Inside the cycle of college football coach firings: why so many swift changes
It’s never been a better time to be a college football agent.
They get coaches into jobs. You already knew that. But now, they spend more time negotiating them out of position, hawking in hefty buyouts in doing so.
The most recent — and possibly most jarring — was LSU firing Brian Kelly. The Tigers had fallen to 5-3 after entering his fourth year in the preseason top 10, and a 49-25 dragging by Texas A&M marked the end.
He isn’t alone. Twelve schools have already axed their coaches before Halloween, the most in the last decade. Last season’s coaching cycle only featured 16 by the end of the year, which is relatively active, and 2023’s was the most aggressive in decades, with the likes of Alabama and Michigan headlining 31 changes.
This season may even eclipse that. Three blue bloods — Penn State, LSU and Florida — have already ripped the Band-Aid, while others like Florida State and Auburn are amid abnormally bad multi-year stretches under their current leaders, and a switch nears for each. Pressure looms for schools to be competitive and consistent immediately under coaches amid an era of change in college athletics.
“We didn’t win as many games as we wanted to but there was no question we had the talent to win at that level,” Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin said. “There’s never been a time as many financial resources and as much commitment has gone into making Gator football as good as it can be.
“We’re here to win championships.”
That’s the atmosphere of most major college programs, and exactly why there’s at least two more current coaching openings this year than there have ever been prior to November. It feeds from NIL and a shifting revenue-sharing environment. As schools can pay their players up to $20.5 million this year, a perception persists that the playing field is even. There’s no excuse to not win now.
That mindset is especially prevalent at major universities, where financial resources allow them to out-bid most other schools in a less-cloaked way than they ever have before. At Florida, Stricklin emphasized that UF’s facilities and backing make it a job where remaining competitive is a requirement. LSU athletic director Scott Woodward emphasized a similar sentiment while explaining why he cut Kelly.
“The success at the level that LSU demands simply did not materialize,” Woodward said. “We will not lower our standards. … We will immediately begin a national search for a new head coach, and I am confident in our ability to bring to Baton Rouge an outstanding leader, teacher and coach, who fits our culture and community and embraces the excellence we demand.”
Standards have possibly ballooned to unachievable proportions. Seven of the teams who are currently looking for new coaches have been featured in a New Year’s Six Bowl since the turn of the century. They know what success looks like, but only one (Penn State) has reached that same level since the COVID-19 pandemic, when this player empowerment ball started rolling.
In pursuit of what may be unattainable, each school’s athletic director echoed similar messages about their standards and the type of coach they’re going to hire next. To that point, the pool of candidates is only so large, especially if the likes of Florida State or Auburn join. As teams are much faster to pull the trigger on an underperforming hire, some will struggle to find competent replacements, and few will find definitive improvement.
“This is a self-sustaining cycle,” said Matt Brown — founder of Extra Points, a newsletter publication that covers college athletics business — in June. Even then, this wave of coach firings was somewhat predictable. “Schools want to win quickly, and that’s never been easy. … The schedule for coaches is ticking ever faster than it had in the past, and it’ll just continue with each new coach hired until something changes.”
While high-profile names circulate for the largest openings, including the likes of Lane Kiffin and James Franklin, not every school will be able to attract a coach with that track record. Some may find themselves in this same spot again three years later, searching, yet again, for program sustainability that no longer exists.