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.
The Ryan Day situation at Ohio State exemplifies how these three tribes can reshape a program’s trajectory. With a staggering 86.8% winning percentage and a 64-3 record outside of Michigan games and playoff appearances, Day should be untouchable in the eyes of any rational observer. But that’s not how college football works in 2024, especially not in Columbus.
The Sunshine Pumpers point to the program’s continued playoff contention and recruiting dominance, including a roster powered by $20 million in NIL money. They’ll tell you that Day’s overall record (.868 winning percentage) would be celebrated at 95% of programs nationwide. And they’re not wrong.
The Negative Nellies, however, have found their ammunition: a 2-7 record in career-defining moments and four straight losses to Michigan, including an unthinkable defeat to an unranked Wolverines squad that had just lost their head coach to the NFL. The “Big Game Day” epithet has stuck, and the critics are getting louder.
But it’s the Middle Majority that makes this situation genuinely fascinating. They’re running the numbers: a $35 million buyout, a coach who consistently wins everything except the games that matter most and a recruiting machine that just watched Michigan flip five-star quarterback Bryce Underwood with a reported $10 million NIL deal. The silent jury is still deliberating, but their patience is wearing thin.
Athletic Director Ross Bjork’s carefully worded support – “Coach Day does a great job leading our program. He’s our coach” – reads less like a vote of confidence and more like a holding pattern until the playoff scenario plays out. The real question might not be whether Ohio State wants to keep Day but whether Day wants to stay in a pressure cooker where even a 66-10 record can’t guarantee job security.
Unlike the Ohio State scenario, Kent State’s situation with Kenni Burns has achieved something remarkable: it’s united all three tribes in bewilderment. When you’ve lost 21 straight games and your head coach is being sued for defaulting on a $24,000 credit card debt despite making nearly half a million dollars annually, even the Sunshine Pumpers run out of silver linings to grasp.
The raw numbers read like a satire of college football excess: a 1-33 overall record, a $1.51 million buyout, and a contract extension through 2028 that was inexplicably granted in February 2024 – the same period during which Burns was reportedly falling behind on his credit card payments. The Golden Flashes haven’t just lost games; they’ve been dismantled with surgical precision, outscored 486-160 overall and 282-99 in MAC play. The season’s nadir came early with a loss to St. Francis (PA), though the subsequent 71-0 demolition by Tennessee and 56-0 erasure by Penn State suggest “nadir” might be a moving target.
In any rational football universe, this would be where our three tribes engage in their usual warfare of interpretation. The Negative Nellies would demand immediate change, the Sunshine Pumpers would preach patience, and the Middle Majority would weigh the practical constraints against the competitive collapse. But when your head coach can’t manage his personal finances – defaulting on debt to a local bank that once sponsored the athletic program, no less – while earning $475,000 a year, it raises uncomfortable questions about institutional judgment.
Kent State has transcended such traditional dynamics. When your season ends with a 43-7 loss to Buffalo, extending the nation’s longest active losing streak to 21 games, while your head coach dodges court summons over unpaid credit card bills, you’ve achieved something rare in modern college football: unanimous consensus. The same industry that might force out Ryan Day and his 87% winning percentage at Ohio State has somehow found infinite patience for a program redefining competitive futility both on and off the field.
Perhaps that’s the most fascinating part of this story – how Kent State has inadvertently experimented with just how far institutional inertia can stretch. The answer is at least 21 games, one credit card default, and counting.
The UAB situation under Trent Dilfer exemplifies what happens when all three fan tribes suddenly realize they’ve been watching the same horror movie. Four seasons ago, UAB dominated Tulane with a bruising defense that held the Green Wave to 21 points. This year? Tulane hung 71 points on the Blazers in their stadium.
As Joseph Goodman of the Alabama Media Group devastatingly points out, UAB has completed a stunning transformation “from being a symbol of pride for the city of Birmingham to the worst team in college football.” Not the bottom 10. Not second-to-last. The worst. This is a program that, under Bill Clark, made five consecutive bowl games and engineered a move to the American Athletic Conference. Under Dilfer, they’re losing 32-6 to Louisiana-Monroe, a program he describes as “historically tragic.”
The Sunshine Pumpers, usually reliable defenders of any coach with an NFL pedigree, have gone quiet. The Negative Nellies are pointing to a season-ending loss to Charlotte where the Blazers missed not one but two chip-shot field goals. And the Middle Majority? They’re doing the math on how a program goes from nine wins and a bowl victory over BYU in 2021 to this level of competitive collapse.
Yet in a twist that would bewilder even the most optimistic fans, UAB appears ready to run it back with Dilfer in 2024. The sacrifice of assistant coaches is enough to appease the football gods, even as the program that Bill Clark rebuilt piece by piece crumbles into competitive irrelevance.
The most telling sign of the program’s descent is when a senior quarterback abandons the team mid-season to preserve his eligibility. This suggests that the quarterback whisperer might have lost his voice.
You know something has gone wrong when your fanbase goes from celebrating a splash hire to demanding his head in just two years. Luke Fickell’s descent at Wisconsin is a cautionary tale about the dangers of heightened expectations, with his .760 winning percentage at Cincinnati deteriorating to .500 in Madison.
The Sunshine Pumpers still point to his overall .667 career winning percentage and Cincinnati success, including that magical College Football Playoff run. They’ll tell you that losing starting quarterback Tyler Van Dyke to a torn ACL derailed what could have been a breakthrough season. And didn’t Fickell already show accountability by firing offensive coordinator Phil Longo?
However, the Negative Nellies have the receipts: five consecutive losses to the end of 2024, the first such streak since 1991. It was a humiliating 24-7 home loss to Minnesota that snapped a 22-year bowl streak and an offense that managed just 44 total yards in the first half of their season finale, with bowl eligibility on the line. The boos raining down at Camp Randall tell their own story.
The Middle Majority finds itself in an uncomfortable position. This is the same Luke Fickell who Ohio State passed over for Ryan Day – and now both men find themselves scrutinized for failing to meet their program’s standards, albeit at very different levels. The irony isn’t lost on anyone that while Ohio State contemplates moving on from Day’s 87% win rate, Wisconsin seems prepared to give Fickell another chance to prove he hasn’t lost his Cincinnati magic.
The most damning indictment? When athletic director Chris McIntosh’s recent raise and extension become part of the conversation about your job security, you know the pressure is mounting.
At Auburn, the three tribes of college football fandom find themselves engaged in a uniquely expensive form of warfare. Since 2000, the program has spent $68 million not on building success but on buying out failure – a figure transforming Auburn football from a sports program into a case study of institutional self-sabotage.
The Sunshine Pumpers are clinging to Auburn’s 2025 recruiting class, currently ranked fifth nationally, like a life raft in a storm of mediocrity. They’ll tell you that Freeze needs time, that his 444.5 yards per game show the offense is close to clicking, and that better days are just around the corner. Remember that Texas A&M signed a top-20 class a month after firing their coach last year.
The Negative Nellies point to numbers that are harder to spin: 11-14 overall, 5-11 in the SEC, and now 0-2 in the Iron Bowl. As Paul Finebaum put it, after the latest loss to Alabama, people “really have to wonder about this program’s future.” When you’re generating 444.5 yards per game but still can’t score, you’re not just failing – you’re finding innovative new ways to disappoint.
