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Week 15 Coaches Hot Seat Rankings – Breaking Down the Top 5

Mark Haines on December 3, 2024

Welcome to our breakdown of the Top 5 ranked coaches on the Week 15 Coaches Hot Seat Rankings.

In the era of social media and team message boards, College football communities typically fall into three categories:

Picture the modern college football landscape as a digital Roman Colosseum, where three distinct tribes gather daily to pass judgment on their gladiators. I’ve spent months studying these tribes, fascinated by how their collective voice can determine the fate of multimillion-dollar coaching careers with the force of an emperor’s thumb.

First, you have the Sunshine Pumpers – college football’s eternal optimists, whose rose-tinted view of their program would make Pollyanna seem cynical. They’re the ones who’d watch their team’s practice facility burn to the ground and declare it a strategic move to improve ventilation. Their unwavering positivity isn’t just amusing; it’s a psychological defense mechanism worth millions to beleaguered athletic directors who need someone, anyone, to keep buying season tickets.

Then there are the Negative Nellies, the digital descendants of Ancient Greek tragedy choruses. These people have turned catastrophizing into an art form and see an upset loss to a rival as evidence of civilization’s collapse. They don’t just want their coach fired; they want him launched into the sun, preferably before halftime.

But the real power brokers? They’re the Middle Majority – college football’s silent jury. These are the clear-eyed realists who still remember that this is, ultimately, a game played by 20-year-olds. Lose their support, and a coach’s career expectancy drops faster than a team’s ranking after a loss to an FCS opponent.

As we examine this week’s coaching hot seat rankings, remember: these three tribes aren’t just posting on message boards – they’re reshaping the power dynamics of a $8 billion industry, one complaint thread at a time.

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Targeting Winners: College Football’s Day of Reckoning

Mark Haines on November 29, 2024

When History Comes Due: College Football’s Day of Reckoning

On the final Saturday of November 2024, college football will remind us why it remains America’s most compelling social experiment. In four different stadiums, eight teams will engage in a ritual that’s equal parts sporting event and psychological warfare. These aren’t just games—they’re settling accounts, tests of collective will, and exercises in mass delusion, where entire states convince themselves that the impossible is probable.

In South Carolina, two programs that share nothing but geography and mutual contempt will try to prove that statistics are just numbers on a page. In Columbus, Ohio State faces the cruel irony of finally getting a vulnerable Michigan team after three years of losses, only to discover that beating a wounded rival might be the most challenging task. In Los Angeles, USC will attempt to salvage a disappointing season by derailing Notre Dame’s playoff dreams, proving once again that nothing satisfies quite like ruining someone else’s perfect ending. And in Eugene, Oregon stands ready to exorcise three years of frustration against a Washington program that’s fallen from national championship contender to cautionary tale in less time than it takes to earn a college degree.

Each of these games carries its own particular strain of madness. Together, they form a perfect case study in how rational human beings – coaches, players, and millions of fans – can convince themselves that history, statistics, and probability are merely suggestions rather than laws. In short, it’s everything that makes college football the most irrational, and therefore most human, of our sports.

The Numbers That Lie: A Tale of Two Programs – South Carolina at Clemson

In the gathering dusk of late November, two football programs circle each other like prizefighters, each convinced they’ve decoded the other’s fatal flaw. The statistics tell one story: Clemson, the higher-ranked team with the more prolific offense, should win this game. But anyone who’s spent time in South Carolina knows that numbers, like the sweet tea served at every diner from Charleston to Greenville, can be deceptive.

The conventional wisdom says Clemson has the edge. Their quarterback, Cade Klubnik, throws for nearly fifty more yards per game than his counterpart. Their offense generates more total yards, touchdowns, and everything that should matter. We could all go home now if football games were played on spreadsheets.

But here’s where it gets interesting.

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Coaches Hot Seat Rankings – Week 14

Mark Haines on November 26, 2024

Coaches Hot Seat Rankings—Week 14. Our full rankings are delayed due to technical difficulties. Our team is working on a solution, and we will release them as soon as possible.

In the meantime, the Top 20 appears on our site.

The coaching carousel has started spinning earlier than expected this year, with two notable moves reshaping the landscape just days before rivalry weekend. On Tuesday morning, North Carolina shocked the college football world by parting ways with Hall of Fame coach Mack Brown, ending his second stint in Chapel Hill after six seasons. The decision came just 24 hours after Brown had publicly stated his intention to return in 2025, marking an awkward end for the 73-year-old who led the Tar Heels to six straight bowl appearances during his return tenure.

While Brown prepares for his final game against NC State this Saturday, Rice made its move by hiring Davidson head coach Scott Abell to lead their program. Abell, who built Davidson into an FCS powerhouse with his innovative triple-option offense, faces the challenge of translating his success to the FBS level.

These early moves could be harbingers of a relatively quiet coaching carousel, as many programs appear hesitant to make changes amid uncertainty surrounding player revenue sharing and a thin candidate pool. However, that hasn’t stopped the temperature from rising for several coaches fighting to save their jobs.

