Forty names, games, teams and minutiae making news in college sports ...
First Quarter: College Football Job Jeopardy Is Spreading
There already have been seven in-season firings at the FBS level this season, five at the Power 4 conference level. There certainly will be more—potentially many more, after a weekend in which several embattled coaches played themselves into further jeopardy. Buyouts are steep, but there might be an increasing tolerance for throwing massive piles at a cash and hoping the next guy will do better.
(Keep in mind, the mitigation clauses in contracts matter. Penn State conceivably owes a $45 million buyout to James Franklin, but on College GameDay on Saturday he sounded like a man eager for his next job—and he would get one. That would dramatically reduce what the Nittany Lions owe Franklin.)
A Dash look at where things are worst, and how much it could potentially cost to make a change.
Florida (1). Coach in trouble: Billy Napier. Record at Florida: 21–23. How hot is the seat: It’s actually already been reduced to carbon. There is no seat left. Napier was fired Sunday. Jimbo Meter: A buyout in the $20 million range, which has been accepted as the price of erasing this error and starting over.
The situation: Napier, whose press conferences have had a numb sameness to them for years, actually seemed to get choked up a bit Saturday after the Gators beat Mississippi State in his final game. (Beating the Bulldogs isn’t worth what it used to be; both Napier and Jimbo Fisher at Texas A&M were fired after victories over Mississippi State.)
Napier might have been a Nick Saban assistant, but he proved to be in over his head as an SEC head coach. Poor in-game decisions, bad staffing choices and a chronic inability to produce a competent offense have been the hallmarks of his tenure. That won’t get it done at a place that has won three national championships.
Florida State (2). Coach in trouble: Mike Norvell. Record at FSU: 36–30. How hot is the seat: surface of the sun. The school already reduced his salary by more than $4 million after last year’s disaster, anticipating a turnaround. Jimbo Meter: The buyout is about $59 million, according to published reports. That would be the second-biggest ever.
The situation: The Seminoles couldn’t have started the season any better, solidly beating Alabama and getting to 3–0. It has spiraled into a 2024 flashback train wreck since then, with four straight losses. The latest one was an #ACCAfterDark carnival of the weird at Stanford—a game in which it certainly looked like the Seminoles scored a potential game-tying touchdown on the last play, but replay did not overturn a decision that the FSU runner was down short of the goal line. Maybe the ‘Noles were robbed—but the fact that they were trying to conjure up a miracle TD against a program with dramatically less talent, being led by an interim coach, was the bigger story.
Given Florida State’s strong-arming of the ACC during and after its 13–1 season in ’23, the school can’t really passively accept a program collapse in vague hope of an eventual turnaround. The Seminoles have lost 15 of their last 20, including nine straight ACC games and eight straight games away from Tallahassee. Norvell blew out both coordinators after last year and again hit the transfer portal heavily, but it’s not working. When everything changes but the head coach, and the program remains in freefall, guess who’s next to go?
Auburn (3). Coach in trouble: Hugh Freeze. Record at Auburn: 14–18. How hot is the seat: surface of Mercury. Jimbo Meter: A relatively cheap $15.4 million buyout in today’s climate.
The situation: Freeze has been Bryan Harsin 2.0, and that was so intolerable that Auburn boosters ran him out after just 21 games on the job. Like Norvell, Freeze started this season with great promise, going 3–0 and scoring a road win over Baylor. And like Norvell, he’s winless since, dropping four straight conference games by 10 points or less. The decision to go make Oklahoma transfer quarterback Jackson Arnold the offensive centerpiece was dubious at the time and worse now that he’s last in the SEC in pass efficiency.
Auburn is notoriously unhappy with hits football coaches, but Freeze has earned all the blowback. A onetime offensive savant hasn’t been able to muster more than 17 points in his last five SEC games. A stellar 2026 recruiting class has been losing commitments for months, so that likely won’t be enough to save Freeze, either.
Wisconsin (4). Coach in trouble: Luke Fickell. Record at Wisconsin: 15-18. How hot is the seat: surface of Mercury as well. Jimbo Meter: a $27.5 million buyout, which is a lot for a school that has traditionally operated from a place of fiscal restraint.
The situation: One of the most heralded hires of ’23 has never worked out as anticipated, and it has gotten markedly worse over the last 12 games. Fickell’s record in that time is 2–10, with the only victories over Miami (Ohio) and Middle Tennessee. Home games have become toxic airborne events, with cascades of boos and rows of empty seats. The Badgers have been shut out in consecutive games for the first time since 1977.
Fickell hasn’t been able to deliver a glimmer of hope the last two seasons. And there are more losses on the way against a difficult closing schedule.
Kentucky (5). Coach in trouble: Mark Stoops. Record at Kentucky: 69–76. How hot is the seat: surface of Venus. Jimbo Meter: The buyout is believed to be in the $38 million range, which is exorbitant. But think how much money the Wildcats saved on buyouts when John Calipari voluntarily left for Arkansas in ’24.
The situation: Stoops’s team turned in a tenacious performance Saturday night against Texas, falling in overtime, 13–10. (Speaking of disappointments: yo, Longhorns.) Good try, good effort, but the bottom line is that Kentucky has lost nine straight SEC games and 16 of its last 18 within the league. Bad offenses lose games in the SEC, and the Wildcats have been among the worst on that side of the ball for the past two years.