But it’s the Middle Majority that genuinely appreciates the dark comedy here. Auburn has fired a coach two years after winning a national title (Gene Chizik), dismissed another despite his mystifying ability to beat Alabama in odd-numbered years (Gus Malzahn), and scrapped Bryan Harsin for the crime of not being from around here. Now they’ve got Freeze, whose $20.3 million buyout can be paid monthly through 2028 – less like a coaching contract and more like a mortgage on mediocrity.
The most revealing detail is that Auburn structured Freeze’s buyout not as a deterrent to firing him but as a more convenient payment plan. This behavior reflects an institution that knows itself too well—like someone who builds the divorce settlement into their wedding vows.
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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
In the economics of college football, Mike MacIntyre’s tenure at FIU represents a perfect market failure – where moral hazard meets reputational collapse in real-time. His 11-24 record tells only part of the story; the real ledger is written in broken trust and thrown furniture.
The math is brutal: one chair was thrown in a rivalry game halftime, twelve current players silently support allegations of misconduct, and eight are starters. It’s a balance sheet of fear, where scholarships become leverage and silence becomes currency.
MacIntyre’s recent attempt to rewrite FIU’s history (“this program hasn’t had a good history since the beginning”) reads less like a gaffe and more like a desperate man’s attempt to hedge against his failure. However, markets have a way of finding true value, and in college football, truth emerges in empty seats and player testimonies.
The most telling metric isn’t his 3-8 record in 2024 but the text message circulating through his locker room, begging players to defend him to the athletic director. It’s the kind of desperate liquidity call that precedes institutional collapse, where a coach’s credibility becomes the ultimate distressed asset.
In the end, MacIntyre’s FIU tenure might be remembered not for the games lost but for the moment when the cost of silence exceeded the price of speaking out.
Neal Brown’s story at West Virginia reads like a cautionary tale of college football’s middle class. In an era when programs are expected to ascend or decline, Brown mastered the art of maintaining perfect mediocrity—a feat that paradoxically sealed his fate.
Every season followed a similar script: flashes of potential undermined by predictable setbacks. He’d win just enough to keep hope alive but never enough to compete. His 37-34 record tells the story of a program stuck in limbo, neither good enough to challenge the conference elite nor bad enough to force immediate change.
The numbers that matter aren’t the wins and losses but the empty seats at Milan Puskar Stadium. In college football’s attention economy, being average is worse than being terrible. At least terrible teams inspire passion. Brown’s teams inspired something far more dangerous: indifference.
The 2024 season, following a deceptively promising 9-4 campaign exposed the fundamental flaw in Brown’s tenure. When finally given a veteran team and heightened expectations, his program reverted to its mean. A pattern that speaks to a larger truth about college football: you can’t build a program on almost but not quite.
Brown’s buyout is $16.7 million if fired before Dec. 31, 2024. Reports suggest WVU donors may help fund this buyout, making his termination more financially feasible than previously thought. The high buyout was initially considered job security, but donor intervention changed that calculus.
Kenni Burns’ tenure at Kent State has devolved from a cautionary tale into pure absurdity. His 2024 season reads like a dark comedy: losing to St. Francis (PA), a non-major program, before suffering historic beatdowns at Tennessee (71-0) and Penn State (56-0). His overall record now stands at 1-33, with zero wins in 2024.
The numbers tell a story of competitive collapse. Kent State hasn’t just lost – they’ve been outscored 486-160. In MAC play, where mid-majors are supposed to find their level, they’ve been outscored 282-99. The final indignity came in losing the Wagon Wheel rivalry to Akron, sacrificing even the $5,000 bonus that might have helped with those credit card payments.
But the contract extension through 2028 transforms this from tragedy into farce. Kent State isn’t just paying for failure – they’re financing it long-term, like a subprime mortgage on competitive irrelevance. Their head coach can’t balance his checkbook, and their football program can’t score a point against top-25 teams. Both, somehow, keep getting extended credit.
In the end, Burns isn’t just losing games—he’s redefining the boundaries of institutional patience in an industry famous for lacking it.
Burns’ buyout after 2024 is $1.51 million, per his contract extension signed in February 2024. This figure represents approximately three years of his base salary at Kent State.
The 2024 season has only reinforced the narrative of App State’s decline under Clark. At 5-5 (potentially 5-6 with Georgia Southern remaining), the program continues its downward trajectory from its previous G5 powerhouse status.
Key 2024 Issues:
Blowout losses (66-20 to Clemson, 48-14 to South Alabama)
2-5 in Sun Belt before recent recovery
Defensive collapse (allowing 35.1 PPG)
However, recent wins over JMU and ODU show signs of life. The question is whether this late-season surge can save Clark’s job, especially given his careful contract structure with decreasing buyouts.
The math is stark: Clark’s overall record is now 44-28 (.611), but the trend line points downward. For a program that once dominated the Sun Belt, mediocrity feels like failure. App State faces a decision: whether maintaining a winning record justifies retaining a coach who’s transformed their championship expectations into bowl eligibility hopes.
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.
In the peculiar economy of college football, where success is measured in increments of eternal optimism and crushing disappointment, Shawn Clark finds himself caught in the undertow of expectations at Appalachian State. The numbers tell one story: 39-23 since taking the helm in 2020, a winning percentage that would keep most mid-major coaches comfortably employed. But numbers, as any good statistician will tell you, can lie by omission.
What the raw data fails to capture is the psychological toll of regression. The Mountaineers weren’t just expected to be good in 2023 – they were supposed to be the darlings of the Group of Five, the team that might crash the party of college football’s elite. Instead, they’ve become a case study of the dangers of potential unrealized. At 4-5, with games against James Madison and Georgia Southern looming like storm clouds on the horizon, Clark has managed to do something remarkable: he’s made winning 63% of his games feel like a failure.
The truly fascinating part isn’t that Clark might lose his job – it’s that he’s demonstrated how quickly the currency of past success can be devalued by present disappointment. In the modern college football marketplace, where fans trade in the futures market of expectations rather than the commodity market of actual wins, Clark’s greatest sin wasn’t losing – it was making people believe they could win more.
Contract and Buyout: The Price of Promise
To understand the true economics of college football’s expectations game, look no further than the elaborate financial instrument known as Shawn Clark’s contract. It’s a document that reads like a futures trading agreement, where the underlying commodity is hope itself. The university has systematically increased its investment in Clark yearly – from $775,000 in 2021 to $925,020 in 2023 – a nearly 20% appreciation in perceived value over just two years. This comes complete with a monthly “retention bonus” of $22,085, which seems precision-engineered by some unseen actuary to satisfy Clark just enough to stay.
But it’s in the buyout structure where the real financial engineering reveals itself. The university created what Wall Street would recognize as a descending ladder of put options – starting at $5 million and stepping down to a mere $250,000 by 2025. It’s the kind of carefully crafted exit strategy that investment bankers admire, protecting both parties while gradually reducing exposure. The genius is in how it mirrors the depreciation of both risk and potential – like a financial instrument slowly losing its time value as it approaches expiration.
The contract extension through 2026 tells its own story – one of institutional optimism colliding with the harsh reality of on-field results. However, it’s worth noting – and this is where the fine print becomes crucial – that these buyout figures come from Clark’s initial contract signed in December 2019. Like any sophisticated financial instrument, the terms may have been restructured during his 2021 extension. In the opaque world of college football contracts, such details often remain sealed in filing cabinets, known only to agents, attorneys, and athletic directors until they become relevant.
