As the college football season begins to wind down, one of my personal favorite times of year begins the coaching carousel. While this season has been different in how job security is graded, there are also some clear and obvious coaches who will not be at the helm for their team’s next year. There are also coaches who are just beginning to see pressure in their job security and others who may be surprise firings this year. I didn’t include any first-year coaches, and I’m reluctant to mention many second-year coaches, but if they are power five and under .500, they are considered for this article.
The three men who I consider to be gone come the end of their seasons are Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh, Texas’s Tom Herman, and Vanderbilt’s Derek Mason. For Harbaugh, losing to a winless Penn State team seemed to be the nail in his coffin to an underwhelming tenure. Rumors have him going to the NFL, whether to the Jets or to the Bears or some other team. Regardless, he will not be in Ann Arbor come August of 2021. The hottest seat in the Big 12 is Tom Herman of Texas. The only bowl team mentioned here, Tom Herman, made as many changes to his staff before this season and was expected to be in the hunt for the playoff. Now, they got ousted from the Big 12 championship game by Iowa State and are looking at a low-level bowl game come December. His time should be over there.
Derek Mason will also be gone, who currently has not won a game this year. Vanderbilt might be the hardest job to succeed in in college football, but Mason seems to have worn his welcome out. He led the Commodores to two bowl games and has gotten a few of his players drafted, but his time seems to be coming to an end. Elsewhere in the SEC, Stoops in Kentucky, Pruitt in Tennessee, and Orgeron in LSU should all get another season at their respective schools. Pruitt is especially intriguing, considering how underwhelming their season was this year and how much pressure the coach has in Knoxville. While Orgeron have had the most disappointing title defense in history, he’ll be back.
Admittedly, it’s a bit too early to tell who is actually a dud in the Pac 12, but I do think the Kevin Sumlin experiment is over in Arizona. Starting 0-3 after two straight losing seasons is not going to get it done. Both Cal’s Justin Wilcox and Stanford’s David Shaw should get second chances, though Shaw’s seat is starting to get hotter. Similar to Shaw’s situation is Duke’s David Cutcliffe in the ACC. With these “education first” institutions, the leash is usually longer than at many other schools. Cutcliffe has given a consistent winner to the school but after two straight years of sub-.500 play, there may be questions about his job security. In the ACC, however, the hottest job may be Syracuse’s, Dino Babers. After a ten-win season in 2018, they missed a bowl game last year and have only won one game this year. I can see him getting a mulligan this year, though I can also see him getting fired. It’s 50/50, in my opinion. Mendenhall should be good in Virginia as well and should be in a bowl game come the end of the year. Georgia Tech’s Geoff Collins will probably also have his job reviewed, even though he is only in his second year. Next year should be a win or go home type of season for him.
Another second-year coach who must win next year is going to be Kansas’s, Les Miles. He probably has the toughest job in the Big 12 and was seen as the right man to turn that program around. They are winless this year and haven’t looked close to being in any game this year. He is going to have to do clean up work quickly. Matt Wells in Texas Tech is also going to need to win next year as well after two sub-.500 seasons. The Big 10’s hottest seat is Harbaugh, but it may be time to start thinking about Scott Frost’s security in Nebraska. The rebuild was not supposed to be easy, but it may not be going fast enough. I think he’ll be back for next year, but the seat is simmering. The more I hear about James Franklin’s job security, the more it sounds secure. Penn State’s disappointing season is seen as more of a blip in the radar than anything else, and he should be fine.
The coaching carousel is one of the more intriguing stories to write about for any league, but college football can be seen as something different. With so many names and faces, the carousel is almost seen as a death and rebirth of the sport. The older ideas get old and die out, and newer, younger, and better schemes and playcallers move in. These new philosophies are rarely invented on the NFL level; it comes from the younger guys who get chances to take college programs to the next level. While it is sad to see coaches lose their jobs, as they are human beings, the newer people coming in with fresh ideas is what makes college football the wide expanse of different stories and philosophies that it is
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