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Week 2 Coaches Hot Seat Rankings

Mark Haines on September 9, 2026

Luke Fickell takes over at 1 after Wisconsin was outscored 28‑3 in the second half at Lambeau Field, and Dabo Swinney climbed 44 spots after losing by 41.

Luke Fickell had Notre Dame beaten at halftime, and 86 seconds later he was the hottest seat in America.

He had company. Every other man on this board who played a football game lost too, with 1 exception, and the exception got punished for it. Mike Locksley beat somebody 62‑0 on Saturday, and this board dropped him 3 spots. Dave Doeren never left the house and climbed 5.

Anybody who finds that backward can take it up with the scoreboard. It lied twice on Saturday and again on Monday night.

Dabo Swinney moved 44 spots.

The season is 5 days old.

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The Week 2 board

Figure 1. The Week 2 Coaches Hot Seat top 10, with each coach’s position on the Week 1 board published August 31.

1.    Luke Fickell and the 86 seconds

Give the man his 30 minutes.

Wisconsin led 13‑10 at the break at Lambeau Field, with 75,939 people in the seats, against a Notre Dame team that would be ranked 3rd in the country by Tuesday afternoon. Then the Irish scored 14 points in 86 seconds of the third quarter. DJ McKinney took a Colton Joseph pass 55 yards the other way, and nobody laid a hand on him. The Badgers managed 3 points the rest of the night.

Final score: Notre Dame 41, Wisconsin 13.

“I don’t have a great explanation for the second half,” Fickell said.

Nobody in Madison has asked him for one in 4 years.

Wisconsin has this instead:

  • 7,193 people quit buying tickets. A 13.1% drop, and an athletic department that believed them enough to write ticket revenue down 11.6% in its own budget. Chanting is free. Nobody cancels 7,193 season tickets by accident.
  • The record is 16‑22. 3 full seasons and 1 game in Madison, all of it pointing the same direction.
  • The schedule was supposed to be the gift. No Ohio State. No Oregon. No Michigan. No Indiana. Wisconsin cleared his calendar of every excuse it could find, and he opened against the 1 non-conference opponent left on it capable of embarrassing him.

They hired Luke Fickell to put a ceiling on a program that used to win 9 games a year in its sleep. 3 years later, the Badgers cannot locate the floor with a flashlight.

He takes the top spot from a man who lost by less.

2.    Greg Schiano and the 8 possessions

Greg Schiano scored a touchdown on his opening drive Thursday night and then took the rest of the evening off.

8 straight possessions, no points. UMass 37, Rutgers 21, in Piscataway, where Rutgers had the post-game fireworks show lined up in advance, seemingly expecting a win.

The winner deserves a good look. UMass went 0‑12 last season and came in on a 16-game losing streak. UMass had not beaten an FBS opponent since a win over Army in 2023. Rutgers was favored by roughly 28, and the Minutemen answered that opening touchdown with 30 unanswered points while Dylan Lonergan, imported from Boston College to solve the quarterback position, threw 3 interceptions and lost a fumble.

Now somebody in New Jersey must live with it.

The UMass head coach is Joe Harasymiak. From 2022 to 2024, he ran Greg Schiano’s defense and was twice nominated for the prestigious Broyles Award after building a top-20 national defense.

Schiano’s 2025 defense finished last in the FBS, all 136 of them, at 7.6 yards allowed per play. His old coordinator brought a winless roster into that stadium, and his team moved the ball whenever the mood struck. A bad Thursday looks nothing like that. Schiano watched his own methods work beautifully from the wrong sideline.

Schiano has coached 208 games at Rutgers across 2 tenures and won 99.

People in New Brunswick have been saying for years that Greg Schiano is the only man alive who can win in Piscataway. Thursday night was the first time that stopped sounding like a compliment.

3.    Mike Norvell and the 585 yards

The genius got outgained by 261 yards, won the turnover battle by 3, and lost anyway.

SMU beat Florida State 27‑24 on Monday night in a stadium that lost power and pushed kickoff back nearly 2 hours, and the lights were not the only thing in Tallahassee that went out early. The Mustangs put up 585 yards. Florida State managed 324, took the ball away 4 times, and converted all of that into 7 points. Bill Connelly’s postgame model gave the Seminoles a 1.4% chance of winning a game they lost by 3.

Doak Campbell booed him when the video board found him.

Norvell went 0‑4 in one-score games last season. He is 0‑5 now.

That number is the entire case against him, and it fits on a napkin. Hand this man 4 extra possessions, a home crowd and a 3-point deficit in the fourth quarter, and he will find a way to give it back. He has done it 5 times in a row.

Florida State still has not won a road game since November of 2023. Monday was at home, so the streak got the night off, along with everybody in garnet who was supposed to tackle Kevin Jennings.

He drops to 3 because 2 other men had worse weekends. Nothing in Tallahassee got better.

4.    Mike Locksley and the 62 points that cost him 3 spots

Mike Locksley beat somebody 62‑0, and this board moved him down, and the only thing he can blame is his own schedule.

Maryland gained 646 yards. Maryland ran for 365 on 40 carries. Maryland scored 6 rushing touchdowns. Maryland held Hampton to 85 total yards, and 10 of them on the ground. Hampton plays in the FCS and had never once in its history lined up across from a big-time program.

“Excited again that we were able to get a win for the first time in a long time,” Locksley said.

That is the head coach of a Big Ten football program describing a shutout of Hampton as a special occasion.

The awful part is that he is right. Maryland had not won a football game in almost 11 months. The Terrapins dropped the final 8 games of 2025 and then waited out the summer for Hampton to arrive and break the drought. The non-conference winning streak now stands at 19, the longest active run in the FBS. Nobody in this country beats the teams that agreed in advance to lose quite like Mike Locksley.

The seat cools 3 spots. It cools the way a stove cools when somebody opens a window.

Every game that made it hot is still on the schedule.

5.    Dave Doeren and the 0 snaps

Dave Doeren climbed 5 spots without leaving the house.

NC State did not play. The only football Raleigh has seen in 2026 is a 34‑8 loss at Virginia, 168 total yards, 3.3 per play, and a fan base that started the argument before this newsletter printed a number. He moved up 5 anyway, because 3 men above him fell off the board.

Richmond comes to Carter-Finley on Friday.

Fourteenth season, FCS opponent, 4 days after an idle Saturday, his own supporters spent relitigating him. Somebody in Raleigh should check on the man.

6.    Dave Aranda and the 1-point

Dave Aranda intercepted the other quarterback 3 times and lost by 1.

Auburn 17, Baylor 16, in Atlanta. Byrum Brown made his first start for the Tigers, threw 3 picks, and won. DJ Lagway went 27-of-54 for 333 yards and got Baylor into the end zone on 4th-and-goal with 9 seconds to play, and Aranda sent the offense back out for 2 points rather than take the tie. It died a yard short of the line.

Nobody in Waco is arguing with that call, and neither am I. The call was never the problem.

Aranda is 36‑38 at Baylor with 1 winning season since the 2021 conference title. A team that takes the football away from a first-time starter 3 times and still loses by a point had already told on itself long before anybody lined up for a conversion.

7.    Butch Jones and the 4 interceptions

Butch Jones led 3 separate times before halftime and handed Memphis the football 4 times, and only 1 of those facts made it into the final.

Memphis 42, Arkansas State 24. Trey Owens, the Texas transfer, threw for 325 yards in his first career start, and Jones announced afterward that Owens keeps the starting job. Memphis ran for 335 on its way to 523 total yards while Jaylin Carter scored 4 touchdowns, 3 of them after the break.

Jones is 26‑38 in Jonesboro across 6 seasons, and his point differential has finished negative in every one of them, including the 8‑5 that Arkansas keeps holding up as evidence.

6 years is long enough to stop calling it a rebuild.

Eight, Nine and Ten: The 44 spots and the 30 spots

2 men climbed into this top 10 from the middle of the board, and 1 of them covered 44 spots to get here.

Dabo Swinney, Clemson, 50 to 6. LSU won 51‑10 with better than 600 yards of offense, the worst beating of Swinney’s Clemson career. He spent the summer calling his own roster a bunch of nobodies. Lane Kiffin agreed with him in Baton Rouge, in public, by 41. The loss has fans and experts questioning if his older methods still work in modern college football. Candidly, I don’t think Clemson will fire him – his buyout is too high – but a negotiated exit or Swinney stepping down at the end of the season are both realistic options.

Bill O’Brien, Boston College, 40 to 10. Cincinnati won 34‑15 while JC French ran for 3 touchdowns and threw for a 4th. Boston College went 2‑10 a year ago and opened the sequel getting outscored by 19.

Joe Moorhead, Akron, 12 to 9. Wake Forest 38, Akron 16, with the Zips opening as a 24.5-point underdog. Moorhead is 13‑36 at Akron and has never finished a season above .500 there. This is his 5th.

The 3 who came off

Lance Leipold, Matt Rhule, and Chris Creighton are gone from this board, and none of them did anything to earn the favor.

Leipold sat at 5 a week ago. Creighton sat at 9. Their seats did not cool by a degree. 5 other men simply had a worse 5 days, and that is how a top 10 behaves in September. A coach doesn’t get relief around here. Somebody else just steps in front of him.

What Friday night settles

Greg Schiano goes to Chestnut Hill on Friday to play Bill O’Brien.

Number 2 on this board against number 10, 4 days after both lost to opponents they had no business losing to. Whoever loses spends next week explaining it to the other, and both know precisely how it will read in this space.

Somebody will be number 1 on this board next Tuesday, and it may well be whichever of them loses.

The rule for this week

Check who a man beat before checking whether he won.

Mike Locksley won by 62 and fell 3 spots because Hampton is an FCS program that had never played a big-time opponent in its life. Greg Schiano lost by 16 and climbed 6, because UMass went 0‑12 last year and the man holding the clipboard on the other side of the stadium used to work for him. The scoreboard reported both games accurately and got both wrong.

The only 2 men on this board who did not lose a football game over the weekend are ranked 5th and 7th on it.

Nobody made a mistake.

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The Clock In The Stadium Said Michigan Lost. The Big Ten Has A Different Clock, And You Are Not Allowed To See It

Mark Haines on September 7, 2026

The clock you watched isn’t the real clock

Everybody in that stadium looked at the same number: zero.

Bryce Underwood threw a Hail Mary out the back of the end zone. The scoreboard hit triple zeros. Western Michigan’s sideline emptied onto the field, because that’s what teams do when the clock says the game is over and they are ahead. Lance Taylor said he looked up and it was past zeros before anybody touched the ball. Then a replay official reached into a drawer somewhere and produced one more second; Underwood hit JJ Buchanan for 47 yards, and Michigan won 13-12.

So which clock was right, and why does the answer require a press release?

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The Big Ten’s explanation eats itself

Read the conference statement slowly, because it argues against the conference.