In the risk-obsessed college football world, where athletic directors typically rush to extend their coaches’ contracts at the first sign of competence, Charles Huff’s situation at Marshall stands as a fascinating market inefficiency. Here’s a coach entering the twilight of his original six-year contract – a virtual unicorn in modern college athletics – with no extension in sight and a buyout figure that reads more like a mid-level administrator’s salary than a Power Five coach’s exit package: $125,917.
The number itself tells a story. Not $125,000, not $126,000, but $125,917. It’s the kind of precise figure that suggests it was calculated by someone who believes in the power of actuarial tables and compound interest rather than the typical athletic department mathematics of ego and escalation.
What makes this situation particularly remarkable is its rarity. In an industry where coaches typically receive extension after extension – often before proving their worth – Huff operates in a state of contractual purgatory. His original 2021 deal will expire at the end of next season, creating the sort of uncertainty that athletic directors typically avoid, like a blocked punt. It’s as if Marshall accidentally discovered a new way to incentivize performance: by doing absolutely nothing.
This arrangement is a controlled experiment in coaching motivation. While his peers coach with golden parachutes worth millions, Huff operates with a buyout that wouldn’t cover the cost of a decent offensive coordinator in the SEC. It’s the kind of situation that would make Billy Beane smile. This market inefficiency either proves the conventional wisdom about coaching contracts wrong or demonstrates exactly why such wisdom exists in the first place.
Ultimately, Huff’s contract situation reads less like a strategic decision and more like an oversight – as if Marshall’s athletic department forgot to follow the standard operating procedure of college football’s coaching carousel. The question isn’t whether this approach is brilliant or foolish but whether it was an approach at all.
If you wanted to design a perfect experiment to test the breaking point of college football’s traditional patience with new coaches, you couldn’t do better than the case of Kenni Burns at Kent State. His record reads like a Silicon Valley startup’s burn rate: 1-22 overall, hemorrhaging games at a pace that would make even the most optimistic venture capitalist nervous. But what happened off the field transforms this from a simple story of athletic underperformance into something far more revealing about the economics of mid-major college football.
In a move that defied conventional market logic, Kent State doubled down on its investment in February 2024, extending Burns’ contract through 2028. Just months later, a local bank would be suing their head coach over $23,852.09 in credit card debt, representing roughly 4.5% of his annual salary. It’s the kind of financial disconnect that would make a Wall Street risk manager break out in hives: a man making half a million dollars annually defaulting on a credit card from the same community bank that once sponsored the school’s baseball program.
The financial architecture of Burns’ deal reveals the strange economics of mid-major college football. His base salary – starting at $475,000 and climbing to $515,000 – comes wrapped in a series of micro-incentives that read like a behavioral economist’s experiment in motivation. There’s $5,000 for beating Akron in the battle for the Wagon Wheel trophy (a sum that somehow manages to overvalue and undervalue a rivalry game simultaneously), and up to $15,000 for hitting academic benchmarks – as if to say, “If you can’t win games, at least make sure the players can read about them.”
But it’s in the confluence of the guarantee game clause and the credit card debt where the real story emerges. While up to $200,000 per year from Power 5 “guarantee games” goes directly to the football budget – effectively creating a financial instrument where Kent State profits from their competitive irrelevance – their head coach couldn’t manage to keep current on a $20,000 credit limit. The excuse of “a recent remodel and move” reads less like a justification and more like a perfect metaphor for the program: renovating while the foundation crumbles.
The buyout figure of $1.51 million after 2024 now looks less like an insurance policy against success and more like a cautionary tale about financial due diligence. In the strange economy of college football, Kent State potentially has to pay seven figures to part ways with a coach who couldn’t pay his credit card bill.
This is no longer a coaching contract; it’s a case study of the disconnect between institutional faith and personal finance. Every clause, every bonus, every carefully worded incentive tells the story of a program trying to convince itself that patience is still a virtue in an industry that traded that commodity away years ago. At 1-22, with their head coach dodging debt collectors, they’re not just losing games; they’re conducting an expensive experiment in the limits of institutional faith while their coach conducts his experiment in the limits of credit.
The most telling detail might be the timing: Burns’ team was 60 days past due on its payments to Hometown Bank and past due on delivering a single win in the 2023 season. In college football’s economy, some debts seem more forgivable than others.
In college football economics, Neal Brown’s contract at West Virginia is a case study in the psychology of institutional momentum. Here’s a coach who parlayed a 9-4 season into what might be the most elaborately structured compensation package in the mid-tier Power Five – a document that reveals more about the anxieties of college football administration than it does about winning football games.
The raw numbers tell one story: a $4 million base salary escalating to $4.4 million by 2027, a buyout structure that would make a Wall Street severance specialist blush ($9.525 million if terminated after this season), and a bonus structure so intricately layered it resembles a hedge fund’s fee schedule more than a coaching contract. But it’s in the timing that the real story emerges.
What makes Brown’s situation particularly fascinating isn’t just the money – it’s his apparent reconceptualization of the product he’s being paid to deliver. In October, after another loss to a ranked opponent (bringing his record against Top 25 teams to a sobering 3-16), Brown offered the most revealing quote in modern college football: “Did they have a good time? Did they enjoy it? It was a pretty good atmosphere. I’m assuming they had a pretty good time tailgating.”
It was the kind of statement that would make a McKinsey consultant proud – a brilliant pivot from measuring success by wins and losses to measuring it by customer satisfaction with the peripheral experience. Brown reframed a football program as an entertainment venue, suggesting that the actual game might be incidental to the tailgating experience. It’s as if the CEO of a struggling restaurant chain decided to focus on the quality of the parking lot rather than the food.
Brown’s contract’s genius—or perhaps madness—lies in its bonus structure. It reads like a Choose Your Own Adventure book written by an accountant: $100,000 for eight wins, $125,000 for nine, and up to $200,000 for running the table. Notably, nowhere in the contract is there a bonus for enhancing the tailgating experience.
But it’s in the perks where the true nature of college football’s economy reveals itself. Two courtesy vehicles, a country club membership (funded through “private dollars” – a distinction that speaks volumes about the creative accounting of college athletics), and a $5,000 allowance for university apparel. Even the ticket allocations are meticulously detailed: 25 premium tickets or a suite for football, five for basketball, and 20 for bowl games – enough to host quite a tailgate party of his own.
The buyout clause – 75% of the remaining salary if terminated without cause – stands as a monument to institutional fear: fear of being wrong or right or having to admit either. At current projections, that’s $9.525 million to say goodbye to a coach who might finish 5-7, make a bowl game, or do just enough to make everyone wonder if next year will be different. Or perhaps, given his new metrics for success, just enough people might have a good time tailgating to make it all worthwhile.
In the end, Neal Brown’s tenure isn’t just about coaching football – it’s about an institution trying to put a price on hope while their coach redefines what hope means. Each clause, each bonus, and each carefully worded provision reveals a program desperate to believe it has found its answer while simultaneously hedging against the possibility that it hasn’t. At 5-5, Brown isn’t just managing a football team – he’s curating an entertainment experience worth millions, where the game might be an excuse for the party in the parking lot.
