Blog Article
Preseason 2026 Coaches’ Hot Seat Rankings
Let us tell you what this list measures, because everyone else gets it wrong on purpose.
We are not predicting who gets fired. Nobody is getting fired in Week 0. Or Week 1. A firing is a press release and a buyout negotiation, and in August, it is months away from anyone’s desk. So a list of who loses his job tells you nothing right now, which is exactly why everyone else’s version is dead weight in the preseason.
What we rank is already real today: pressure. The heat on a coach to win right now, this season, this month. Every man on this board is feeling it before a single snap, because the expectations are already set and the schedule is already waiting. That heat is a living thing, not a prophecy, and it moves. So we move with it.
That is why we re-rank every single week of the season.
Read this for exactly what it is.
It is a snapshot of who feels the most heat to win now. Week 0 and Week 1 will not fire anybody, but they will start filling in the picture. A bad loss out of the gate spikes the heat. A statement win bleeds it off. Some of these ten will cool off and drop out of the top ten by midseason. Other coaches, nowhere on this list right now, will lose three straight and come roaring up it. The names move, the order churns, and that movement is the entire point.
The ranking is a thermometer, not a tombstone.
Why ours reads nothing like the rest
Everybody else builds their list off the win-loss record, the laziest tell in sports media, because reading a record is easy and reading a roster is work. We did the work. Every coach here ran through a comparison database built to catch what that column hides, and it does three things the hot-take machine will not:
- It strips the cupcakes. A 77-3 win over an FCS tomato can stops counting the same as a one-score win over a team that finishes ranked. By the time a number reaches you, the padding is already in the trash.
- It measures a man against the right bar. Each coach is graded against his own school’s history and a fair peer with the same job, not a national average that pretends Rutgers and Ohio State are the same gig. Hard jobs get graded as hard jobs.
- It counts what decides a coach’s fate. Point differential, margin against good teams, one-score records, the predictive numbers that flash a collapse a full year before the win column admits it. The record is the last thing to know that a coach is cooked. Our database is the first.
That is why our verdicts will not always match the mob. A few coaches the internet wants run out of town are sitting cooler than the yelling suggests, and a few the lists keep protecting are in far deeper trouble than their records cop to. We show the math, and we never hide the ugly part behind a tidy label.
So here are the ten coaches under the most pressure to win now, ranked from hottest seat to coldest, each with a verdict and the single number that put him there.
A warning before you scroll: some of these are going to make you mad.
Good.
1. Mike Locksley, Maryland
Hot, a trend, not a blip
Somebody made up a story that Maryland fired Mike Locksley, and two million of you raced to read it before a single soul stopped to ask whether it was true. That should tell Mike something, though I suspect he’d rather not hear it. Here are two numbers, Mike, and you can decide which one goes on the billboard. There’s 0-19 against ranked Big Ten teams, a record that takes genuine dedication to keep that clean. Or there’s 18 straight wins in nonconference play, because nobody in America beats the teams that agreed to lose quite like you do. You climbed all the way to a 9.74 and then handed it right back, and now every starter is returning in 2026, and the excuse drawer is empty. This Friday, our deep dive Diagnosis, available exclusively to newsletter subscribers, has the receipts. Bring a buddy who still believes.
2. Mike Norvell, Florida State
Hot, schedule-inflated
Ten million dollars a year. That’s the going rate in Tallahassee for an offensive genius who has not won a football game away from home since November of 2023. Genius. They really do keep using that word. The faithful will wave a plus-11 scoring margin in your face and dare you to say something, so let’s say something. That margin was built on a 77-3 win over an FCS team and a 66-10 win over a MAC team, and the moment you sweep those two tomato cans off the table, your genius is sitting at plus -0.2 with a 3-7 record and an 0-4 mark in the games that actually came down to a snap. Then, after all of that, he looked around and decided he was the right man to call the plays. Naturally. The June 30th Friday Diagnosis issue does the subtraction Florida State keeps refusing to do.
Diagnosis: Mike Norvell is available only to newsletter subscribers on June 30th.
3. Lance Leipold, Kansas
Pressure-lagging
Now everybody wants Lance Leipold’s head, which is usually the surest sign it’s the wrong call. The same voters who ranked him as the 15th best FBS coach a year ago knocked him down 19 spots this time, and I’d pay money to hear what they think changed, beyond the standings they can read and the roster they can’t. Leipold doesn’t pad his schedule; his 2023 ranked season holds up even after you strip the creampuffs, and the real trouble is a run defense getting shoved around for 190 yards a night, which is a problem you coach, not a man you fire. His luck in one-score games fell off a cliff, 7-2 down to 2-12, and somehow that turned into a verdict on him instead of the bounces. The Friday Diagnosis separates the coach from the panic and hands you the one number that decides 2026.