The Big Ten says it used a direct shot of the game clock in the stadium, side by side with the play, to rule that Broncos safety Micah Davis touched the ball with one second left. Fine. Except NBC’s rules analyst, Terry McAulay, a man who refereed three Super Bowls, went on the air and said his producer had confirmed the network’s inset clock was the stadium clock. That is the clock you saw. That clock read zero with the ball still hanging in the air, and McAulay said flatly that it wasn’t close.

Both of those things can’t be true, and the conference is the one asking you to believe both.

Introducing the clock nobody knew existed

The fallback explanation is worse than no explanation.

The story now is that the Hawk-Eye replay system had a different sync, which means there is a version of Saturday night’s clock that lives in a replay center and disagrees with the version bolted to the stadium. The conference notes that 85 minutes before kickoff, every broadcast camera in the replay system, including the one pointed at the game clock, gets synced with a strobe. Wonderful. Nobody asked how it gets synced. They asked why the one clock that the players, the coaches, the officials on the field, the 110,000 in the seats, and the audience at home all use is the backup copy. McAulay, live on the air, said the Big Ten was going to have to explain how anyone got to one second on that play.

Twenty-four hours later, the Big Ten still hasn’t.

Now go check the rest of college football

If the visible clock is advisory, the problem doesn’t stop in Ann Arbor.

  • Every game that has ever ended with zeros on the board and a ball in the air is now a second short
  • Every coach who has ever managed the last 10 seconds of a half did it off a display the conference now treats as approximate
  • Every quarterback who has spiked the ball with one tick showing was working from a number that might have been someone else’s number
  • Every fan who has watched a clock run out and assumed the game was over was, it turns out, guessing

Basketball figured this out with a red light around the backboard, and college football has decided the light is a suggestion.

Then Michigan stormed its own field

And here is where a bad night became embarrassing.

Michigan is ranked. Michigan was favored by four touchdowns. Michigan is the flagship of the state, and Western Michigan is a directional school 130 miles up the road with a $1.5 million payday and nothing to lose. During the celebration, you could hear chants of “fire Kyle” in the background, which is a hell of a soundtrack for a win. Then the students came over the wall to celebrate surviving a MAC team by one point on a second that the visible clock says never existed.

A ranked blue blood rushing the field after that is the single most humiliating image of Week 1.

What this does to the seat

Nobody gets fired for winning, and nobody gets a pass on how.

Kyle Whittingham called it one for the history books, which is true in a way he didn’t intend, and then he did the honest thing at the podium and listed what his team failed to do:

  • Stop the run
  • Run the ball
  • Win the turnover margin
  • Get enough first downs

Western Michigan kicked four field goals, took the ball away three times, and ran a 20-play drive that ate 13 minutes and 40 seconds off a clock that belongs to somebody else. Michigan trailed for 60 minutes. Whittingham has a long enough record that Saturday counts, and what it says is that his run defense couldn’t get a MAC offense off the grass, and his quarterback put the ball on the ground at his own 31 with 1:50 to go. If that is still true in October, nobody will remember the Hail Mary.

Michigan is 1-0, and the only clock anyone in that stadium could see says otherwise.

Weekly Coaches Hot Seat rankings will be available Wednesday.

They’re still playing. SMU at Florida State closes Week 1 tonight, with SMU a slight favorite by win probability and a huge favorite in the eyes of most who follow college football. Look for Norvel to keep that hot seat hot. Subscribe to have the rankings delivered straight to your inbox each week.

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Mike Norvell Won by 17 and Got Hotter. Dave Doeren Lost by 26 and Jumped to 10 on Our Board. Week 0 Wasn’t About Wins.

Mark Haines on August 31, 2026

Week 1 Coaches Hot Seat Rankings

Florida State wrote New Mexico State a $1.4 million check and got booed 20 minutes into the game it bought.

The money amounts to roughly $82,000 per point of the final margin, and the margin was 17. Mike Norvell, in his seventh season as Florida State’s head coach, was favored by 31.5 and led by 7 in the third quarter. His own building turned on him in the second quarter, after a touchdown drive by the visitors and a three-and-out by the hosts, and the invoice sat there the rest of the night.

That is the whole weekend in a single transaction. Across 8 games, 4 coaches walked out of Saturday hotter than they walked in, and only 2 of them lost. It reads backward only if you believe this board only measures wins. It never has. It measures whether a program looked like the thing it’s paying to be, and on Saturday a lot of them didn’t.

Something stated up front, because the window matters more than the label. Only 3 of the 10 coaches on our board played, so the weekend produced exactly 1 move. Dave Doeren enters the top 10 at 10, and Barry Odom comes off it. Doeren spent most of last season bubbling under, parked in the teens while the pressure built, and Saturday finished a climb that’s been 3 years in the making. Mike Locksley, Lance Leipold, Luke Fickell, Butch Jones, Dave Aranda, Matt Rhule, and Greg Schiano all open next weekend, and the rest of the board holds until they do.

Figure 1. Every Week 0 favorite measured against its closing spread. Orange marks the 4 favorites that failed to cover, including a Florida State team that laid 31.5 and won by 17. Source: closing consensus lines via BetMGM, Caesars, DraftKings and FanDuel, compiled by College Football News. Final scores via the CHS 2026 season workbook.

Mike Norvell and the 1,008 days

The number that walked into Doak Campbell Stadium with Norvell on Saturday was 1,008.

That is how many days had passed since Florida State last won a football game outside Tallahassee, a 24-15 win at Florida on November 25, 2023. The streak stands at 11 straight road losses. Week 0 couldn’t touch it because the game was at home, and neither of the 2 tells this newsletter named in the spring was on the schedule. No bus ride, no close fourth quarter.

That left a single question: Does this look like a program that has fixed something?

Florida State put up 419 yards at 6.3 a play and went 6-for-6 in the red zone against a team picked near the bottom of the FBS. Then the other column. New Mexico State converted 10 of its 17 third downs. Trey Hedden, the Aggies quarterback, went 10-of-13 for 158 yards on third down alone, including throws of 33 and 34 yards for scores. Ashton Daniels, the Auburn transfer running Norvell’s offense, finished 17-of-27 for 202 yards with a touchdown and an interception, and spent the night getting hit in a pocket that wouldn’t hold.

Norvell said during the offseason that he expected 2026 to be the best year of his life.

The season is 1 game old.

I am still waiting for the part where somebody at Florida State explains what’s different. Different quarterback, yes. Different play-caller, technically, since Norvell took the sheet back himself. Different result? New Mexico State cut the lead to 10 midway through the fourth quarter, and New Mexico State has gone 7-17 across the previous 2 seasons.

Here is the sentence that should follow him into September. Norvell has 4 losing seasons at Florida State. The 3 men who held the job before him produced 4 between them across the previous 44 years.

He won the game and got the worse half of it.

Dave Doeren and the 168 yards

Dave Doeren has coached NC State for 14 seasons, and Saturday spent about 30 minutes relitigating all of them.

Virginia beat the Wolfpack 34-8 and had it finished by halftime. NC State gained 168 total yards on 3.3 yards per play with 10 first downs, punted 5 times before the break, and turned it over twice. CJ Bailey went 12-of-23 for 84 yards with an interception and a lost fumble in the red zone. Beau Pribula, the Missouri and Penn State transfer now playing for Tony Elliott, went 9-of-11 for 155 yards with 2 touchdowns and led everybody on the field in rushing with 110 yards on 15 carries.

Doeren had won 8 consecutive season openers. He was 4-0 against Virginia. Both of those died on the same afternoon.

Now the structural number, the one that has always defined him. Doeren has 8 seasons of 8 wins or more at NC State. He has zero seasons of 10.

“It was disappointing as hell, to say the least,” he said afterward. “I own that. That’s on me. Everybody can blame the head coach. That’s great.”

Everybody did.

Doeren went into Saturday at 14 on our board and came out at 10. His fan base didn’t make that call; we did. But what a fan base does on the night of a 34-8 loss is one of the things this board reads, and NC State’s was loud enough to hear from here.

Figure 2. Offensive yards per play for all 16 teams that played in Week 0. NC State and TCU finished 15th and 14th of 16 in the weekend both coaches needed to go differently, and Florida State posted 6.3 against a team picked near the bottom of the FBS. Source: CHS 2026 team stats workbook, Week 0.

Sonny Dykes and the fewest points in 31 games

Sonny Dykes flew a brand-new offense to Dublin and came home with the fewest points TCU has scored since 2023.

The Horned Frogs lost 15-10 to a North Carolina team that went 4-8 last season. Jaden Craig, the Harvard transfer installed to replace Josh Hoover under new coordinator Gordon Sammis, threw for 175 yards. That is TCU’s lowest passing total since the January 2023 championship game against Georgia. The offense posted a 27% success rate, the worst mark of a Dykes tenure that started in 2022. The Frogs also took 11 penalties for 90 yards and jumped offside on fourth-and-1 to end it.

The Aer Lingus Classic has developed a habit worth knowing about:

  • 2022. Nebraska lost it to Northwestern and fired Scott Frost 12 days later.
  • 2023. Navy lost it and finished 5-7.
  • 2024. Florida State lost it and collapsed to 2-10.
  • 2025. Kansas State lost it, started 1-3, and Chris Klieman retired before the bowl.

That is 4 straight losers and 4 bad autumns. Dykes gets to find out whether that’s a pattern or a coincidence, and he gets to find out in public.

Chris Creighton and the 69 rushing yards

Chris Creighton got Eastern Michigan the 500th win in program history and couldn’t run the ball 3 yards at a time to do it.

The Eagles beat Sacramento State 28-17 and carried 30 times for 69 yards, an average of 2.3. Dontae McMillan ran for 1,014 yards last season at 5.7 yards per carry. Noah Kim carried the whole night instead, 27-of-38 for 279 yards with 2 touchdowns and a third on the ground.

The defense looks like it surrendered 17 points. It surrendered 11. Sacramento State blocked a punt and scored 6 on a defensive return, so the honest number for Creighton’s defense is better than the box score reads.

That’s the good news, and it’s thinner than it sounds. A 4-8 team that fixed nothing about how it moves the ball on the ground beat a program playing the first FBS game in its history, and needed a late interception to do it.

The 3 winners and what their wins were worth

Saturday produced 3 wins that will read differently in November.

  • Bill Belichick, North Carolina. In year 2, he got the first halftime lead over a major-conference opponent of his college tenure, and his offense had almost nothing to do with it. The Tar Heels scored 15 points with 0 passing touchdowns and 90 rushing yards on 29 carries while losing 2 fumbles, and the defense held TCU to 281 yards. He won a game his defense won for him, and after 4-8 he’ll take it.
  • Tavita Pritchard, Stanford. In his first game as a head coach, he watched a 23-7 lead turn into a tie, then scored with 1:41 left and added a scoop-and-score 29 seconds after that to beat Hawaii 37-27. By CBS Sports’ count, Stanford had been the worst closer in the sport over 5 years, so the debut counts as an exorcism.
  • Tony Elliott, Virginia. He replaced an 11-win quarterback and upgraded. Pribula’s 110 rushing yards were the most by a Virginia quarterback since 2020, and Elliott, sitting on a seat that was warm 2 seasons ago and an extension that runs through 2030, had the cleanest Saturday of anybody in week 0.