In the complex marketplace of college football coaching talents, Kevin Wilson’s career trajectory reads like a case study in the industry’s peculiar definition of failure and success. Here’s a coach who helped orchestrate some of the most prolific offenses in college football history at Oklahoma, got fired from Indiana for winning too little, landed at Ohio State, where he helped set conference records, and then – in a move that defies conventional career logic – chose to take over at Tulsa, where he’s currently orchestrating what might be called a masterclass in proving why offensive coordinators don’t always make great head coaches.
The numbers tell a story that no Wall Street analyst would want to pitch to investors: 7-13 at Tulsa, adding to a career head coaching record of 33-60. But the path to those numbers makes Wilson’s case so fascinating. This is a man who once presided over an Oklahoma offense that scored 716 points in a season (still third-best in FBS history), helped develop multiple Heisman Trophy finalists at Ohio State, and somehow managed to make Indiana’s offense lead the Big Ten in passing – a feat roughly equivalent to making Vermont a skiing powerhouse.
Wilson’s career is exciting because it perfectly captures the football industry’s inability to value talent properly. Here’s a coordinator who helped create offensive systems that generated billions in revenue for major programs, yet when given his own program at Indiana, was dismissed after going 6-6 – a record that at Indiana should have earned him consideration for canonization rather than termination. The official reason was “mistreatment of players,” but in college football’s economy, winning six games at Indiana while losing the PR battle proves about as sustainable as a crypto startup with good fundamentals but an evil Twitter presence.
The move to Tulsa represents the greatest market inefficiency in college football or its most predictable regression to the mean. Wilson left a position at Ohio State where he was helping generate NFL quarterbacks like a factory assembly line to take over a program where success is measured in bowl eligibility rather than national championships. It’s as if a quantitative trader left Renaissance Technologies to manage a local credit union’s investment portfolio.
The tragedy isn’t that Wilson is failing at Tulsa – it’s that his career perfectly illustrates college football’s inability to distinguish between the skills needed to coordinate an offense and those required to run an entire program. His genius for designing plays that made Oklahoma and Ohio State unstoppable hasn’t translated into the ability to make Tulsa merely competitive. It’s the coaching equivalent of the Peter Principle: promoting someone until they reach their incompetence, except in this case, Wilson chose his promotion.
Ultimately, Kevin Wilson’s story isn’t just about wins and losses – it’s about how college football’s market for coaching talent consistently misvalues specialized skills. His career path from offensive mastermind to struggling head coach serves as a reminder that in college football’s economy, being brilliant at one thing doesn’t guarantee even basic competence at the next level up. At 3-5 this season, Wilson isn’t just coaching football – he’s providing a cautionary tale about the dangers of mistaking tactical brilliance for strategic leadership.
Some numbers tell you everything you need to know about a program’s soul. At Auburn, that number is $68 million – paid not to win games but to make coaches disappear since 2000. The figure transforms a football program into a case study of institutional behavior, like watching someone set fire to their house because they didn’t like the paint color.
Hugh Freeze arrived on the Plains as the latest solution to a problem Auburn can’t quite define. His 2-5 record wouldn’t be remarkable at many places, but it’s just the latest chapter in a story of perpetual dissatisfaction at Auburn. The Tigers have fired a coach two years after winning a national title (Gene Chizik), dismissed another despite his beating Alabama in odd-numbered years with mystifying regularity (Gus Malzahn), and scrapped Bryan Harsin for the crime of not being from around here.
What makes Freeze’s situation fascinating isn’t just his struggles – it’s how carefully Auburn planned for them. His contract reveals an institution that has learned one lesson from its past: how to structure a buyout. While previous coaches like Malzahn ($21.5 million) and Harsin ($15.6 million) had to be paid off like desperate ransom demands, Freeze’s $20.3 million sendoff can be stretched out in monthly installments through 2028, like a mortgage on mediocrity.
The cruel irony is that Freeze, hired to fix Auburn’s offense, has instead provided a masterclass in offensive futility. His team ranks among the SEC’s worst in scoring despite generating 444.5 yards per game – they’re breaking down exactly where the end zone comes into view. It’s as if someone hired Picasso to paint their house, and he insisted on using his feet.
Yet Freeze might survive, at least temporarily, because of a recruiting class ranked fifth nationally – though, as Texas A&M recently demonstrated by signing a top-20 class a month after firing Jimbo Fisher, even that achievement comes with an asterisk in the NIL era.
At 2-5, with five opponents ahead who all have better records, Freeze is approaching territory that not even Auburn’s most creative accountants can rationalize. He’s already matching Bryan Harsin’s pace toward dismissal and doing it with an offense that makes three yards and a cloud of dust look innovative.
The most revealing detail might be this: Auburn structured Freeze’s buyout not as a deterrent to firing him but as a more convenient mechanism. It’s the behavior of an institution that knows itself too well – like someone who builds the divorce settlement into their wedding vows.
In December 2021, Sonny Cumbie orchestrated what appeared to be a perfect audition. As Texas Tech’s interim coach, he dismantled Mike Leach’s Mississippi State team in the Liberty Bowl, displaying offensive creativity that makes athletic directors dream big dreams on small budgets. For Louisiana Tech, a program perpetually searching for innovation at discount prices, Cumbie represented a calculated risk: a quarterback whisperer who might turn Ruston into Conference USA’s laboratory for offensive evolution.
Twenty-four games later, that laboratory has produced mostly smoke. Cumbie’s record at Louisiana Tech reads like a scientific study in diminishing returns: 3-9, 3-9, and now 4-6, with an offense that’s regressed from five 40-point outbursts in 2022 to sporadic signs of life in 2024. The quarterback whisperer has largely gone silent.
But the real story isn’t in the wins and losses – it’s in the assembly of his coaching staff, where Louisiana Tech’s financial reality collides with its aspirations. “We are at the bottom rung of the assistant coach pay scale,” one fan noted, defending a collection of hires from places like Central Washington and Stephen F. Austin. Another countered, “None of these resumes are very impressive,” missing the point that impressive resumes rarely come at discount prices.
Consider the economics: Louisiana Tech offers Cumbie $900,000 annually, escalating to a modest $1 million, with $1.4 million to divide among ten assistants. In today’s college football, that’s like trying to build a sports car with spare parts from a bicycle shop. The program’s one notable coaching success story – Manny Diaz – stayed precisely one year before moving to bigger opportunities, a pattern that repeats itself across similar programs.
Cumbie’s tenure reveals the fundamental challenge facing programs like Louisiana Tech: they’re forced to bet on potential rather than proof, on coaches who might become something rather than those who already are. His staff, assembled from the outer reaches of college football’s map, represents either brilliant talent spotting or desperate bargain hunting, depending on your perspective and, crucially, the final score.
The tragedy isn’t that Cumbie is failing; his failure was priced into the system from the start. That Liberty Bowl victory, rather than launching a career, may have obscured an essential truth: miracles rarely come with multi-year warranties in college football’s modern economy.
At 10-24 overall, Cumbie has reached the point where even patient programs begin asking hard questions. But perhaps the most challenging question isn’t about Cumbie – it’s whether any coach, given Louisiana Tech’s resources, could build something sustainable from spare parts and promises.
At Arkansas, they’re learning that timing in college football isn’t just about when to fire your coach – it’s about understanding when you’ve lost the luxury of waiting. The Razorbacks find themselves trapped in a maze of their construction: $40 million in new financial obligations from revenue sharing and settlements, a coach with a $10 million buyout that nobody can quite justify, and a contract clause that threatens to extend the very situation fans are desperate to escape.