Diagnosis: Lance Leipold will appear in our July 3rd newsletter, available only to subscribers.
4. Luke Fickell, Wisconsin
Hot, structural trend
Wisconsin spent two decades as the most boring nine-win machine in America. It ran the ball, won the trophy games, never missed a bowl, and somebody in Madison decided that was a problem. So they hired Luke Fickell to add a ceiling, and instead he ripped out the floor, installed an Air Raid nobody in that building ever asked for, and the Badgers have gone 7-6, 5-7, 4-8. That is not a slump; that is a staircase, and it points down. They have not won a Big Ten game since October of 2024, which is a long time to go without doing the one thing your conference is named after. Before anyone brands Fickell a fraud, look at the Cincinnati Playoff team on his resume. The man can coach. This is a fit failure, not a talent shortage, which is exactly why the athletic director’s “we didn’t fund him” routine should make you laugh out loud. The Friday Diagnosis shows a decline in two lines, and the $27 million buyout is the only thing keeping his chair lukewarm rather than on fire.
See Diagnosis: Luke Fickell available to newsletter subscribers on July 10.
5. Butch Jones, Arkansas State
Mixed, leaning warm
Here is the laziest take in college football: Butch Jones belongs on a hot seat because of a motivational sign he made at Tennessee in 2017, a job he has not held in nearly a decade. Put the meme down. It is not analysis, it is a punchline you have been recycling for the better part of a decade. The trouble is, the other side is no sharper, because Arkansas State’s defenders will hand you three straight bowl appearances as if that closes the case. It does not. The 8-5 everybody points to was propped up by a 7-1 record in one-score games, which is just a fancy way of saying the season was a coin that kept landing heads. His point differential has been negative every single year, three of five seasons trip the cupcake flag, and when Arkansas State lines up against an actual good team, it loses by 25. Both camps are arguing about the wrong number. The Friday Diagnosis is two charts, the trophy case on top and the math underneath, and they are not telling the same story.
Diagnosis: Butch Jones will be available to newsletter subscribers on July 17.
6. Dave Aranda, Baylor
Structural trend, dressed as a plateau
Dave Aranda won a Sugar Bowl in 2021, and Baylor has let him cash that one check ever since. Call it a plateau if it helps you sleep. It is not a plateau. A plateau is flat. This is one tall spike in 2021 with four years of erosion hanging off it, because since that banner, the Bears have finished with a losing record in three of four seasons. The lone winning year in the bunch was 2024, and even that ended in a bowl loss. Here is the trick the raw averages play on you: that one 12-win season does all the lifting, and the moment you set it aside, Aranda grades a hair above the rebuild he walked into. So why is he still standing? Not because he earned it, and not because of the buyout everyone assumes. He is still in Waco because the man whose job it is to fire him quit first. Athletic director Mack Rhoades resigned in November, a day before the decision came down, and rather than make a season-defining hire with no athletic director in place, president Linda Livingstone kept Aranda and left the call to whoever takes the job next. Read her retention letter, and you will notice it never quite says he earned another year. It leans on instability, the vacancy, and the cost of moving on during a coaching carousel gone haywire. That is not a vote of confidence. It is a stay of execution with the paperwork still pending. The Friday Diagnosis shows you the lone spike, the sawtooth beneath it, and the front-office vacancy, the only thing between Aranda and the door.
Diagnosis: Dave Aranda will be available to newsletter subscribers on July 24th.
7. Matt Rhule, Nebraska
Mixed
Matt Rhule sells one product, the year-three leap, and he has the receipts to back the pitch, because Temple and Baylor both detonated in his third year. So Nebraska bought it, waited three years, and got a 7-6 that looked exactly like the 7-6 from year two, capped by three straight blowout losses to close the season. That is not a leap. That is a man standing still in nicer shoes. Now, the crowd screaming “fraud” is wrong, and I will say it plainly: the data has him miles ahead of the Frost wreck he inherited. But the “just trust the build” crowd is wrong too, because across three full years in Lincoln, he has not beaten a single ranked-caliber team, and most of those games were not close. So you have a coach who is clearly competent and clearly stuck, which is the worst possible place to stand when your athletic department just handed you an extension through 2032 and a buyout north of $71 million. The Friday Diagnosis sits right there in the uncomfortable middle that the contract created.