The 2 debuts and the 7.0 yards per play

Saturday added 2 programs to the FBS and gave Memphis the loudest argument of the weekend.

North Dakota State opened its FBS life by beating Jacksonville State 33-7 in the Fargodome, and the Bison are 10-5 against FBS opponents since moving to Division I in 2004. Sacramento State lost by 11 in its first game at this level under first-year head coach Alonzo Carter, and blocked a punt and scored on defense. Memphis went to Las Vegas and beat Dan Mullen’s UNLV 27-21, averaging 7.0 yards per play, the best figure anybody posted all weekend, and sacked Jackson Arnold 6 times after halftime.

Mullen won 10 games in his first season in Las Vegas and was voted the national first-year coach of the year for it. He opened his second by losing at home. Nobody is putting him on a hot seat over a single Saturday, and everybody in that building noticed.

The rule for the next 3 months

Watch the crowd before checking the score.

Florida State won by 17, and its own crowd booed in the second quarter of a $1.4 million tune-up. NC State lost by 26, and its own coach volunteered the blame before a reporter could ask him for it. Norvell has a fan base that has quit on the games. Doeren has a fan base that hasn’t quit on him yet. The distance between those 2 conditions is the entire difference between a bad Saturday and a hot seat, and a win-loss column will never show it to you.

The other 7 coaches on our top 10 Coaches Hot Seat Rankings board play their first game next weekend.

Stay tuned.

That’s a Wrap

Eight games, and neither coach who needed a clean Saturday got one.

  • Mike Norvell won by 17 and got hotter. Florida State paid New Mexico State $1.4 million to come to Doak Campbell, laid 31.5, won by 17, and heard boos in the second quarter. The road losing streak is untouched at 11 games and 1,008 days, because this one was at home.
  • Dave Doeren went from 14 to 10 on the Coaches Hot Seat board. NC State managed 168 total yards on 3.3 a play in a 34-8 loss; Barry Odom came off the top 10 to make room, and the fan base started the argument before we published a number.

The suits had a better week than the coaches

The SEC’s other 15 schools called a meeting, made sure LSU wasn’t invited, and spent it hunting through 48 pages of bylaws for a lawful way to throw a member out of the conference.

They haven’t found one. They’re still reading.

In another room, a committee voted to erase Week 0 and take 5 days off the January portal window, then stood up and called the whole thing clarity.

And the federal rulebook this sport has chased for 7 years slipped again, for a reason that has nothing to do with football and everything to do with men who’d rather be home campaigning.

Not one of those 3 stories has a coach in it. Not one of them has anybody who ever threw a block.

They’re all in the newsletter.

On the Radar is exclusively available to newsletter subscribers. Join us here [LINK]

Next week: The Diagnosis, Dave Doeren

Doeren is the winningest coach in NC State history and the second-longest-tenured coach in the ACC behind Dabo Swinney, yet in 13 seasons he has never won 10 games. That isn’t a slump, and it isn’t bad luck. It’s the product. NC State built a program that can’t fall far enough to fire him and can’t climb high enough to matter, and it pays him almost $6 million a year to hold it right there.

The number to carry in is 0. Across 13 seasons: 95 wins, more than any coach the school has ever had, 4 nine-win years, and 0 seasons of 10.

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Week 0 – 2026 Coaches Hot Seat Rankings

Mark Haines on August 25, 2026

Wisconsin Fans Stopped Chanting and Canceled 7,193 Season Tickets. That Is How You Measure a Hot Seat in 2026

Here is who has the least room to fail in 2026, and why it is not the order our own numbers produce.

Every coach in the top 4 was publicly saved by his own school last fall. A president or an athletic director issued a written statement explaining why the man was staying at Florida State, Wisconsin, Baylor, and Maryland. That detail matters to you for one reason: it means the school already ran the buyout, already weighed the alternative, and already told you in public which way it leans.

Nobody publishes that statement about a winning coach.

A vote of confidence is a receipt with a date. The top 10 sits below, with the number that puts each man there.

Lance Leipold at 5 is the exception nobody had to defend, which is exactly why he ranks behind 4 men who did.

The Board

1. Mike Norvell, Florida State: 7 wins in 2 seasons and 53 million reasons he is still employed

Florida State did something almost no athletic department has the nerve to do.

It publicly graded its own football program in writing and gave it an F. The president, the athletic director, and the board chair put out a statement agreeing the operation needed structural changes. Then they kept the man operating it. A school announced the building was on fire, named no firefighters, and renewed the lease.

Here is what the fire looks like in numbers. 7 wins across 2 seasons, which arrived directly after a 13-1 year, and 38-34 for the whole tenure. No road win since November of 2023. In 2025, the Seminoles outscored their schedule by 11 points a game and finished 5-7, and if that sounds impossible, it is because the entire margin came from beating an FCS team 77-3 and a MAC team 66-10.

Remove those 2 games and the 11 points become two-tenths of a point. Remove the tune-ups from anybody’s season, and you get the truth about them.

The buyout is the reason he is still employed and the reason this seat is the hottest in America. Walking away after 2025 will cost about $53 million. After this season, it drops to roughly 46. The price of the decision falls at the exact moment the evidence for making it arrives, and Florida State has already told you in writing which way it grades him.

He opens Saturday against New Mexico State. The hottest seat in the country gets a bye week disguised as a game.

2. Luke Fickell, Wisconsin: 7,193 fans quit buying tickets

In September, with Camp Randall chanting for his firing during the fourth quarter, Luke Fickell was asked what he wanted to say to the people paying to watch this.

He said they had to be just like the team.

The fans took him up on it.

Wisconsin sold 47,587 season tickets for 2026, down from 54,780. That is 7,193 people who decided their best effort was staying home, a 13.1 percent drop, and the athletic department believed it enough to write ticket revenue down 11.6 percent in the budget. A chant is free. A season ticket is not. When a fan base stops yelling and starts subtracting, the message has been upgraded.

Then the man holding the umbrella left. Chris McIntosh hired Fickell, defended him through 2 losing seasons, published the letter, and took a job at the Big Ten office. Shawn Eichorst walked into a building holding a coach he did not hire and a reputation that survives either outcome.

At media days in July, Fickell said the last 2 years had not been up to the standard and that he was not shying away from it. Nobody asked him to shy away from it. 12.8 points a game, 135th out of 136 teams, is not the kind of thing that hides.

This year the schedule finally cooperates. No Ohio State. No Oregon. No Michigan. No Indiana. The easiest Big Ten draw of his tenure arrives in the same season as a $21.3 million buyout and a new boss, and the sport rarely removes every excuse at once like that.

3. Dave Aranda, Baylor: 59 players left in one offseason

Dave Aranda spent his July at Big 12 media days explaining the concept of finishing.

There is a start, he said, and a middle, and a finish, and Baylor had been working on the finish all offseason. He said the Bears had to close the deal. It is a fine coaching thought, and it lands strangely when you check what happened the last time this program reached December.

59 players closed a deal. All of them with other schools.

That’s not a roster refresh, and this is where the numbers everybody else uses fall apart. Message-board sentiment reads Baylor as the calmest fan base in this group, well behind the noise at Wisconsin and Maryland. Quiet is not the same as content. Look at what left the building rather than what got posted.

  • The class they saved him for left too. 4-star defensive lineman Jamarion Carlton went to Texas, and 4-star cornerback Jamarion Vincent went to Michigan. The recruiting haul Baylor cited as its reason to keep Aranda is suiting up elsewhere this fall.
  • The man who would have made the call was already gone. Athletic director Mack Rhoades resigned in November, and university president Linda Livingstone announced that Aranda was returning, with the team sitting at 5-5.
  • The record has not moved in 4 years. Aranda is 36-37 at Baylor and 22-28 since the 2021 conference title, with 1 winning season in that stretch and a 1-5 mark against TCU.
  • He handed off the defense. Aranda gave the unit to Joe Klanderman and moved into a front-office role. A defensive coordinator answered the hot seat by doing less defensive coordinating.

An anonymous Big 12 coach told Athlon this summer that Aranda knows football and is a little weird. Peers don’t say that about coaches who won 10 games. New athletic director Doug McNamee now runs a program he didn’t build for a coach he didn’t pick, and there is no more precarious arrangement in the sport.

4. Michael Locksley, Maryland: 71 percent of the roster back and 8 straight losses to explain

Michael Locksley has the angriest fan base on this board, and only the fourth spot, and the reason is that Maryland just handed him everything he has been asking for.

71 percent of production returns, second most in the country behind Notre Dame. 14 projected starters are back. Malik Washington returns at quarterback after throwing for 2,963 yards as a true freshman. Every alibi from last season, the youth and the churn and the roster that had never played a down together, reported to camp this month with a year of experience and nowhere left to point.

The 2025 season is a strange document. Maryland led in 11 of its 12 games. Maryland then lost the last 8 in a row. A team that cannot hold a lead 8 consecutive times has stopped being unlucky and started being coached that way.

Athletic director Jim Smith wrote his letter, backed an eighth season, and promised more money for the roster. The buyout is 13 million dollars, which in this crowd is a rounding error. Public support plus a cheap exit is the definition of a short rope, and 37-49 with no winning conference record in 8 attempts is how the rope got short.

5. Lance Leipold, Kansas: back-to-back 5-7 seasons after the rebuild that made him

Nothing happened at Kansas last fall, which is precisely why Lance Leipold is on this list.

No statement. No letter. No president stepping to a microphone to explain the football coach. Sentiment in Lawrence still runs positive, the only place in this group where that is true, because Leipold took a program that won 21 games in 11 years and got it to 9 wins and consecutive bowls without padding the schedule to do it. That buys a man something, and it does not buy him forever.

Then 5-7. Then 5-7 again. He is 27-35 at Kansas, and the arrow has pointed the same direction for 2 straight seasons.

Back-to-back losing years after the rebuild that made your name is where pressure begins. Fifth on this board is the polite way of saying that the grace period now has an expiration date.

Where our numbers and our judgment disagree

The workbook that runs this board would order the top 5 differently, and hiding that would make the entire exercise a fraud.

On the numbers alone, it reads Locksley first at 93.2, Norvell second at 84.5, Leipold third at 84.2, Fickell fourth at 77.9, Aranda sixth at 76.1. The published board moves Norvell up 1, Fickell up 2, Aranda up 3, Locksley down 3, Leipold down 2.

Every one of those moves comes from the same blind spot. The model counts what a fan base says and cannot count what an institution does, and institutions are the better tell. Maryland is loud, cheap to unwind, and just committed more money to the coach. Baylor is silent and just watched 59 players walk. Loud and cheap wins a column in sentiment and loses a season.