Sam Pittman’s tenure reads like a cautionary tale about institutional decision-making. In 2021, when his team peaked at No. 8 in the country, Arkansas rewarded a coach who had never led another program with contract protections that assumed he had somewhere else to go. “Zero leverage in any negotiations,” as one fan put it, somehow translated into maximum security.
Now, at 5-5, with Louisiana Tech and Missouri remaining, Arkansas faces a peculiar mathematical crisis: two more wins, including a potential bowl victory, would trigger an automatic extension. It’s the kind of clause that transforms every touchdown into a threat, every victory into a potential long-term liability.
The administration’s whispered excuse – waiting for revenue sharing to settle before making any moves – ignores a crucial market reality: this may be the recent slowest season for Power Five vacancies. While Arkansas waits for perfect conditions, they’re watching their coach surrender 694 yards to Ole Miss in the most expensive audition for an extension in SEC history.
The genuinely revealing detail isn’t Pittman’s 28-30 record or even the historic defensive collapse against Ole Miss. The architecture of decisions led Arkansas to create a contract where success and failure became equally problematic. They built a system where winning just enough could be worse than losing outright.
As the Louisiana Tech game approaches, Arkansas faces a question beyond football strategy: How much does it cost to fix a mistake before it compounds itself? In a season where every other Power Five job remains secure, the opportunity to make a change has never been more evident – or more urgently needed before those two fateful wins can materialize.
The irony isn’t lost on a fanbase watching their program twist into financial knots. They know that while $10 million might seem steep to move on from Pittman, it’s a bargain compared to the long-term cost of letting him stay just long enough to earn the right to stay longer.
College football usually punishes hubris swiftly, but at UAB, they’re experimenting to see how long an administration can ignore reality. The results aren’t encouraging.
Trent Dilfer inherited Bill Clark’s masterwork – six straight winning seasons, two conference titles, a program that survived death once and emerged stronger. In less than two years, he’s transformed it into a case study in institutional denial. The on-field collapse would be enough: no first-half touchdowns in conference play, players ejected for shoving officials and post-touchdown headbutts. But it’s Dilfer’s “It’s not like this is freakin’ Alabama” dismissal that reveals the more profound dysfunction.
Athletic Director Mark Ingram’s steadfast support of Dilfer doesn’t read like loyalty so much as a refusal to acknowledge a $4.1 million mistake. The Jalen Kitna situation crystallizes the dynamic: faced with predictable backlash over signing a player dismissed from Florida on child pornography charges, the administration didn’t retreat – they dug in deeper, with Dilfer dismissing “initial headlines” as if they were discussing a parking ticket rather than felony charges.
The tragedy isn’t just in UAB’s regression from conference champion to cautionary tale. It’s in watching an administration convince itself that standing firm amid disaster demonstrates strength rather than stubbornness. While Dilfer jokes about his high school coaching days after 35-point losses, Ingram’s support transforms from professional courtesy to something more troubling: an administrator who can’t or won’t distinguish between standing by his coach and standing in the way of his program’s recovery.
The most revealing detail isn’t the empty stands or the lopsided scores – it’s the growing suspicion among boosters that this might be what program death looks like when it comes from within rather than from above. UAB once rallied a city to save its football team. Now they watch that same team dismantled by the people charged with protecting it, led by a coach who reminds them they’re not Alabama, backed by an AD who seems determined to prove it.
In the heart of Blacksburg, Virginia, a story of ambition, expectation, and the relentless pursuit of gridiron glory unfolds. Brent Pry, the man tasked with resurrecting Virginia Tech’s football program, stands at the center of this tale—a coach caught between the weight of history and the harsh realities of the present. Three years ago, Pry arrived at Lane Stadium with the promise of defensive brilliance and a return to the Hokies’ golden era. The faithful, hungry for success, embraced him. In early 2024, a staggering 75.1% of fans rated his performance at the top of the scale. Hope, it seemed, had found a new home in Virginia Tech. But in the unforgiving world of college football, where yesterday’s hero can quickly become today’s scapegoat, Pry’s journey has been anything but smooth. His first season in 2022 was a brutal 3-8 campaign—a record that would make even the most optimistic fan wince. It was as if the Hokies had forgotten how to win, their once-feared program reduced to a shadow of its former self. Yet, like any good underdog story, 2023 brought a glimmer of hope. A 7-6 record, capped by a Military Bowl victory, suggested that perhaps Pry’s process was beginning to bear fruit. The defense, long the backbone of Virginia Tech’s identity, cracked the top 20 nationally. For a moment, it seemed the tide was turning. But college football is a game of “what have you done for me lately,” and 2024 has been a study of unfulfilled potential. As November’s chill settles over the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Hokies sit at 5-4, their dreams of ACC contention fading like the autumn leaves. The faithful who once believed Pry would deliver an ACC championship now watch each game with bated breath, hoping for a miracle but fearing the worst. The numbers tell a story of their own. A 1-11 record in one-score games hangs around Pry’s neck like an albatross, each close loss a reminder of what could have been. It’s the statistic that keeps coaches up at night, poring over game film in search of answers that seem just out of reach. In the high-stakes chess match of college athletics, Pry’s moves are scrutinized with the intensity of a Wall Street earnings report. His contract, set to pay him $5 million a year by 2026, looms large—a bet placed by an administration hoping for a long-term payoff. But the clock is ticking in a world where patience is rare. As the 2024 season hurtles toward its conclusion, Brent Pry stands at a crossroads. The next chapter in this saga of redemption and reckoning will be in the coming months. In the stands of Lane Stadium, under the Friday night lights, the verdict on Pry’s tenure hangs in the balance—a reminder that in college football, as in life, the line between triumph and tribulation is often as thin as a goal line.
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.
Here’s our Top 10 for this week, plus a little insider information on each:
1. Don Brown – UMass
Don Brown sits atop college football’s hot seat list in a way that perfectly captures the industry’s bias for action over patience. UMass administrators, energized by their MAC invitation and staring at a manageable $800,000 buyout, seem eager to start fresh before the 2025 conference transition. The kind of institutional momentum creates its own gravity – the desire to make a splashy hire before joining a new conference to signal ambition and commitment to a brighter future. But there’s a fascinating market inefficiency at play here that nobody’s talking about: Brown might be the rare coach whose value to the program is about to increase precisely when they’re most inclined to remove him. His decades of MAC experience as a defensive coordinator at Central Michigan and Connecticut (during its MAC era) and his deep New England recruiting roots represent institutional knowledge that money can’t easily buy. UMass is preparing to make a classic institutional mistake: paying to remove expertise they’ll need to acquire again, all in service of a fresh start that might not be as fresh as they imagine. After all, the next coach will face the same fundamental challenges – navigating one more year of independence before transitioning to the MAC – with less experience in both contexts.
2. Charles Huff – Marshall
Huff’s position has improved slightly with a recent win, but he is in year 4 of a 5-year contract, and his small $125,917 buyout means Marshall could make a change without significant financial strain. His hot seat status remains high, though the recent win may have bought him some time.
3. Stan Drayton – Temple
This week, a 52 – 6 loss to Tulane has intensified the pressure on Drayton. With no specified buyout disclosed, Temple might have flexibility in making a coaching change if they decide to go that route. The program’s struggles in the American Athletic Conference likely contribute to his hot seat status.
