decided that he will call the defensive plays, a rarity for a head coach. If you’re struggling in any way to find your way as a head man, adding play-calling duties would seem to additionally muddy things. Mason might have been able to more seamlessly learn lessons about hires and other managerial aspects at a smaller school, but the mistakes become amplified at an SEC school, even at Vanderbilt. It’s 50-50 whether Mason gets another season, dependent not only on performance but improvement in terms of how the program is being run from day to day.
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