Check the call in November. That is what the Prior column is for.

What to watch Saturday

Week Zero is 1 game, and anybody selling it as a referendum is selling something.

It does hand you one thing. Norvell hosts a New Mexico State program with 7 wins in 2 seasons, and there is no version of a competitive fourth quarter in Tallahassee that reads as progress. Everybody else waits. The board barely moves next week and then moves hard in October, when the window feeding these rankings finally fills with 2026 football.

Until then, this is the baseline, and baselines are only useful if someone writes them down before the season rather than after.

The bottom line

None of these 5 men is finished, and this has never been a list of who loses a job.

It is a list of who has the least room left. Four of them work for schools that already priced the alternative, chose the cheaper year, and then dressed the arithmetic up as faith. Faith had nothing to do with it. Receipts are reconciled, and December is when the accounting is done. When a university publishes a letter about its football coach, save it. Check the date in December.

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The Real Reason Luke Fickell Is on the Hot Seat at Wisconsin (It’s Not the Air Raid)

Mark Haines on July 10, 2026

Yes, Luke Fickell is on the hot seat, and it is one of the hottest in college football.

The reason is not the one most fans reach for. Wisconsin spent two years blaming the Air Raid, then fired the coordinator who ran it and watched the offense get worse, scoring 12.8 points a game in 2025. The pressure is real, and the story underneath it is more interesting than the boos suggest.

This is a pressure read, not a firing prediction. Below are the five questions that decide whether Fickell’s 2026 cools the seat or lights it, with the tell to watch for each one so you can judge the season as it happens.

Question 1: Can the offense clear the mid-20s, or is 12.8 the real Wisconsin?

Start with the number that ended the scheme debate.

In 2025, the reborn run-first offense scored 12.8 points a game, 135th out of 136 teams in the country and dead last in the Power Four. That happened after Wisconsin buried the Air Raid, which means the scheme was never the whole problem. The old system, which averaged in the low 20s, had more life in it than the throwback version brought in to save the day.

The tell to watch: look for the offense to camp in the mid-20s a game. Anything near 12 means the disease is still active, and a unit score of 24 or more is the first honest sign that the patient is up and walking.

Question 2: Does Colton Joseph survive to November?

The single biggest variable is not the scheme or the schedule; it is health.

Fickell has brought in a veteran transfer quarterback every year, and three straight have lost their seasons to injury: Tanner Mordecai’s hand in 2023, Tyler Van Dyke’s ACL in 2024, and Billy Edwards Jr.’s knee in 2025. New starter Colton Joseph is a dynamic dual-threat from Old Dominion, which is exciting and also the catch, because a runner behind a rebuilt line is an injury risk. The last three Wisconsin starters went down the same way.

The tell to watch: count how many games the Week 1 quarterback finishes. Joseph, standing on the field for the Minnesota finale, would break the pattern that has defined the entire tenure, and it matters more than any single stat line.

Question 3: Can Wisconsin make a bowl on the easiest schedule in the Big Ten?

The 2026 schedule takes away every excuse.

CBS Sports rated Wisconsin’s slate the easiest in the Big Ten, with no Ohio State, Oregon, Michigan, or Indiana. Last year’s opponents went a combined 110-53, with the eventual national champion among them. This year’s group went 69-79. With a draw this soft, six wins is the floor of competence rather than an achievement.

The tell to watch: treat bowl eligibility as the baseline, not the prize. A third straight bowl miss on a schedule this forgiving would be the loudest result of the season and a sign the problem runs deeper than luck.

Question 4: Is it bad luck or bad coaching?

This is the fairest question in the whole debate, and it deserves a real answer.

The quarterback injuries are a genuine misfortune, and no coach draws up a torn ACL. But building every season on a one-year rental with no functional backup is a roster decision, and Fickell made that call three straight times. When the school kept him, athletic director Chris McIntosh pointed at money, and there is a sliver of truth there, since Wisconsin has lagged in NIL. Paul Chryst won 67 games on less, though, and Fickell reached a College Football Playoff at Cincinnati on a fraction of a Big Ten budget.

The tell to watch: separate the wound from the plan. Injuries are luck, but depth behind the starter and finishing close games are coaching, so watch whether Wisconsin has a real answer the first time something goes wrong.

Question 5: What cools the seat, and what only looks like progress?

Not every win means the same thing this fall.

A nine-win season built on a soft schedule can still hide the same flaw, just as two non-conference blowouts can flatter a point differential. The results that move the needle are the ones that test the real problem. Wisconsin closed 2025 by upsetting ranked Washington and ranked Illinois, proof that the pulse is there when the quarterback is upright.

The results that change the read:

  • A healthy quarterback in December. If Joseph finishes the year, the biggest variable will finally break Wisconsin’s way.
  • An offense in the mid-20s. Scoring, not scheme talk, is the proof the fix took.
  • A road win over a team with a pulse. Padding the record at home proves nothing the schedule did not already promise.

The bottom line on Luke Fickell’s hot seat

This is a Structural Trend, and it is the hottest honest seat on the board.

The scheme war is over, and the offense lost anyway, which points the finger at the quarterback room rather than the playbook. The best-case scenario is real because the injuries were rotten luck, and a healthy Joseph on the softest schedule in the league could spark a genuine bounce. The buyout of about 25 million dollars buys Fickell the patience his record could not earn, so 2026 is the year the excuses finally run out.

Ask these five questions as the season unfolds, and you will know whether Wisconsin is climbing or just enjoying a soft landing.

Score it yourself

Want to run this same diagnosis on your team’s coach?

The Coach Evaluation Scorecard is our free, seven-category tool for scoring any coaching situation out of 35, so you can tell a hot seat from a cold take before the season starts. Grab it here.

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Mike Locksley’s Hot Seat in 2026: Maryland’s 18-0 and 0-19 Problem

Mark Haines on June 26, 2026

Mike Locksley is 18-0. He is also 0-19.

Locksley is the head coach at Maryland, the program he grew up rooting for, and those two numbers are why he enters 2026 coaching for his job. The 18-0 is his record in nonconference games, the bodies nobody schedules to test you. The 0-19 is his mark against ranked Big Ten teams, the only games that decide a season. He beats the filler and loses to everyone who matters, and Maryland keeps meeting that ceiling on national television.

A coach can survive a lot. He cannot survive a number that specific.

Our model grades Locksley a Trend, not a Blip, and 2026 is the cleanest test he will ever get. Maryland brought back nearly everyone that matters, from the freshman quarterback who reset its passing records to a defense that returns almost intact. If a roster this experienced still cannot beat a ranked team, the ceiling was never the talent.

Why the seat is hot

On a Sunday in November, Maryland fired Mike Locksley, and none of it was true.

A fake report tore across social media, blamed a 55-10 homecoming wipeout by Indiana, and pulled past two million views before anyone debunked it. The lie outran the truth for one reason, the same reason the seat is hot: it felt true. This is Locksley’s hometown, the program he grew up rooting for, and for the first time his own stadium chanted for the firing out loud.

Athletic director Jim Smith, in his first year, could have made the move and chose not to. Instead, he retained Locksley for 2026 and published an open letter promising more resources, conceding that competing requires a level commitment. That is not a clean endorsement. It is a new AD betting on continuity while admitting the program has been under-supported, and it leaves Locksley coaching for his job with the safety net half-removed.

Here is the standard. Ralph Friedgen won 60 percent of his games at Maryland and kept the Terps ranked across 36 separate weeks. Locksley has won 45 percent and reached the rankings in exactly one week of his entire tenure.

The comparison that fuels the heat:

  • Win rate: .453 to Friedgen’s .600. Greg Schiano at Rutgers, the peer comp, sits at .444.
  • Quality: an average SRS of 2.5 to Friedgen’s 5.5.
  • Relevance: one ranked week, against Friedgen’s 36.

The national lists agree with the fans. Sports Illustrated slots his seat among the hottest in the Big Ten, CBS Sports files him under start-improving-now, and 247Sports calls 2026 a referendum.

The rebuild that makes this hurt

To understand the fall, you have to understand what Locksley walked into.

He took the job in December 2018 as a man who already knew the worst thing. Fifteen months earlier, his son Meiko had been shot and killed in Columbia at 25, a case still unsolved, and nine months after that, a Maryland player named Jordan McNair died of heatstroke after a team workout, in the same Shock Trauma center where Meiko died. Locksley had helped recruit McNair. He did not inherit a football program so much as grief, and he came home anyway, telling recruits’ families he would treat their sons as his own.

The program was rubble. DJ Durkin had been fired after McNair’s death exposed a toxic culture, and Locksley’s first team went 3-9 with an SRS of minus 3.18, the signature of a dead program. Then he built. The SRS climbed season by season: -3.18, 0.49, 3.44, 6.68, 9.74. By 2022 and 2023, Maryland was 8-5 and 8-5 with three straight bowl wins, the longest such streak the program had ever produced, powered by quarterback Taulia Tagovailoa.

[Figure 1: SRS climb-and-fall chart, insert from the Diagnosis]

Figure 1. The climb out of a dead program to a 9.74 SRS peak, and the two-year fall that gave it all back. 2020 is omitted from trend scoring.

That 9.74 peak is what convicts him, because the program gave it all back in twenty-four months. Tagovailoa left, and Maryland has not replaced him. This is the cruelty the standings hide: Locksley already proved he could win here, which is exactly why losing it back has felt like a death in the family.

What the data says

Start with the number that ends the cookout argument: Mike Locksley is 0-19 against ranked Big Ten opponents.

In the same years, he has won 18 straight nonconference games. He beats the bodies nobody schedules to test you and loses to everybody who decides a season. Luck does not lose you the same game nineteen times. That is a ceiling, and Maryland keeps meeting it on national television.

Figure 2. The defining split of the Locksley era: unbeaten against the schedule’s filler, winless against everyone ranked.

One honest caveat, because it raises the credibility of everything else.

Friedgen coached entirely in the ACC; Locksley coaches entirely in the Big Ten, and the workbook’s strength-of-schedule numbers confirm his slate is meaningfully tougher. Part of the .600-versus-.453 gap is two leagues, not two coaches. But the harder league explains the floor, not the collapse. He hit 9.74 in this same Big Ten in 2023, then fell to minus 0.74 and minus 0.91. The conference did not change in twenty-four months. The roster did.

The full comparison: Locksley against the Maryland standard

Here is the entire profile in one place, the same way we grade every coach: Locksley measured against the school-success comp, Ralph Friedgen, and the peer comp, Greg Schiano at Rutgers.

The shading is Locksley’s only, and it is read across the three coaches. Green means he is the best of the three on that metric, red means the worst, and the rest is a wash. One glance tells the story: he wins the passing-game rows and loses almost everything that decides games.

Table 1. Career per-game and rate averages, eligible seasons only, 2020 excluded. Shading marks where Locksley ranks best (green) or worst (red) among the three coaches; defensive and giveaway metrics are scored so that lower is better. Source: CHS Hot Seat Diagnosis workbook v3.