4. Trent Dilfer – UAB
Dilfer’s hot seat status has worsened with another loss. His $4,116,667 buyout is significant for UAB, which might give him more time. However, his unusual comments, media interactions, and poor on-field results have quickly put him in a precarious position despite being only in his second year.
5. Dave Aranda – Baylor
Despite a bye week, Aranda remains on the hot seat. His substantial $20-25 million buyout is a major factor in Baylor’s decision-making process. Recent wins have improved his standing, and there’s an industry consensus that he’s trending towards returning in 2025, partly due to the financial implications of a coaching change.
6. Sam Pittman – Arkansas
Sam Pittman moves down to #6 on our Hot Seat Rankings in what might be college football’s most emotionally complicated coaching situation. He’s the kind of figure who makes fans want to invite him over for dinner while simultaneously wanting to throw their remote through the TV during games. His Arkansas team has shown improvement this year, but in a way that feels like watching a gifted student consistently turn in C+ work – there’s something both promising and maddening about it all. The blowout loss to Ole Miss exposed the fundamental disconnect: a team with SEC talent playing with the discipline of a midnight pickup game. And here’s where it gets interesting – and credit to Jackson Collier of the Hardwood Hogs Podcast (@JCHoops on X) for surfacing a contract provision that adds another layer to this Southern football soap opera: If Pittman can scrape together seven wins between Louisiana Tech and one more victory (including a potential bowl game), he triggers an automatic raise and extension. It’s the kind of clause that transforms Arkansas’s $10 million buyout decision from merely expensive to existentially complex. The boosters’ dilemma is almost Shakespearean: How do you fire someone everyone likes who’s making the team better but not as much better as it should be? Especially when the cost of doing so keeps threatening to go up?
7. Sonny Cumbie – Louisiana Tech
A loss this week has likely increased the pressure on Cumbie. With a $1,625,000 buyout, Louisiana Tech has some flexibility if it chooses to make a change. The program’s performance in Conference USA will determine his future.
8. Kevin Wilson – Tulsa
Wilson’s first season at Tulsa has been challenging, but a recent comeback win against UTSA may have improved his standing. His buyout details aren’t specified, but Tulsa’s financial situation and patience with new coaches could influence his job security.
9. Ryan Walters – Purdue
Despite the most recent 45-0 loss to Ohio State, reports suggest Walters is expected to get more time at Purdue. His $9,590,625 buyout and the administration’s recognition of NIL challenges in the Big Ten could provide him additional job security despite the team’s struggles this season.
10. Hugh Freeze – Auburn
Freeze’s $20,312,500 buyout is a significant factor in his job security. Auburn’s recent performance and Freeze’s past success at Ole Miss are considerations. While he’s on the hot seat, the financial implications of a coaching change might give him more time to turn the program around.
In the high-stakes theater of college football, where careers rise and fall on autumn Saturdays, it’s time for the weekly ritual that makes athletic directors squirm and message boards light up: The Coaches Hot Seat Rankings. Like a real-time chronicle of coaching mortality, these rankings capture the brutal Darwinism of the profession, where yesterday’s genius is today’s candidate for early retirement. Week 11’s balloting is now open, and you can play judge, jury, and potential career executioner in the always-entertaining spectacle of coaching evaluation. Cast your vote now through the link provided – though be warned, participating in this weekly referendum on coaching competence can be strangely addictive.
It’s college football’s week 11 – that special time of year when athletic directors start pricing golden parachutes. At Arkansas, Sam Pittman (#1) watches Jaxson Dart throw for 515 yards against his defense and wonders if those moving trucks outside his office are just passing through . In Birmingham, Trent Dilfer (#2) has mastered the art of making UAB worse than “freakin’ Alabama,” while Temple’s Stan Drayton (#3) costs more per loss than some entire Group of Five coaching staffs.
In the statistical carnage that was Ole Miss’s 63-31 dismantling of Arkansas, two numbers stood out like neon signs above a desperate Vegas casino: 515 and 6. That’s how many yards and touchdowns Jaxson Dart threw without a single interception—a feat no SEC quarterback had ever managed. His favorite target, Jordan Watkins, turned eight catches into 254 yards and five touchdowns, the efficiency that makes defensive coordinators contemplate career changes.
Lane Kiffin, college football’s resident chaos merchant, couldn’t resist twisting the knife with a post-game quip about airport tarmacs—a particularly cruel jab given that Sam Pittman might soon be familiar with them himself. In the merciless accounting of college football, Pittman’s seat isn’t just hot; it is approaching nuclear fusion.
2. Trent Dilfer – UAB
On Saturday, UAB’s Kam Shanks and Jalen Kitna shattered school records in a 59-21 victory over Tulsa that felt less like a breakthrough and more like a beautiful funeral. The numbers were staggering: Shanks’s 311 all-purpose yards, Kitna’s 404 passing yards, and six touchdowns—the statistics that usually save coaching careers. But in Birmingham, where Trent Dilfer has managed to transform a conference champion into a 2-6 cautionary tale, even victory feels like defeat.
The real story isn’t in Saturday’s box score—it’s in Dilfer’s infamous “It’s not like this is freakin’ Alabama” quip, the kind of comment that makes boosters reach for their checkbooks and their phones simultaneously. In less than two years, he’s taken Bill Clark’s ascending program—six straight winning seasons, two conference titles—and performed the sort of dismantling usually reserved for failed hedge funds or terminated football programs, something Birmingham knows too well.
The irony? Dilfer’s still collecting his $1.3 million salary while his team plays like they’re working for minimum wage against real competition. In the economics of college football, that’s the kind of inefficiency that doesn’t survive long—even with Mark Ingram in charge.
3. Stan Drayton – Temple
In the economics of college football, Temple University has managed to create a case study in how not to allocate resources. They’re paying Stan Drayton—a career running backs coach—$2.5 million annually to perform heart surgery. At the same time, Florida Atlantic handed Tom Herman the same job for the price of a luxury sedan. It’s the kind of financial decision that would have kept the late Lew Katz up at night, pacing his private jet’s cabin, checkbook in hand.
The cruel mathematics of Temple’s predicament reveals itself in two numbers: 55-0, the score by which SMU dismantled the Owls on national television, and $7.5 million, the remaining cost of Drayton’s contract. In a different era, when Temple had its own version of a Wall Street activist investor in Katz, this market inefficiency would have been corrected by Monday morning. But his son Drew, now on the Board of Trustees, treats the family fortune like a conservative bond portfolio—safe, steady, and utterly useless for the kind of radical intervention Temple football requires.
The tragedy isn’t just in losing—everyone loves Drayton the Man. It’s watching a university bet its football future on a position coach while having no hedge against failure. In North Philadelphia, where campus security costs outweigh football aspirations, they’re learning that love doesn’t show up in the win column.
4. Billy Napier – Florida
For three hours and fifty-six minutes on Saturday, Billy Napier lived in an alternate universe where Florida football still mattered. His Gators, held together with duct tape and populated partly by what appeared to be a local moving crew (they’d shown up early, anticipating a blowout), had somehow matched the mighty Georgia Bulldogs punch for punch. The score sat at 20-20, and Napier could almost feel his seat temperature dropping from nuclear to merely scalding.