In this week’s Hot Seat Rankings, we examine the mounting pressure at FIU, where Mike MacIntyre’s tenure has devolved into chaos amid allegations of misconduct and thrown furniture. We’ll also analyze Neal Brown’s expensive mediocrity at West Virginia, Kenni Burns’ historically bad run at Kent State, and the declining returns at Appalachian State under Shawn Clark.

Week 14 – Coaches Hot Seat Top 4

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Congratulations to Blake Harrell, the new head coach at ECU. 12 other FBS jobs are now open

Mark Haines on November 25, 2024

Congratulations to Blake Harrell, who was named the new head coach at East Carolina today. There are 12 other FBS openings shown below:

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Targeting Winners Gridiron Trifecta: UNLV Battles San Jose State, Ohio State Faces Indiana Upset Bid, USC-UCLA Clash in Crosstown Showdown

Mark Haines on November 22, 2024

In a college football weekend that promises to reshape conference landscapes and ignite rivalries, three pivotal matchups take center stage in this Targeting Winners gridiron trifecta. The 23rd-ranked UNLV Rebels, orchestrating a Cinderella season under Barry Odom, square off against the aerial assault of San Jose State in a Mountain West thriller that could redefine the conference hierarchy

Meanwhile, the Big Ten trembles as Indiana’s high-octane offense, averaging a staggering 43.9 points per game, dares to challenge Ohio State’s fortress-like defense, allowing a mere 10.3 points per game, in a clash that could alter the College Football Playoff picture.

And in Los Angeles, the crosstown rivalry between USC and UCLA takes on newfound urgency, with bowl eligibility hanging in the balance for the Trojans and pride at stake for the Bruins in their inaugural Big Ten season.

It’s a weekend where underdogs dream big, powerhouses defend their thrones, and every snap could alter the course of the season. Tune into the Targeting Winners Podcast for a breakdown of other featured games this week.

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Gridiron Gambles: The 10 College Football Coaches Walking a Tightrope

Mark Haines on November 21, 2024

    In the high-stakes college football arena, where careers are made and broken on the whims of boosters and the bounce of an oblong ball, ten men are perched precariously on the edge of oblivion. “Gridiron Gambles: The 10 College Football Coaches Walking a Tightrope” isn’t just a headline—it’s a window into the soul-crushing, sweat-soaked world where multimillion-dollar contracts collide with the harsh realities of wins and losses. From the Appalachian highlands to the sun-baked plains of Texas, these coaches navigate a landscape where success is measured in increments of eternal optimism and crushing disappointment. Their stories, a cocktail of ambition, desperation, and financial engineering, reveal the true nature of an industry where the difference between genius and failure is often nothing more than a well-timed trick play or a kicker’s wayward foot.

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    UPDATED: We’re up to 11 FBS coaching changes so far in 2024

    Mark Haines on November 18, 2024

    Here are the 10 FBS coaching changes so far in 2024.

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    This Week’s Targeting Winners Preview: Conference Championship Implications Abound

    Mark Haines on November 14, 2024

    As we gear up for another edition of the Targeting Winners Podcast, which will be released this Friday (available on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts), let’s dive into three games that have caught our attention—each with its own compelling narrative around coaching futures and championship aspirations.

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    Week 12 Hot Seat Rankings Reveal The New Math of Firing Coaches: When Balance Sheets Trump Box Scores

    Mark Haines on November 12, 2024

    Graphic by Tony Altimore @TJAltimore on X

    When Money Changes Everything: College Football’s New Math

    If you want to understand what’s happening in college football right now, forget about the polls, the playoff rankings, and even the win-loss records. Instead, study Tony Altimore’s (@TJAltimore on X) financial visualization of athletic department debt. This document looks less like a sports analysis and more like a hedge fund’s risk assessment of distressed assets. What Altimore has captured, in clean lines and horrifying clarity, is the moment when college football’s financial chickens have come home to roost.

    The numbers are staggering enough to make a Wall Street quant nervous. Major athletic departments have the kind of revenue shortfalls that would make a leveraged buyout specialist think twice, all while trying to maintain the facade that their business model isn’t fundamentally broken. Our Hot Seat Rankings arrive in this financial maelstrom, a list that increasingly reads like a collection of toxic assets nobody knows how to value.

    Consider the range of buyouts in play: Marshall could rid itself of Charles Huff for the price of a mid-level administrator’s salary ($125,917), while Baylor would need to liquidate the equivalent of a small endowment ($20-25 million) to move on from Dave Aranda. In any rational market, these numbers represent the cost of doing business. But in 2024’s college football economy, where athletic departments are juggling NIL collectives, revenue sharing, the House Settlement, facility arms races, and operational deficits that would make a venture capitalist blanch, even UMass’s relatively modest $800,000 obligation to Don Brown looks less like a buyout and more like a luxury they might not be able to afford.

    We’re witnessing the emergence of a new market inefficiency: coaches who become unsackable not through their success but through the financial implications of their failure. In a world where half our Hot Seat candidates owe their job security to their buyout clauses rather than their win percentages, we’ve entered a realm where being too expensive to fire has become its own kind of competitive advantage.

    Welcome to college football’s new normal, where balance sheets matter more than playbooks, and the most important numbers aren’t on the scoreboard but in the fine print of contracts that increasingly look like they were designed by derivatives traders rather than athletic directors.

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