Read the green and the red as two sentences.

The green is the passing game: completion percentage, passing yards, passing touchdowns, total yards, and total touchdowns per game, each a Locksley advantage over both comps. The red is everything that turns yards into wins: win percentage, ranked weeks, point differential, turnover margin, points allowed, and passing touchdowns allowed. A coach can lead this table in passing production and still trail it in the only column that matters, which is the win percentage row at the very top.

The defense is the reason, and the names tell the story

If you watched Maryland in November, you watched a secondary get cooked in real time.

The Terps lost their final eight games of 2025, and the defense did the losing. The unit finished fifth-worst in the Big Ten at 26.5 points allowed per game, and it got worse as the year wore on, surrendering a staggering 39.4 points per game across five November contests. They did not hold a single opponent under 20 points down the stretch. The matrix shows why: 28.0 points allowed per game to a comp average of 24.3, 236.8 passing yards allowed to 211.5, and 1.68 passing touchdowns allowed per game to a comp average of 1.32. The run game stagnated too, 128.5 rushing yards a game against a comp average of 151.2 and falling, so an offense that could throw could not run, and a defense that could not stop anyone turned every shootout into a loss.

Here is the twist, and it is the heart of the 2026 case.

Defensive coordinator Ted Monachino keeps his job and enters year two, with co-coordinator Aazaar Abdul-Rahim alongside him, so this is a continuity bet: the same coordinators, kept on to fix what they just broke. The argument for patience is that the bleed was youth, not talent. Monachino has said the young players made young-player mistakes, and Locksley points out the unit still led the Big Ten with 19 regular-season interceptions and four defensive touchdowns, the playmaking of a good defense trapped inside a unit that could not close. The bet is that experience fixes the rest.

And the experience is real, which is what makes 2026 the verdict. Maryland returns 74 percent of its defensive production, fourth nationally behind Florida, Notre Dame, and Air Force, anchored by senior linebacker Daniel Wingate, who turned down outside interest to come back and is arguably the Terps’ best 2027 draft prospect. The edge rotation of Zahir Mathis and Sidney Stewart returns, with five-star recruit Zion Elee added to it. Cornerbacks Dontay Joyner and Jamare Glasker are back, joined by Boston College transfer Amari Jackson. This is a maximally experienced defense by design.

Blip or trend

Most hot-seat lists hand you a label without telling you the window that produced it, which is selling an opinion in a lab coat.

Start the clock in 2023, Locksley’s best year, and the model says a possible blip. Start it in 2024, and the same model says a clear decline. The honest read is the shape itself: this is two straight 4-8 seasons stacked directly on the best two-year run in twenty years. That is not a dip, it is a cliff with a peak right behind it, which is the worst kind, because the talent to be good is recent enough to remember and already gone.

The label is Trend. We make the call in the open instead of hiding the window behind it.

What still works

The case for patience starts at quarterback, and his name is Malik Washington.

The in-state four-star from Archbishop Spalding started as a true freshman in 2025, set Maryland freshman passing records, and agreed to return for 2026 instead of testing the portal, the kind of continuity almost nobody at a 4-8 program keeps. He inherits a new offensive coordinator in Clint Trickett, who ran Conference USA’s top-scoring and rushing offense at Jacksonville State last year, powered by national rushing leader Cam Cook, a deliberate hire to fix the exact run-game problem the matrix flags in red. Washington has a veteran portal room behind him, Cardell Williams from Sacramento State and Devin Kargman from Kent State, so a Washington injury no longer ends the season the way it would have in 2024.

The rest of the case for waiting:

  • Continuity: Maryland returns 14 starters, tied for the second-most in the country. Locksley is betting the whole season on the idea that experience converts close losses into wins.
  • Resources: the AD’s public pledge of more NIL support, per Bleacher Report, signals the administration thinks it underbuilt the roster it is now judging.
  • Local recruiting: five-star edge Zion Elee headlines a build-from-within approach that is keeping DMV talent home, the foundation Locksley’s peak was built on.

None of this erases the cliff. It explains why a move is not automatic. But it also removes the alibis, because a roster this experienced does not get to blame youth in 2026.

The 2026 outlook: the 4-0 start is the trap

The single most dangerous thing that can happen to Maryland in 2026 is a 4-0 start, because it would prove nothing and feel like everything.

The first two openers are the kind of games the 18-game nonconference streak was built on, and Maryland should win them. The next two have teeth: a Virginia Tech rebuild under James Franklin, and a UCLA team the Terps are favored against for one reason only, home field. So even a 4-0 start would rest on two routine wins, one coin flip, and a game decided by a plane ticket. Then the season tells the truth, and the ceiling the standings hide comes due in October.

The runway, all winnable:

  • Sept 5: Hampton: an FCS opener, a scheduled win.
  • Sept 12: at UConn: a road trip but a manageable one, against a team Maryland routed 50-7 in 2024.
  • Sept 19: Virginia Tech: the toughest of the four, at home. Note the wrinkle: this is the first Maryland meeting with a Virginia Tech now coached by James Franklin, who took over in Blacksburg after his Penn State exit, so the rebuilt Hokies are a genuine unknown.
  • Sept 26: UCLA: the Big Ten home opener, and the biggest test of the opening month. This is not the 3-9 UCLA that still beat Maryland in 2025. The Bruins hired Bob Chesney off a James Madison run to the playoffs, reloaded with a top-25 transfer class, and returned Nico Iamaleava with weapons at last. Maryland’s edge is the zip code, not the roster: UCLA crosses three time zones for a road kickoff. Lean on that, but lightly, because if a plane ride is the difference, a win here proves Maryland holds home field, not that it closes the gap that decides seasons.

Then the measuring sticks, where the 0-19 gets its 2026 stress test. Back-to-back road trips to Nebraska on Oct 3 and to Ohio State on Oct 10 are the ceiling for the schedule. The October 31 home game against Illinois and the November 7 trip to Purdue are the swing games that decide bowl math, since Purdue was among the league’s weakest last year, and Locksley has owned Rutgers, his Oct 17 home opponent. The November back half hardens: Wisconsin at home Nov 14, a cross-country trip to USC Nov 21, and the home finale Nov 28 against a Penn State program that has beaten Maryland four straight and owns the all-time series 44-3-1. A scalp there would rewrite the season.

The Market Read

The books have already told you what the model did, if you know how to listen.

Sportsbooks price Maryland around a six-and-a-half win total and a 500-to-1 shot to win the Big Ten, which is the market’s polite way of saying bowl-eligible and irrelevant. The trap is the front end of the schedule. Maryland should walk into October at or near 4-0, and a clean September will tempt the market to price an improvement over the 0-19 mark against ranked teams says is not real. The value, if it exists, lives in the gap between a record propped up by the 18-game cupcake streak and a back half that hardens through Nebraska, Ohio State, Wisconsin, USC, and Penn State.

Watch the tells, not the win column.

  • The numbers to trust are SRS and point differential, because both turn before the record does, and a September that looks clean but flat in the predictive metrics is a mirage with a price tag.
  • The fade window is October, when the filler runs out and the ceiling the standings hide finally comes due.

We do not hand out picks. We hand you the read and the line where it breaks.

What changes the story next

Forget the win total. The signal that matters is whether Maryland finally beats a ranked opponent.

2026 is year eight, and the continuity bet means the excuses are spent. Watch three things, none of them the record against the filler.

  • The defense: with 74 percent of production back and Monachino in year two, the unit that gave up 39.4 a game in November has to actually close games, or the youth excuse dies, and the Trend hardens to Structural.
  • The run game: Trickett was hired to build one. If Washington still has to throw it every down, the offense stays easy to defend when the lights come up.
  • The predictive metrics: watch SRS and point differential early, because they flash a real turnaround before the win column does.

If those hold where they have sat for two years, the next label is Structural Trend, and the conversation stops being about whether to wait.

Bottom line

This is a Trend, and 2026 is the cleanest test Locksley will ever get.

He has his quarterback in Malik Washington, a run-game fixer in Clint Trickett, 14 returning starters, a defense that gets almost everyone back, and an AD who chose him and promised the money. The alibis are gone. Strip them away, and you are left with his own number, 9.74, reached and surrendered in twenty-four months, and an 0-19 mark against which everyone Maryland measures itself. He proved he could build it once. If this roster, this experienced, still cannot beat a ranked team, then Maryland will have its answer: the ceiling was never the talent.

Three things would change my mind, and none of them is another blowout of an overmatched opponent.

  • A one-score win. They went 0-4 in them. One close victory is worth more than every cupcake blowout combined.
  • A road win. The first since November 2023 would be the cleanest evidence that the finishing problem is coaching progress, not noise.
  • The anchors converting. SRS and point differential mean nothing until they start showing up in the fourth quarter of a tight one.

Grade your own coach

You just watched us put Locksley’s seat under the thermometer. You can run the same read on your team.

Our free Coach Evaluation Scorecard breaks a coaching tenure into seven categories, each scored from 1 to 5 based on the evidence in a Diagnosis. Add them up for a number out of 35 that says whether your coach is building the program or losing it. It is how an analyst evaluates a coach, not how a message board does.

Click the button below. Enter your email and hit Grade My Coach. The Scorecard is yours in about two minutes.

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Pat Fitzgerald Is 17-38 Against Ranked Teams. Michigan State Just Hired Him To Beat Ohio State.

Mark Haines on January 22, 2026

Everybody’s talking about the baggage.

The hazing scandal. The two years away. The “100 percent vindicated” quote that will resurface every time the Spartans lose back-to-back games.

That’s the easy narrative.

But the harder question—the one that actually determines whether this hire works—is hiding in plain sight.

It’s in the splits.

.309 Against Ranked. .469 On The Road. 5-8 In Bowls.

Pat Fitzgerald went 118-106 in 17 seasons at Northwestern.

Respectable. Ten bowl trips. Two Big Ten West titles. Five AP Top-25 finishes.

But peel back the overall record and you find a coach with real vulnerabilities.

Home: 65-44 (.596) Away: 46-52 (.469) vs Ranked: 17-38 (.309) Bowl Games: 5-8 (.385)

That’s a below-.500 road coach.

That’s a coach who won fewer than one in three games against ranked opponents. That’s a coach who went 5-8 in bowl games—games where both teams have a month to prepare.

These aren’t cherry-picked stats.

They’re the games that define whether you’re building a program or just surviving.

Northwestern Was Hard. But That Only Explains So Much.

Northwestern is one of the hardest jobs in college football.

Elite academic standards. A tiny recruiting pool. A fan base that treats sellouts as a pleasant surprise.

The fact that Fitzgerald won anything there is a testament to his culture-building ability.

Michigan State doesn’t have those constraints.

It’s a large state school with standard admission requirements, a passionate fan base, and recruiting access across the Midwest that Northwestern could never match. In theory, Fitzgerald’s ceiling should rise with better raw material.