But Georgia, like a cat toying with an injured mouse, was merely setting up the punchline. Carson Beck had thrown three interceptions, seemingly playing to Florida’s level, until you realized it was all part of the script. In four brutal minutes, the Bulldogs engineered a 75-yard drive, snatched an interception, and scored again—transforming what could have been Napier’s career-saving upset into just another SEC cautionary tale.
The cruelest part? Those last four minutes proved that the previous 56 had been merely Georgia’s idea of performance art, a masterclass in giving false hope to the doomed.
5. Dave Aranda – Baylor
At Baylor, Dave Aranda’s job security has behaved like a volatile tech stock—swooning early, rebounding late, and keeping traders guessing. After opening 2-4 with wins against only Air Force and something called Tarleton State, Aranda’s position looked about as secure as a crypto wallet password. But in the fluid market of college football coaching, even the most bearish positions can reverse course.
Two consecutive wins against Texas Tech and Oklahoma State have performed the kind of market correction usually reserved for Federal Reserve announcements. The remaining schedule—TCU, West Virginia, Houston, and Kansas, none currently above .500—looks less like a gauntlet and more like a carefully curated path to bowl eligibility. “Six wins and he’s back,” whispered one industry insider, with the kind of certainty usually reserved for insider trading tips.
The irony? Aranda, the defensive genius who once commanded premium value in the coaching marketplace, finds his future tied to the most basic of metrics: win six games or clean out your office. In Waco, where faith and football intersect with ten-figure endowments, salvation comes from a .500 record.
6. Sonny Cumbie – Louisiana Tech
In Huntsville, Texas, on a Tuesday night that felt more like a Samuel Beckett play than a football game, Sonny Cumbie’s Louisiana Tech team managed to lose 9-3 while winning almost every statistical category that matters. They outgained Sam Houston 312-268, held a rushing attack that averaged 200 yards per game to just 105, and forced two turnovers. By any rational measure, they should have won. But college football, like tragedy, follows its peculiar logic.
The box score reads like a hedge fund’s risk assessment report gone wrong: four turnovers, two turnovers on downs, and three points to show for it all. Twice, the Bulldogs penetrated within the 5-yard line in the fourth quarter alone, finding new and creative ways to self-destruct each time. This kind of performance makes athletic directors update their coaching search firms’ contact information.
The cruel irony? Cumbie’s defense played well enough to win a conference championship game. Instead, they watched their offense turn the red zone into a haunted house, fumbling away what little hope remained of salvaging their season. At 3-5, with Jacksonville State looming, Cumbie finds himself selling the one commodity no one in college football wants to buy: moral victories.
7. Joe Moorhead – Akron
Joe Moorhead’s return to Akron had all the elements of a classic homecoming story—the prodigal coordinator returns, older and wiser, ready to transform his former program. It was the kind of narrative Hollywood makes movies about. Instead, it’s become a documentary about entropy: two straight 2-10 seasons, with 2023 following the same inexorable path toward dysfunction.
Saturday’s 41-30 loss to Buffalo reads like a physics problem where all the equations work backwards. The Zips outgained Buffalo 452-390, dominated through the air 378-210, and won the third-down battle 43% to 23%. Ben Finley threw for 378 yards and four touchdowns—numbers that in any rational universe translate to victory. But Akron, like a time traveler who can only arrive after the critical moments have passed, spotted Buffalo a 38-7 lead before remembering how to play football.
The cruel irony? Moorhead was supposed to be the sure thing—the experienced head coach, the familiar face, the proven winner. Instead, he’s become living proof that in college football, like quantum mechanics, observation changes the outcome. In Akron, where they’ve spent decades trying to solve the equation of relevance, they’re learning that even the smartest professors sometimes fail the final exam.
8. Mark Stoops – Kentucky
Mark Stoops has achieved something that should be impossible in the physical universe of college football: becoming Kentucky’s all-time winningest coach (73 victories) while simultaneously watching his support evaporate like bourbon at a tailgate. It’s the kind of contradiction that makes quantum physicists scratch their heads—how can someone be the most successful coach in school history and a source of fan rebellion?
The 2024 season opened like a Southern Gothic novel—high expectations, veteran talent, and a schedule that read like a list of ancient curses. By week two against South Carolina, the plot had turned dark: the offensive line collapsed like a condemned building, and fans who’d once praised Stoops’ program building started treating his flirtation with Texas A&M like a betrayal in a Faulkner story.
The cruel irony? In a state where basketball championships are measured like bourbon vintages, Stoops made football matter. He turned seven straight bowl games into an expectation rather than a miracle. As whispers suggest he might walk away, Kentucky faces a terrifying question: What if their greatest football coach ever was also their last chance at sustained relevance? In Lexington, where basketball season can’t start soon enough, they learn that success and satisfaction rarely arrive in the same bottle.
9. Hugh Freeze – Auburn
In the Gothic horror story that is Auburn football, Hugh Freeze has managed to accomplish something previously thought impossible: making Jordan-Hare Stadium about as intimidating as a petting zoo. The latest chapter? A 17-7 loss to Vanderbilt that read less like a football game and more like an exorcism gone wrong—except the demons won.
The numbers tell a story of decay that would make Edgar Allan Poe proud: 4-10 against SEC opponents since his arrival, an offense that treats the end zone like it’s radioactive, and a fan base discovering that their traditional autumn rituals of victory have been replaced by something far more sinister: mediocrity. They’re not just losing; they’re losing to Vanderbilt at home, the kind of plot twist that makes Stephen King seem unimaginative.
The cruel irony? After enduring what they called “the worst coach in SEC history, ” Auburn hired Freeze to be their savior.” Now, as Freeze watches his quarterback Payton Thorne perform weekly reenactments of college football’s greatest disasters while Jarquez Hunter stands idle on the sideline, they learn a painful lesson: sometimes the cure can feel worse than the disease. On the Plains, where “War Eagle” once struck fear into visitors, they discover that not all resurrection stories have happy endings.
10. Lincoln Riley – USC
Lincoln Riley’s USC experiment has begun to resemble a Silicon Valley startup in freefall—the kind where the CEO starts banning journalists, restricting information flow, and contemplating whether to return the deposit on the party clown. The numbers tell the story of this implosion: 5-11 in their last 16 games, a stark reversal from the 17-3 start that had USC boosters dreaming of their next Pete Carroll.
Saturday’s 26-21 loss to Washington felt less like a football game and more like a hedge fund’s last trading day. Miller Moss threw three interceptions, each one driving down USC’s stock price a little further. The remaining schedule—Nebraska, UCLA, Notre Dame—looms like a series of margin calls. A bowl game, once considered a foregone conclusion in the Riley era, now feels about as sure as a cryptocurrency recovery.
The tragedy isn’t just in the losing—it’s in watching Riley transform from offensive genius to besieged executive. We expect his next move to come straight from his Oklahoma playbook: painting the windows black in Heritage Hall and the McKay Center. In L.A., where style points count double, Riley’s program has become something worse than unsuccessful: It’s become uncool.
Check out our complete list here. Share your thoughts here.
The 2024 college football season has been a rollercoaster of expectations and disappointments, and no one knows this better than the fans. As we enter the final stretch, it’s time for you to weigh in on which coaches are feeling the heat and which ones might need to update their résumés. Your voice matters – cast your vote here.