Diagnosis Matt Rhule will provide a complete breakdown to newsletter subscribers on July 31st.
8. Greg Schiano, Rutgers
Mixed, leaning warm
Rutgers fans will tell you, with total sincerity, that Greg Schiano is the only man alive who can win in Piscataway. Here is the uncomfortable part. They are probably right, and that is not the compliment they think it is. When the strongest case for your coach is that the job would sink anybody else, you have quietly stopped measuring him against winning and started measuring him against the abyss he replaced. And the second rescue is not the clean climb the first one was. It is a sawtooth, two-bowl seasons cushioned by a lot of mediocrity, then a 5-7 in 2025 held up by three nonconference cupcakes and a 19-point-a-game beating every time a real team showed up. Nobody is questioning what Schiano means to that program, and nobody should. But meaning a lot and winning enough are two different columns. The Friday Diagnosis has the sawtooth, the peer who quietly lapped him, and the buyout that slid him from untouchable to affordable when nobody was looking.
Diagnosis: Greg Schiano will be available for subscribers on August 7th.
9. Chris Creighton, Eastern Michigan
Mixed, leaning warm
The nicest thing Eastern Michigan fans can muster for Chris Creighton is that he is good for EMU, but probably would not be good anywhere else. Sit with that one, because it is not a defense. It is a ceiling with a man’s name painted on it. And give Creighton his due, because the due is real. He took one of the genuine graveyards in this sport and dragged it to three bowl games, which is closer to a miracle than a coaching job. But somewhere along the way, “respectable” stopped being the floor and became the ceiling, and the line has slid ever since, 9-4 in 2022 down to 6-7, then 5-7, then 4-8, with a 2025 that ended in a postseason ban for low academic scores. The “it’s just EMU” excuse does not hold either, because a peer one league over has stayed standing while Creighton slid. The Friday Diagnosis has the full arc, the erosion against anyone good, and the tiny buyout that is the only thing keeping his chair warm instead of hot.
Diagnosis: Chris Creighton will be available to newsletter subscribers on August 14th.
10. Barry Odom, Purdue
Pressure-inflated
Everybody needs to take a deep breath and remember that Barry Odom has been Purdue’s head coach for exactly one year. One. The 2-10 was ugly, and I am not going to insult you by pretending otherwise, but the man inherited a 1-11 pile of rubble and rebuilt the thing with 82 players he had never met. You want to convict him on that? The detail the hot-take machine conveniently skipped is what happened the last time Odom got a real second year, at UNLV, where his team finished 11-3. That is the comp, not the wreckage he is still clearing. So if you are hunting for the actual pressure in West Lafayette, do not aim it at Odom. Aim it at a Purdue administration that fired the last guy just two years in and seems to believe a 1-11 disaster can be cleaned up by Thanksgiving. The Friday Diagnosis puts both of Odom’s Year Ones next to his one finished product and shows you where the heat really belongs.
Diagnosis: Barry Odom will appear in our August 21st issue for subscribers.
That’s a Wrap
Knowing a coach is on the hot seat is free. Knowing why is the whole game.
Anybody can tell you a coach is on the hot seat. The noise machine does it for nothing, all day long.
What it cannot tell you is whether the seat is real.
That is the gap we live in. In today’s rankings, we put Locksley over Norvell, defended Leipold and Odom while the internet screamed for their heads, and cooled off coaches the national lists were ready to bury. Some of those calls will look obvious by November. They do not look obvious now. That is the point. The board tells you who. The reasoning tells you who is right, and we have been right often enough to build a publication on it.
So here is your first move, and it costs you nothing.
The Coach Evaluation Scorecard is the instrument we use here. Seven questions, scored one to five. Here is the first one, free, run it on your own coach right now.
Forget last season’s record. Over the last three years, has the program’s trajectory been climbing, flat, or falling? Five if it’s clearly on the way up, one if it’s falling off a cliff.
That is one row. Grab the scorecard and you get the other six too: roster building, the transfer portal, staff, game management, culture, and whether the coach even fits the job. You run your own guy down the list, score each one, and add it up. The total, somewhere between 7 and 35, is your verdict: building the program, treading water, or quietly losing it. Under 22, he is in more trouble than the fan base wants to admit.
It is the same tool behind every Diagnosis we publish, and it is yours to keep and run on any coach you want. Free, no card, and it is on your screen the second you sign up. Every Tuesday after that, the board shows up on its own.
Go grade your coach the way we grade ours, use the button below, and get your own copy of the Coaches’ Evaluation Scorecard.