But here’s the uncomfortable question.

Do the splits improve with better players—or are they baked into his coaching DNA?

His record against ranked opponents wasn’t a talent problem.

It was a performance problem. Scheme. Adjustments. Preparation against elite competition.

At Northwestern, he was almost always the underdog.

We never got to see whether he could win with talent, because he rarely had it. Michigan State is betting the answer is yes.

The splits suggest they should be nervous.

Ohio State. Michigan. Oregon. USC. Penn State. Good Luck.

The league Fitzgerald left isn’t the league he’s entering.

In 2022, the Big Ten West was a knife fight between Northwestern, Iowa, Purdue, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Winnable.

In 2026, Michigan State’s conference includes Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, Oregon, USC, and Washington.

The road schedule alone is a gauntlet.

If Fitzgerald’s .469 road record and .309 mark against ranked opponents translate to East Lansing, the Spartans are looking at 5-7 wins as the ceiling, not the floor. And with his late-tenure decline at Northwestern (3-9, 3-9, 1-11 in his final three seasons), there’s evidence he struggled to adapt even before the two-year absence.

That absence matters.

Fitzgerald has been off the sideline since July 2023—the most transformative period in college football history. Full NIL monetization. The transfer portal as the primary roster-building mechanism. The rise of GM and personnel departments.

His Northwestern teams were culture-first, developmental, and scheme-sound.

They were never portal-aggressive or NIL-forward.

Can he adapt at 50?

The splits don’t answer that question. But they don’t inspire confidence either.

If The Splits Hold, MSU Will Have Spent $50 Million On Nothing.

Michigan State structured this deal carefully.

Five years. $30 million total. Heavily incentive-laden.

Year 1 pays $5 million, escalating $500K annually.

Bonuses start at $500K for six wins and climb to $1.5 million for eight-plus. There’s also an automatic one-year extension trigger if he hits seven regular-season wins in any of his first three seasons.

On paper, this looks like smart risk management.

MSU isn’t betting the house—especially after eating Jonathan Smith’s $30 million buyout.

But look closer.

The extension trigger at seven wins is generous for a program that went 5-7 and 4-8 under Smith. If Fitzgerald clears that bar once, MSU is locked in for another year. And if the splits hold—if he’s a 5-6 win coach in this league—what does it actually cost to move on?

Recent buyouts have been coach-friendly disasters.

Mark Stoops leveraged Kentucky into a deal that made him nearly unfireable. Hugh Freeze’s Auburn contract guaranteed generational wealth regardless of performance.

Schools are learning the hard way that buyout math matters more than press conference optimism.

MSU’s deal isn’t in that category.

But it’s not airtight either. If Fitzgerald underperforms, the Spartans will have spent $30 million on Jonathan Smith, another $20-25 million on Fitzgerald, and still be looking for answers.

That’s $50+ million for five years of losing seasons.

A Gamble, Not A Plan.

This hire makes sense on paper.

Fitzgerald elevated Northwestern beyond its resource baseline. Michigan State offers more to work with than he ever had in Evanston. The price is reasonable. The upside is real.

But the splits tell a cautionary tale.

A .309 record against ranked opponents doesn’t magically improve because you moved 100 miles east. A below-.500 road record doesn’t fix itself with better facilities. And a coach who went 7-29 in his final three seasons—then spent two years away from the sport’s biggest structural shift—is not a sure thing.

Michigan State is betting Fitzgerald can adapt, modernize, and win the games that matter.

The splits say that’s a gamble, not a plan.

Coaches Hot Seat Verdict: High-variance, defensible. Clear path to success if he staffs aggressively and embraces the portal/NIL infrastructure. Clear path to another coaching search by 2028 if he doesn’t.

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Penn State Fired A Coach Who Won 104 Games Because He Couldn’t Beat Elite Teams. Matt Campbell’s Record Says He Might Solve That Problem.

Mark Haines on December 16, 2025

Penn State didn’t hire Matt Campbell.

They settled for him.

After 54 days of chaos (Pat Kraft whiffing on Matt Rhule, Mike Elko, Kalen DeBoer, and watching Kalani Sitake use Happy Valley as leverage for a BYU extension), the Nittany Lions landed on a coach who was never Plan A. The search that began with dreams of “championship-level” coaching ended with a guy whose ceiling is an open question. And yet, this might be exactly what Penn State needs.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth:

Campbell is a better fit than the process suggests.

The Search Was a Disaster. The Outcome Wasn’t.

Let’s be clear about what happened.

Penn State fired James Franklin on October 12 after a 3-3 start, expecting to land a splash hire before the early signing period. Instead, Kraft conducted the longest Power 4 coaching search of the cycle. By National Signing Day, Penn State had signed exactly two recruits, ranking 134th nationally, while Franklin raided their class from Blacksburg. Former players called it “an unmitigated disaster.” Josh Pate said the search “feels lost.” Landon Tengwall called it “about as big a disaster as you could possibly imagine.”

All of that is true.

But none of it changes what Campbell actually brings.

The Franklin Comparison Everyone’s Making (And Getting Wrong)

The lazy take is that Penn State replaced Franklin with Franklin.

Both coaches hover around .600 win percentage. Both struggle against ranked opponents. Both have conference title game appearances but no championships. On paper, it looks like a lateral move. But that framing ignores context, and context is everything.

Here’s what the numbers actually say:

Campbell vs. Top 10 teams at Iowa State: 4-6 (40%)

Franklin vs. Top 10 teams at Penn State: 4-21 (16%)

Campbell won the same number of Top 10 games in 10 years at Iowa State as Franklin won in 11 years at Penn State. The difference? Campbell did it with the 68th-ranked roster in the talent composite. Franklin had top-10 recruiting classes almost every year.

That’s not the same coach.

That’s a coach who maximizes what he has, versus one who underperforms with what he’s given.

What Campbell Does Well

Campbell’s reputation isn’t built on schemes or slogans.

It’s built on development.

Before Campbell arrived in Ames, Iowa State hadn’t had a player drafted since 2014. Since then, he’s produced 15 NFL Draft picks, including Breece Hall, Brock Purdy, David Montgomery, and Will McDonald IV. He took a program that went 8-28 in the three years before he arrived and delivered eight winning seasons in ten years, two Big 12 title game appearances, and the program’s first-ever 11-win season in 2024.

His philosophy is simple: “Love, care, serve our players.”

That sounds soft until you realize his teams are consistently among the most physical in their conference. Campbell’s offensive identity is built on protecting the quarterback, running the ball downhill, and winning in the trenches. His defensive coordinator, Jon Heacock (who’s following him to Penn State), pioneered the 3-3-5 “three-high safety” scheme that’s been copied across college football. Iowa State ranked in the Big 12’s top three in scoring defense seven of the last eight years.

This isn’t a finesse operation.

It’s blue-collar football with a developmental edge.

The Staff Tells You Everything

Within days of being hired, Campbell made his philosophy clear.

He’s not here to manage someone else’s vision.

He let Jim Knowles walk to Tennessee, the highest-paid assistant in college football, fresh off a national title at Ohio State. He’s bringing his own people: Taylor Mouser as offensive coordinator, Jon Heacock on defense, Ryan Clanton on the offensive line, and Deon Broomfield in the secondary. Nine of his first ten hires came from Iowa State.

The only holdover? Terry Smith.

That’s significant. Smith was the interim coach who went 3-3 after Franklin’s firing. Players held up “HIRE TERRY SMITH” signs on the sideline. Keeping him signals continuity with the locker room while installing an entirely new system everywhere else.

Campbell isn’t blending philosophies.

He’s doing a full operating system replacement.

The Real Question: Can He Win the Games That Matter?

This is where skepticism is fair.

Campbell has never sustained a multi-year Top 10 operation. He’s 0-2 in conference championship games, losing to Oklahoma in 2020 and Arizona State in 2024. His teams have a habit of playing up to elite competition, only to fall short at the finish line. The 2020 Big 12 title game saw Iowa State fall behind 17-0 before mounting a comeback that came up short. The 2024 title game against Arizona State wasn’t close.

Sound familiar?

That’s the exact problem that got Franklin fired.

Penn State’s issue was never the floor. Franklin won 104 games in 11 seasons. The issue was the ceiling, specifically, a 4-21 record against Top 10 teams and a 2-21 record against Top 6 teams. The program that once competed for national titles under Joe Paterno has become a consistent “almost” program. Good enough to get ranked. Not good enough to break through.

Campbell’s track record doesn’t definitively answer whether he can fix that.

But the circumstances are different.

The Resource Upgrade Is Massive

Iowa State was a resource knife fight.

Campbell recruited against Oklahoma and Texas with a fraction of their budget, no blue-chip recruiting geography, and a fan base that had never seen sustained success. He turned Jack Trice Stadium into one of the toughest venues in the Big 12, but he was always swimming upstream.

Penn State is a different animal.

The Nittany Lions are committing $30 million in NIL money and $17 million in staff salary pool—among the highest commitments in the country. Campbell’s contract is $70.5 million guaranteed over eight years, with automatic extensions for playoff appearances. Beaver Stadium is undergoing a $700 million renovation. The recruiting geography includes Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, and the DMV corridor.

Campbell has never had these resources.

The bet is that a coach who went 72-55 at Iowa State, with five eight-win seasons and the program’s only 11-win campaign, can do significantly more when he’s not outgunned on every front.

What Nick Saban Got Right (And Wrong)

Saban weighed in on the hire, calling Campbell “a great coach who’s proven on a consistent basis.”

Then he issued a warning.

“These places that have, to me, a little bit of unrealistic expectations that we’re going to win the national championship… to make that sort of the goal – we gotta win the championship or we’re gonna get rid of the coach – to me is totally wrong. They’ll have a hard time doing it if that’s the approach that they take.”

Saban’s point is valid: championship-or-bust thinking creates instability. Penn State hasn’t won a national title since 1986. They’ve made one playoff appearance ever. Demanding immediate championships from Campbell is unrealistic.

But Saban’s framing also misses something.

Penn State didn’t fire Franklin because he wasn’t winning championships. They fired him because he went 4-21 against Top 10 teams with top-10 recruiting classes. The standard isn’t “win it all.” The standard is “don’t collapse against elite competition every single time.”

That’s a different bar.

And Campbell has a better track record of clearing it.

The Pressure Meter

Current Hot Seat Temperature: COLD

Campbell gets a honeymoon period. Penn State’s 2026 roster is inexperienced after the recruiting disaster, and expectations should be modest for Year 1. The $70.5 million guaranteed contract gives him runway. The administration is invested in patience after the Kraft search debacle embarrassed the university.

What Would Heat Things Up:

  • Losing to teams Penn State shouldn’t lose to (see: Franklin’s Northwestern loss)
  • Failing to establish a recruiting foothold in Pennsylvania
  • Another collapse against Ohio State/Oregon tier opponents in Years 2-3
  • Portal mismanagement or roster instability

What Keeps Him Safe:

  • 9-win floors with competitive losses to elite teams
  • Development of homegrown talent and smart portal additions
  • Playoff appearance by Year 3-4
  • Beating a Top 10 team at least once per season

Campbell isn’t on the hot seat.