Why Your Vote Matters Now
The landscape of college football has shifted dramatically this season. We’re seeing traditional powerhouses struggle, unexpected collapses, and fan bases growing increasingly restless. From Happy Valley to Los Angeles, from The Plains to The Hill, passionate fans question whether their programs are heading in the right direction.
The Notable Names:
James Franklin, Penn State
The numbers tell a story that Penn State fans know all too well: 13-26 against AP Top 25 teams, 3-18 against Top 10 teams, and a painful 1-10 record against Ohio State. The same old story played out in a year when the playoffs seemed within reach. Is being “good” good enough for Happy Valley?
Lincoln Riley, USC
Making $10 million per year comes with expectations, and at 4-5 (2-5 in conference play), Riley’s Trojans are in danger of missing a bowl game entirely. The shine from that 11-3 first season is fading fast, and the remaining games against Nebraska, UCLA, and Notre Dame could define his future.
Hugh Freeze, Auburn
When Vanderbilt becomes your latest disappointment in a season full of them, questions arise. Freeze’s Tigers are matching the identical SEC records that got his predecessor fired, and while recruiting rankings look promising, the on-field product tells a different story. That “snake oil salesman charm” might need more than future promises to satisfy the Auburn faithful.
Sam Pittman, Arkansas
Giving up 63 points at home to Ole Miss might be the final straw. When your head coach admits you got “out-played, out-coached, and out-physicaled,” it’s hard to maintain confidence. The question isn’t whether Pittman can get you to 6-6; it’s whether that’s enough for a program with Arkansas’s history.
Other Hot Seats to Watch
Ryan Walters (Purdue): A potential 1-11 season looms
Mike Norvell (Florida State): Last year’s ACC title might buy time, but 2024’s 1-7 conference record burns
Brent Pry (Virginia Tech): That 1-11 record in one-score games isn’t winning any favor
Kevin Wilson (Tulsa): Losing 45-7 at halftime to a previously 1-6 UAB team speaks volumes
Sonny Cumbie (Louisiana Tech): Three straight losing seasons could spell doom
Make Your Voice Heard
Now it’s your turn. Whether you’re a frustrated fan looking to send a message or a satisfied supporter wanting to back your coach, your vote matters. The temperature on these hot seats changes weekly, and your input helps shape the conversation about the future of these programs.
Cast your vote now and let these coaches know exactly where they stand. After all, in college football, the court of public opinion can be just as impactful as the scoreboard.
A Hot Seat Heatwave is heading our way, featuring seats under some of the biggest names in the game. Every week, we’re tracking the coaches feeling the pressure, those whose jobs are on the line with every win and loss. This week, we’ve got a new entry into our Top 10, plus updates on two coaches facing mounting scrutiny as their programs struggle to find their footing. Get ready, folks, because things are about to get interesting.
Entering the top 10 this week is Mark Stoops at Kentucky
Mark Stoops – Kentucky
Conference: SEC
Base Salary: $9,000,000
School Win Percentage: 52.1%
Career Win Percentage: 52.1%
Stoops has a solid record but faces high expectations, given his substantial salary.
Let’s delve into the remarkable transformation under Mark Stoops. He took the reins at Kentucky, a program once considered the SEC’s underdog, and turned them into a formidable contender. It’s a story of resilience and determination. He inherited a 2-10 team and sculpted them into a consistent bowl contender, shattering decades-long losing streaks against rivals like Florida and Tennessee. He even led them to 10-win seasons, a feat they hadn’t achieved since the disco era.
However, with success comes the burden of expectations. The weight of these expectations is palpable, and it’s starting to take a toll on Stoops. The fans are growing impatient. They’re weary of the 7-5 seasons, the predictable offense, and the losses to teams they believe they should outplay. They see the potential in the team and question why Kentucky isn’t vying for SEC titles.
Now, Stoops isn’t backing down. He’s got that tough-guy mentality, that “I’ve been here before, I’ll weather this storm” attitude. But the pressure’s mounting. He needs to find a way to get this offense rolling, win those crucial games, and show that Kentucky can take that next step.
Here’s the twist: his buyout is surprisingly low. This opens up a world of possibilities for Kentucky. If the situation doesn’t improve, they could make a change without incurring significant financial strain. Stoops crafted something extraordinary at Kentucky, but he’s now standing at a crossroads. He needs to evolve, adapt, and demonstrate that he can elevate this program to the next level. The clock is ticking, Mark. It’s time to silence the skeptics.
Trent Dilfer: From Super Bowl Champ to College Flop?
Trent Dilfer, UAB
Conference: American
Base Salary: $1,300,000
School Win Percentage: 26.3%
Career Win Percentage: 26.3%
Hot Seat member Adam Binaut points out: UAB has been outscored 150-55 in their last three games. This program is on life support.
Trent Dilfer stepped into UAB with a ton of hype, a Super Bowl ring, and… well, not much else. Let’s be honest: The guy had never coached college ball. He inherited a winning program and a team that crushed it year after year. And what happened? They fell apart. It’s a situation that’s left fans and analysts alike scratching their heads in frustration.
5-14. That’s the record. A far cry from the championship banners they were hanging before he got there. Sure, they had a flashy offense for a minute, breaking records and all that. But records don’t win games, do they? The defense? It was a complete disaster. And to top it off, Dilfer’s out here making comments that rub everyone the wrong way.
Look, I get it. Sometimes, things don’t work out. But this? This feels different. This feels like a mismatch from the start. UAB deserves better. They deserve a leader who can build on what they have, not tear it down. The clock’s ticking, Trent. It’s time to step up or step aside.
Stan Drayton: Can “Culture Change” Save His Job at Temple?
Stan Drayton – Temple
Conference: American
Base Salary: $2,500,000
School Win Percentage: 25.0%
Career Win Percentage: 25.0%
Drayton’s third year at Temple hasn’t seen much improvement, keeping him on the hot seat.
Stan Drayton came into Temple preaching this whole “culture change” thing. Lots of talk about trust, ownership, and building the guys up. And hey, you can see some of that. The team has a different vibe. But let’s be blunt: winning cures everything. And right now, Temple ain’t winning.
8-24. That’s the record. Not exactly inspiring, is it? You can talk about “building” all you want, but at some point, you gotta show results. Drayton hasn’t.
He’s lost talent to more prominent programs, struggled to recruit, and those offensive and defensive lines? Yikes. Needs a serious overhaul.
Check out the complete rankings here and leave any comments here.
Week 9 is in the books, and you know what that means… the heat is turning up! We’ve been tracking the whispers, the rumblings, the outright explosions on the sidelines all season long. Now, it’s YOUR turn to weigh in.
For the first time EVER, we’re opening up the Coaches Hot Seat rankings to a fan vote. That’s right, YOU get to help decide who’s feeling the burn and who’s (somehow) still skating by.
Here’s the deal:
We asked, you answered. We’ve compiled a list of the most nominated coaches from our social media channels.
We’ve got our own top 10 brewing (and let me tell you, there are some SHOCKERS in there).
But ultimately, it’s up to YOU. Head over to the Coaches Hot Seat forum and cast your vote! You can vote for as many coaches as you think deserve a spot on the list.
Think we missed someone? Drop their name in the comments!
This is YOUR chance to make your voice heard. We’ll be combining your votes with our own proprietary algorithm (it’s top-secret, folks) to create the definitive Coaches Hot Seat rankings for Week 10.
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