Hiring the right football coach for your university is an admittedly unscientific endeavor, and sometimes even the seemingly perfect candidate — see Scott Frost at Nebraska — doesn’t work out.

But then there are those who pretty much everyone on the planet besides the athletic director doing the hiring has the same reaction toward: What on earth are you guys doing? And then, sure enough: That guy gets fired.

To be clear, these aren’t the 12 “worst” hires of the past dozen years. If so, I would just find 12 coaches with the worst winning percentages. It’s specifically the most inexplicable hires.

Note: The years listed are the first seasons they coached there.

12. Will Muschamp, South Carolina (2016)

When Steve Spurrier stepped down midway through the 2015 season, AD Ray Tanner had nearly two months to identify his replacement. After getting turned down by Arizona’s Rich Rodriguez, Tanner turned to a coach who went a mediocre 17-15 in the SEC at a national championship program with more resources and a more fertile recruiting footprint than South Carolina.

At Florida, Muschamp initially looked promising, going 11-2 in his second season before plummeting to 4-8 and 6-5. His five-year South Carolina tenure followed a similar trajectory: a nine-win season and Outback Bowl upset over Michigan in his second year, before descending to 7-6, 4-8 and 2-5.

Final SEC record: 17-22.

11. Derek Dooley, Tennessee (2010)

When Lane Kiffin controversially ditched the Vols after just one season, Vols AD Mike Hamilton’s frantic January search included rejections from then-Texas defensive coordinator Muschamp, Duke’s David Cutcliffe, Utah’s Kyle Whittingham and Air Force’s Troy Calhoun. Plan … E? A guy whose main qualifications seemed to be a) he was once Nick Saban’s running backs coach at LSU; b) he’d been a head coach for three seasons at Louisiana Tech, where he won an Independence Bowl two years earlier before going 4-8; and c) he was Vince Dooley’s son.

Dooley’s three-year run, in which he lost 14 of his last 15 SEC games, is most fondly remembered for losing a game to LSU for having 13 men on the field on what should have been the game-ending play, and for coaching up his players on the importance of “shower discipline.”