But the leash is shorter than his contract suggests, because the last coach proved you can win 104 games and still get fired for not winning the right ones.

The Bottom Line

Matt Campbell is a floor hire, not a ceiling hire.

He stabilizes the program. He installs a coherent identity. He develops players. He builds culture. He doesn’t embarrass the university with off-field chaos. He gives Penn State a high floor of 8-9 wins with an occasional 10-win season.

Is that enough?

It depends on what Penn State actually wants.

If the goal is “be consistently good and occasionally great,” Campbell is an A hire. If the goal is “become Ohio State,” the jury is still out. Campbell has never built a dynasty. He’s never recruited at a top-5 national level. He’s never won a conference championship.

But he’s also never had the resources to try.

Penn State is betting that the coach who overachieved at Iowa State can break through when he’s finally playing with a full deck. It’s a reasonable bet, probably the most sensible option available after the search went sideways.

The question now is simple:

Can Matt Campbell win the games James Franklin couldn’t?

We’re about to find out.

What do you think of the Campbell hire? Send me an email and let me know. mark@coacheshotseat.com

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Grading the Carousel: Preliminary Hire Grades for the 2024-25 Cycle

Mark Haines on December 3, 2025

The carousel never stops spinning.

We’re tracking 21 coaching changes this cycle — 13 with new coaches already named, 8 still waiting on their guy. What follows are our preliminary grades across three categories: Hire Quality, Process, and Fan/Media Sentiment.

These aren’t final verdicts.

They’re initial reactions. First impressions. The kind of grades that will look either brilliant or idiotic in three years when we revisit them.

We’ll do deep dives on each hire individually in the coming weeks. But for now, here’s where every job stands — from the home runs to the dumpster fires.

The Home Runs

These programs swung big and connected.

Virginia Tech — James Franklin (A / A– / A)

The Hokies didn’t just make a hire. They made a statement.

Landing James Franklin from Penn State signals that Virginia Tech is done being a sleeping giant. The staff and recruiting implications will ripple through the ACC for years. The only question now is whether VT finally acts like the resource program it’s always claimed to be.

How his Penn State staff/recruits follow, what this does to the ACC power structure, and whether VT is finally acting like a “resource program” again.

Oregon State — JaMarcus Shephard (A / A– / A)

The Beavers landed their guy without a nationwide circus.

JaMarcus Shephard comes from Alabama’s staff into the most uncertain moment in Oregon State history. Post-realignment survival depends on portal management and identity preservation. A first-time head coach navigating conference limbo while maintaining Trent Bray’s defensive DNA is a tall order — but OSU handled this search like a program that knows exactly who it is.

Post-realignment survival, recruiting without a stable league home, and whether a first-time HC can maintain Bray’s defensive identity.

LSU — Lane Kiffin (A / D / A)

The hire is an A. The process was a circus.

Lane Kiffin to LSU was the worst-kept secret in college football, which made the public courtship even messier. But the end result? A program with unlimited resources landing one of the sport’s best offensive minds and most ruthless recruiters. The marriage either produces championships or a spectacular implosion. There is no middle ground in Baton Rouge.

Ole Miss fallout, staff poaching wars, and if LSU’s booster culture amplifies or burns out Kiffin’s volatility in a hurry.

Colorado State — Jim Mora Jr. (A / B / B+)

The Mountain West needed a credible name. CSU delivered.

Jim Mora brings NFL pedigree, P4 experience, and a recruiting network that Jay Norvell never fully activated. The question is whether this is a “last tour” victory lap or a legitimate rebuild. Either way, CSU positioned itself to capitalize on a weakened conference landscape.

Can Mora still grind on the trail, how CSU positions itself vs. a weakened MWC, and whether this is a “last tour” or a true rebuild.

Kentucky — Will Stein (A / B– / B)

Mark Stoops cast a long shadow. Will Stein steps into it confidently.

The offensive identity pivot is exactly what Kentucky needed after years of defensive-first football. Stein’s explosiveness ceiling could push the Wildcats from the 7-win band into genuine SEC East contention. The NIL landscape remains a challenge, but this hire signals ambition.

Stoops’ shadow, offensive identity pivot, NIL vs. league peers, and whether Stein can keep Kentucky in the 7–9 win band with a higher explosiveness ceiling.

Auburn — Alex Golesh (A– / B+ / B+)

Auburn got its tempo guy, Alex Golesh, from South Florida.

Golesh’s USF offense translated well enough to earn him a shot at the SEC’s toughest division. The patience level in Auburn is… historically nonexistent. But the process was clean, the hire was decisive, and line-of-scrimmage recruiting will determine whether this becomes a home run or a cautionary tale.

Translation of his USF tempo offense to the SEC West equivalent, patience level in Auburn, and how he recruits the lines of scrimmage.

The Solid Singles

Not flashy. Not embarrassing. Just… fine.

Stanford — Tavita Pritchard (B+ / B / B)

The Cardinal went internal and pragmatic.

Tavita Pritchard inherits Andrew Luck’s GM involvement and Stanford’s perpetual NIL/admissions constraints. The bet is that an NFL-style QB room can overcome portal friction in an ACC that doesn’t care about your academic reputation. It’s a reasonable swing given the circumstances.

Andrew Luck’s GM role, Stanford’s NIL constraints, and whether an NFL-style QB room can overcome admissions/portal friction in the ACC.

UCLA — Bob Chesney (B+ / C / C+)

This is either the next Kalen DeBoer or bargain shopping.

Bob Chesney’s jump from FCS to the Big Ten grind is significant. Here’s the strange part: the process was actually solid — because Martin Jarmond wasn’t running it. And that tells you everything about the real red flags at this job. An ineffective, egomaniacal athletic director. A disconnected, tone-deaf chancellor. A bean counter who only understands counting beans. Chesney’s system might translate just fine. Whether anyone can succeed under this administration is the bigger question.

The massive jump from FCS to the Big Ten grind, and whether anyone can succeed under an ineffective AD, a tone-deaf chancellor, and an administration that only understands counting beans.

Oklahoma State — Eric Morris (B– / B– / B–)

Life after Gundy is officially here.

Eric Morris keeps the Air Raid DNA without the 20-year cultural infrastructure. The question is whether Oklahoma State wants to chase Big 12 titles or just stability. This hire suggests stability. That’s not necessarily wrong — but it’s not inspiring either.

Life after Gundy’s long tenure, keeping the Air Raid DNA without the old culture, and whether OSU wants to chase Big 12 titles or just stability.

Ole Miss — Pete Golding (B / C+ / B)

Continuity hire. Full stop.

Pete Golding’s job is to keep the portal from hemorrhaging and maintain defensive credibility while the offense finds a new identity post-Kiffin. Whether he can be more than a recruiter/DC remains the central question. The Rebels are betting on stability over splash.

Defensive continuity vs. offensive identity change, portal retention after Kiffin, and whether Golding can be more than a recruiter/DC.

Michigan State — Pat Fitzgerald (C / B / B)

The Spartans hired a culture reset.

After back-to-back scandals, Pat Fitzgerald’s “Northwestern-style overachiever” ceiling might be exactly what East Lansing needs. The long-term recruiting upside against Ohio State and Michigan is… limited. But the hire makes sense for a program that desperately needed adults in the room.

Cultural cleanup after back-to-back scandals, ceiling of “Northwestern-style overachiever” in the new Big Ten, and long-term recruiting upside vs. Ohio State/Michigan.

The Fan Base Meltdowns

These aren’t going well.

Florida — Jon Sumrall (C / B+ / D)

The process was fine. The reaction was not.

Sumrall arrives with Steve Spurrier’s public blessing and a mandate to fix Billy Napier’s in-game disasters. But there’s a red flag worth noting: Sumrall’s Tulane teams were consistently among the most penalized in the country — the kind of undisciplined football that suggests coaching issues, not just player mistakes. Florida fans already wanted a bigger name. The D in sentiment reflects a fan base that feels the program settled.

Spurrier publicly blessing the hire, fixing Napier’s in-game messes, and whether Sumrall can weaponize UF’s NIL/portal machine fast enough in the SEC arms race.

Arkansas — Ryan Silverfield (D+ / D / D)

This is a disaster.

The fan backlash isn’t simmering — it’s boiling over into organized protests. Ryan Silverfield’s task is nearly impossible: win quickly in a 16-team SEC with a hostile home base from Day 1. The AD’s survival odds are now directly tied to Silverfield’s record. D across the board, and that might be generous.

Fan backlash/protests, AD survival odds, and if Silverfield can win quickly enough in the new 16-team SEC to quiet a hostile base.

The Clown Shows

No other way to describe these.

Penn State — TBD (INC / F / F)

The Nittany Lions are bleeding.

James Franklin is gone. The portal is circling. And Penn State is playing leverage games with agents while their roster evaporates in real time. At some point, “waiting for the right guy” becomes “watching your program collapse.” That point may have already passed.

Whether PSU finally swings for a top-5 coach, how Sexton’s leverage games play out, and how long they can sit in limbo without bleeding portal talent.

UAB — TBD (INC / F / F)

The Bill Clark era feels like ancient history now.

Former coach Trent Dilfer gets plenty of blame, but AD Mark Ingram deserves more. Together they torched everything Clark built — the goodwill, the culture, the upward trajectory. All of it gone. Now the job sits open and nobody wants it. This isn’t a “hidden gem” search. It’s a punchline. Stadium and resources exist on paper, but the dysfunction has made this one of the least attractive openings in the country.

How attractive the job really is post-Dilfer, stadium/resources vs. recent chaos, and whether UAB leans into offense again or buys a culture guy.

Still on the Board

These jobs remain open. Grades pending.

California (INC / B / B) — Cal’s identity crisis continues. Do they want academics or football? The ACC move demands an answer.

UConn (INC / C+ / C) — Independence is lonely. The next hire determines whether UConn commits to regional recruiting or another failed “national” vision.

North Texas (INC / C / C) — Serial resets in Denton. UNT needs to pick an offensive identity and stick with it.

Coastal Carolina (INC / B– / B–) — The post-Chadwell slump continues. Another spread-option innovator, or something different?

South Florida (INC / B / B) — Golesh left equity in the roster. USF has a window before FSU/UF/Miami clean up their messes.

Memphis (INC / B / B) — The Tigers launch coaches. The question is whether they want another launchpad guy or someone who stays.

The Bottom Line

Thirteen hires graded. Eight more coming.

The best hire so far? Virginia Tech landing James Franklin changes the ACC. The worst situation? Arkansas — and it’s not close.

We’ll revisit these grades in-season. Some will age like wine. Others will age like milk.

The carousel keeps spinning.