Kentucky fans still care far more about basketball, and the NIL figures bear that out. Going all-in on hoops might allow Stoops to muddle on in the job, given the buyout figure, but everyone in the commonwealth would be appreciative if Stoops could find his own exit strategy.
LSU (6). Coach in trouble: Brian Kelly. Record at LSU: 34–13. How hot is the seat: Baton Rouge in the height of summer. Jimbo Meter: He’s got a $52 million buyout, which is massive—but desperate times can call for desperate measures.
The situation: When it comes to roiling discontent with the football coach, LSU is Auburn with better food. Kelly was hired at massive expense with two expectations: get the Tigers into the College Football Playoff and compete for national championships. That hasn’t happened yet, and losing to former SEC doormat Vanderbilt on Saturday sets up the playoff knockout blow in one of the next two games from Texas A&M and/or Alabama. When Vandy is in better playoff position than LSU, the Cajuns get cranky.
The Tigers are a fitfully incomplete team, struggling most of the season on offense but then reversing and being trampled on defense Saturday. LSU gave up a season-high 5.96 yards per play to Vandy, including 239 on the ground. The home game against undefeated A&M feels hugely important for Kelly, followed by an open date and then a trip to Tuscaloosa.
Maryland (7). Coach in trouble: Mike Locksley. Record at Maryland: 37–44. How hot is the seat: Toasty, with a new athletic director and yet another hot start fizzling. Jimbo Meter: The buyout is $13.4 million, which isn’t bad by current industry standards but still a sizable chunk for a school that has lost a lot of money on athletics over the last decade. (Maryland is definitely one of the Big Ten members in favor of the potential $2 billion-plus private capital deal.)
The situation: After three straight winning seasons from 2021–23, Locksley and the Terrapins backslid to 4–8 last year. Locksley volunteered that he “lost the locker room” in terms of NIL situations creating a lack of cohesion and vowed to correct it this year. Then came a familiar 4–0 start —the fourth of 3–0 or better in the last five seasons—and familiar October struggles. Maryland has lost three straight by a total of 10 point, getting outscored 44–7 in the fourth quarter of those games.
Locksley has been a serviceable coach, but a desire for something different is understandable at this point. Problem being, this will be an incredibly competitive hiring market, with so many jobs coming open. Does Maryland have the willingness and the cash to take swings in this climate?
North Carolina (8). Coach in trouble: Bill Belichick. Record at North Carolina: 2–4. How hot is the seat: who really knows? Jimbo Meter: A reported $20 million.
The situation: Chapel Bill has been a Chapel Bust to date, winless against power conference competition. The Tar Heels came close to winning at California on Friday night, but a fumble at the goal line late in the game doomed them to another defeat. At least this one wasn’t a blowout.
After rampant speculation that one or both sides of this odd marriage were ready to pull the plug at midseason, the coach and the school both made assurances that they were committed to each other. But there’s no telling how long that commitment will last, especially from a 73-year-old coach who doesn’t need the job or the money. This one seems like it will stay dormant through the rest of this season.
South Carolina (9). Coach in trouble: Shane Beamer. Record at South Carolina: 32–26. How hot is the seat: Perhaps hotter with the fans than with the administration. Jimbo Meter: The buyout is $27.9 million, a lot for a guy with a winning record who nearly made the playoff last year.
The situation: The Gamecocks have been all over the spectrum the past three seasons, from a 5–7 mark in ’23 that increased the heat on Beamer to a 9–4 breakthrough that removed the heat. But this season has been a backslide to 3–4, 1–4 in the SEC, with losses to Vanderbilt and Missouri. South Carolina is last in the SEC in scoring and total offense despite having a quarterback, LaNorris Sellers, who began the year being touted as a potential No. 1 NFL draft pick. Fact is, the Gamecocks were overrated at No. 13 in the preseason poll, setting up some of the current level of dissatisfaction.
There is a relatively easy way out of this situation if Beamer and Virginia Tech decide they’re right for each other. He has deep ties there since his father, Frank, is the program architect and patriarch. With consecutive games upcoming against Alabama, Mississippi and Texas A&M—combined record of 19–2—Beamer’s South Carolina situation seems unlikely to get better in the short term.
Clemson (10). Coach in trouble: Dabo Swinney. Record at Clemson: 183–51. How hot is the seat: It’s probably up to Swinney to decide whether he’s feeling any discomfort. Jimbo Meter: A whopping $60 million. Clemson isn’t paying that.
The situation: The best coach in program history has let things slide by refusing to modernize. The Tigers have lost five straight home games to power-conference competition, which seems inconceivable from the standard Swinney set while winning two national championships and going to seven College Football Playoffs. But here we are. It’s all gotten very strange in the Upstate.
Swinney will be all but impossible to force out—and, frankly, he’s earned that level of respect. It will be up to the immensely proud and stubborn coach to decide if he wants to go elsewhere, in which case he would immediately become a very hot name on the market.
More College Football on Sports Illustrated
Listen to SI’s new college sports podcast, Others Receiving Votes, below or on Apple and Spotify. Watch the show on SI’s YouTube channel.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Forde-Yard Dash: Despite Massive Buyouts, These Top-Level Coaches Are Feeling the Heat.