Blog Article
WEEK 3 – 2026 COACHES HOT SEAT RANKINGS
Ryan Day led by 20 points in the fourth quarter Saturday night and moved 56 spots up the Coaches Hot Seat Rankings by Sunday morning.
That’s the biggest one-week jump anybody has made this season, and it happened to a man who went into the weekend sitting 115th with a playoff bracket on his mind. Texas took the last 21 points in Austin and won 24-23. Day didn’t coach any worse in the fourth quarter than he had in the first 3. He lost, and this board only speaks one language.
Here’s the read on Week 3.
Of the 86 games played, the ones that moved this board were the ones against opponents capable of winning them. Nearly every coach who cooled off did it by beating somebody with no business on a big-time schedule, and nearly every coach who heated up did it by losing to somebody real. The week graded the calendar more than it graded the coaching.
What moved and why
- Ryan Day went from 115th to 59th, and it cost him 1 quarter. Ohio State led 23-3 entering the fourth at Texas and lost 24-23, which knocks down the 2-year win column and the record-against-ranked-teams column inside the same 15 minutes. He’s still 59th, so nobody should confuse this with a hot seat. The point is that 56 spots were sitting there the whole time, waiting on 1 bad quarter.
- Brent Venables climbed 18 spots to 17th on a 17-10 loss at Michigan. Oklahoma walked in ranked 11th and walked out ranked 24th, and the column that punished him is the one counting games against the AP Top 25. He wins 73 percent of his games in the 2-year window and 38 percent against ranked teams. That second number is the entire profile, and it didn’t get better in Ann Arbor.
- P.J. Fleck moved 11 spots into the top 10 after Mississippi State came to Minneapolis and won 38-13. It’s year 10, the Gophers were outrushed 252 to 13, and Fleck’s Monday answer was penalties and communication. “The penalties absolutely killed us,” he said, and he added that what he loves about this team is their fight. Fight is what you discuss when the rushing number is 13.
- Jeff Choate rose 41 spots to 68th because Nevada lost 20-7 at Montana State. Losing to an FCS opponent in September is the cleanest way to heat a seat in this system, and Choate found it on the road in Bozeman.
- Joe Moorhead cooled 10 spots, from 9th to 19th, for beating Robert Morris 45-10. Akron hung 45 on a team that has no reason to be on the schedule and it counted as a win, because it was. That’s 10 spots of relief bought at wholesale.
- Dabo Swinney fell 7 spots to 13th on a 22-7 win over Georgia Southern. Clemson scored 22 points at home a week after LSU beat them 51-10, and a September date against a Sun Belt team cooled him anyway.
The top of the board
Greg Schiano is the No. 1 hot seat in college football at 0-2, and he earned it the hard way.
Rutgers lost 37-21 at home to a UMass team that hadn’t won a game since October of 2024, as a favorite of nearly 30 points, and Schiano called the performance embarrassing. 8 days later, the Scarlet Knights went to Chestnut Hill and lost 28-21 to a Boston College team that had already been beaten by 19 at Cincinnati. That leaves him with 5 wins in his last 14 games and none in the 2 most winnable dates on his schedule. His composite sits at 96.4.
Mike Norvell is 2nd at 92.4, a gap of 4 points, and the way he got there tells you what kind of week this was.
Norvell didn’t play. Florida State was on a bye, and he still earned a spot because everyone near him got worse. Luke Fickell dropped from 1st to 3rd for beating Western Illinois 36-9. The top of this board rearranged itself over games the top of this board largely sat out.
Schiano has been in it; he’d like everyone to know. Asked about the UMass loss, he reached for Teddy Roosevelt and told the room, “I’ve been in it for 39 years.”
39 years, and 5 wins in the last 14.
Top 25 on the board
Click the button below to see the full ranking of all 138 FBS coaches.
The seat nobody is watching
Tim Albin sits 12th on this board, and I haven’t found his name on a national list all month.
Charlotte opened as a favorite by more than 20 points against The Citadel, an FCS program, and lost 43-41 in triple overtime at home. The 49ers gave up 268 rushing yards and 6 rushing touchdowns to a team that runs the option without apology. A week later, Ole Miss beat them 41-9 in Oxford. Albin’s record at Charlotte is 1-13.
That’s the number, and it’s the reason the board has him ahead of Swinney, ahead of Beamer, ahead of Venables. The only win came against Monmouth last September.
“My heart hurts for the staff and the fan base,” Albin said after The Citadel.
He won a conference championship at Ohio in 2024. He has won 1 game since he left Athens.
Looking ahead to next week
Saturday hands this board 2 games with a hot seat on both sidelines.
- Akron at Minnesota, noon. Moorhead is 19th, and Fleck is 6th, and 1 of them leaves Minneapolis with a September win over an FBS opponent. If it’s Moorhead, the top 5 gets a new resident.
- Eastern Michigan at Wisconsin, 12:30. Creighton is 18th, and Fickell is 3rd, and Camp Randall is supposed to make this one boring. A close fourth quarter here lands on the 3rd seat, not the 18th.
- USC at Rutgers, 3:30 on CBS. Schiano gets the 12th-ranked Trojans at home with AJ Surace at quarterback, the same Surace who threw 3 touchdowns and 4 interceptions at Boston College. Nothing on this date is built to cool the No. 1 seat.
- Florida State at Alabama, 3:30 on ABC. Norvell hasn’t won a road game since November of 2023, a streak that now runs 1,024 days, and the bye did nothing to shorten it. Tuscaloosa either ends that number or makes it the story of his season.
- NC State at Vanderbilt, 12:45. Doeren is 5th, Vanderbilt won 10 games last year, and this is the first result of his season that carries real information.
- Charlotte at App State, 6:00. Albin needs a win badly enough that a respectable loss won’t buy him anything.
Bottom line
A September win over a team with a losing record is worth exactly what you paid for it.
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