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COACHES HOT SEAT: WEEK 13 RANKINGS

Mark Haines on November 18, 2025

The clock just hit midnight on college football’s struggling coaches.

No more “next year” promises. No more “we’re close” platitudes. Week 12 stripped away the illusions and exposed the reality: some programs are moving forward, and others are circling the drain.

Jonathan Smith is 0-7 in Big Ten play. Shane Beamer blew a 27-point halftime lead in the most catastrophic collapse of the season. Mike Norvell’s Florida State is 2-12 in ACC games over two years. Bill Belichick is 0-5 against Power Four opponents in his first college season.

Athletic directors are done selling hope to angry donors. Boosters are done writing checks for mediocrity. The portal opens in three weeks, and players are already making decisions about their futures.

This is where coaching careers get defined—or destroyed.

Here are the ten coaches who entered Week 12 with everything to prove and nothing left to hide behind.

1. Jonathan Smith – Michigan State Spartans (3-7, 0-7 Big Ten)

Jonathan Smith’s seat isn’t just hot anymore. It’s molten.

Michigan State lost to Penn State 28-10 at home Saturday, marking their seventh straight defeat and officially eliminating the Spartans from bowl eligibility. That’s four consecutive seasons without a bowl game and an 0-7 Big Ten record that has Smith at 8-12 overall since arriving from Oregon State.

The numbers: Michigan State owes Smith approximately $32-33 million if they fire him now. That’s one of the most expensive buyouts in the Big Ten. However, the AD and university president, both hired after Smith arrived, have no strong ties to him and are facing mounting pressure to act.

National media outlets universally place Smith at the top of coaching hot seat lists. Fan sentiment has turned nearly uniform in calling for a change. Replacement candidate discussions are already widespread.

Smith will almost certainly coach Michigan State’s final two games, but barring a miracle turnaround, he’s coaching for his next job, not this one.

2. Mike Locksley – Maryland Terrapins (4-6, 1-6 Big Ten)

Mike Locksley just got saved by the very problem that’s destroying college football programs: money.

Maryland announced Sunday that Locksley will return for 2026 despite a six-game losing streak that dropped the Terrapins from 4-0 to 4-6. It’s the second straight season with only one Big Ten win and the 11th consecutive losing season in conference play. Locksley is now 37-47 overall at Maryland and 17-46 in Big Ten games since 2019.

Athletic Director Jim Smith made the decision based on financial reality. Maryland’s athletic department has lost $32.7 million over the past five years. Locksley’s buyout would be $13.4 million. Smith told ESPN the school is “better off pouring already-spent money into building the roster than into bringing in a new coaching staff.”

Translation: We can’t afford to fire him.

The announcement came after “Fire Locksley” chants broke out in the student section during the Indiana game. Locksley’s pressure doesn’t disappear just because he’s surviving 2025. He’s coaching on borrowed time in 2026, and everyone knows it.

3. Shane Beamer – South Carolina Gamecocks (3-7, 1-7 SEC)

Shane Beamer just orchestrated the most spectacular coaching collapse of the 2025 season.

Saturday at Texas A&M, South Carolina led 30-3 at halftime. Then came the second half. Texas A&M scored 28 unanswered points. South Carolina was shut out and managed just 76 total yards after halftime. Final score: 31-30, Aggies. It was the largest comeback in Texas A&M program history.

ESPN’s Paul Finebaum summed it up perfectly: “Shane Beamer right now just looks like a loser.”

South Carolina is now 3-7 and guaranteed a losing season. They’ve lost five straight SEC games and will miss a bowl game for the first time under Beamer. “Fire Beamer” chants have replaced the cheers.

Here’s the financial nightmare: South Carolina extended Beamer through 2030 less than a year ago. His buyout is approximately $27.9 million. Athletic Director Jeremiah Donati is now stuck with one of college football’s most expensive mistakes.

This type of historic collapse changes everything. It’s not just that they lost. It’s HOW they lost.

4. Mike Norvell – Florida State Seminoles (5-5, 2-5 ACC)

Mike Norvell just won a game and it doesn’t matter.

Florida State beat Virginia Tech 34-14 Saturday to improve to 5-5, but the win came against a 3-7 Hokies team that’s almost as bad as the Seminoles. Since being controversially left out of the 2023 College Football Playoff at 13-0, Florida State is 7-15 overall and 2-12 in ACC play.

Athletic Director Michael Alford announced in October that Norvell would remain through the end of 2025, but promised a “comprehensive assessment” after the season. Translation: Norvell is coaching his final games at Florida State.

Here’s why the delay: Money. Norvell’s buyout is approximately $53.3 million after this season. It’s the second-largest buyout in college football history.

Norvell has tried to project confidence, delivering a six-minute “championship expectation” rant recently. The problem is the results. FSU is winless on the road this season and hasn’t won a road game since November 2023.

5. Derek Mason – Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders (2-8, 1-5 Conference USA)

Derek Mason took a sabbatical from coaching after the 2022 season to rest, reflect, and spend time with family.

He should have stayed on sabbatical.

Mason is in his second season at Middle Tennessee and the program has regressed under his leadership. The Blue Raiders went 3-9 in his first year, and they’re currently 2-8 in 2025. That’s 5-17 overall and 3-11 in conference play across two seasons.

Mason replaced Rick Stockstill, who went 113-111 over 18 seasons with 10 bowl appearances. Mason hasn’t come close to matching that standard. Middle Tennessee’s two wins this season came against FCS opponents. Every FBS opponent has beaten them, often badly.

The defense, which should be Mason’s calling card, ranks among the worst in all of college football. Mason’s overall head coaching record is now 30-64 across eight years. At some point, MTSU has to ask if this experiment is worth continuing.

6. Dave Aranda – Baylor Bears (5-5, 3-4 Big 12)

Dave Aranda isn’t getting fired this season, but not for the reasons you’d hope.

After Saturday’s 55-28 home humiliation against Utah, Aranda sits at 5-5 overall and desperately needs one win in the final two games to make a bowl. His defense ranks second-worst in the Big 12 in both scoring and rush defense. For a defensive specialist hired specifically for his defensive expertise, that’s a damning indictment.

Here’s the number that matters most: 21-25. That’s Aranda’s record at Baylor with his own recruits, excluding the COVID season and the 2021 championship season built on Matt Rhule’s inherited roster.

However, Aranda is still employed because athletic director Mack Rhoades took a leave of absence November 12 amid an ongoing investigation. Interim ADs don’t make coaching changes of this magnitude.

It’s not merit. It’s institutional paralysis.

7. Luke Fickell – Wisconsin Badgers (5-6, 3-5 Big Ten)

Luke Fickell went from College Football Playoff coach to coaching for his job in three years.

After leading Cincinnati to the CFP in 2021, Fickell was hired by Wisconsin with enormous expectations. Instead, Wisconsin has regressed. Fickell is now 16-19 overall at Wisconsin and 9-15 in Big Ten play. His teams have produced losing records in two of three full seasons.

The Badgers went scoreless in back-to-back games against Iowa and Ohio State earlier this season, marking the first time that has happened since 1977. Wisconsin hasn’t won a Big Ten home game in over a calendar year.

Here’s the ironic twist: Fickell just received a contract extension through 2032 and a public vote of confidence from AD Chris McIntosh. His buyout is estimated to be around $27.5 million.

Wisconsin is on track for its second straight losing season after 22 consecutive bowl appearances. Fickell gets 2026 to prove he can turn it around, but the pressure will be immense from Day One.

8. Bill Belichick – North Carolina Tar Heels (4-6, 2-4 ACC)

The greatest football coach in history is learning that college football is a different game.

Bill Belichick, winner of six Super Bowls with the Patriots, arrived at North Carolina with enormous fanfare. Instead, he’s 4-6 overall and 0-5 against Power Four opponents. UNC’s losses weren’t just defeats. They were blowouts that exposed fundamental problems with Belichick’s transition to college football.

“It’s an unstructured mess,” a source told WRAL News in October. Reports emerged that Belichick hadn’t “had a conversation with most of the guys on defense.” The Tar Heels rank last in the ACC in total offense and scoring.

At 72 years old, in his first college job ever, Belichick is discovering that recruiting 18-year-olds, managing NIL, and coaching the portal era requires skills he never needed in the NFL.

UNC’s administration sold fans on Belichick, leading them to the playoffs. Instead, they’re fighting for bowl eligibility and dealing with reports of organizational chaos.

9. Justin Wilcox – California Golden Bears (6-4, 3-3 ACC)

Justin Wilcox sits at 6-4 overall and 3-3 in ACC play, a respectable first season navigating conference realignment.

But the pressure has never been higher.

Fan sentiment has turned decisively against Wilcox, with widespread calls for his dismissal dominating the Cal community. This isn’t about the record. It’s about nine years of incremental progress that never accumulates into sustained success.

Then there’s Ron Rivera. Cal’s new General Manager has given Wilcox conditional support, stating that “another victory or two” in the final stretch will be key in determining his future. That’s not a vote of confidence. That’s measured pressure from above.

When your GM says your fate depends on winning one or two games in a 6-4 season, you’re coaching under scrutiny from fans who’ve already moved on and leadership that’s watching closely.

10. Mark Stoops – Kentucky Wildcats (5-5, 2-5 SEC)

Mark Stoops just beat Tennessee Tech 42-10 Saturday, extending Kentucky’s winning streak to four games.

And his pressure level hasn’t budged an inch.

The win over an FCS opponent was expected, and while Stoops praised “this team’s attitude and effort,” beating Tennessee Tech doesn’t change the fundamental calculus around his job security. Fan sentiment remains sharply divided.

What protects Stoops isn’t the four-game winning streak. It’s the $40.5 million buyout that must be paid in full within 60 days if he’s fired. After critical wins at Auburn and over Florida, AD Mitch Barnhart voiced full support, saying Kentucky is “taking steps” back up the mountain.

Kentucky sits one win away from bowl eligibility with two games remaining. The pressure at #10 reflects this: the four-game streak has eased the immediate crisis, but beating an FCS team doesn’t resolve long-term doubts.

WANT TO SEE WHERE YOUR COACH RANKS?

The top 10 are racing against the clock.

But coaching pressure doesn’t stop at #10. A $40.5 million buyout protects Mark Stoops (#10) despite 13 years of middling results. Justin Wilcox (#9) is 6-4 but facing conditional support from his GM. Luke Fickell (#7) just got extended through 2032 despite losing 9 of his last 14 games.

Every FBS coach is ranked based on actual pressure, not speculation about who might be fired.

Subscribers to our newsletter get the full story. Each week, you’ll receive comprehensive profiles of all the top 10 coaches with contract details, buyout numbers, replacement candidates, and insider analysis you won’t find anywhere else. Additionally, our weekly Hot Seat Deep Dive provides an in-depth examination of one coach’s situation. This week: Dave Aranda at Baylor – how administrative chaos became a coaching lifeline, and why institutional paralysis might be the only thing keeping him employed.

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