Which College Football Coach Gets Canned First This Season?
I posted this thread around this time last year and thought with the lack of real football-related material these days, I’d post it again. Not that I don’t love listing off my G.O.A.T foods, but who do you all see among the first college football head coaches to be fired this season?
My first thoughts go to Lovie Smith at Illinois or David Beaty at Kansas. Neither are high profile gigs and both have minimal expectations. Kansas especially. But I’m thinking if Lovie can’t get Illinois to a bowl game after three years at the helm, he’s gone. Beaty may get a longer leash than that, but I doubt he can survive another 1-win season.
Hope it is Brian Kelly due to his humiliating loss at home in the season opener.
I think Notre Dame has 2 guaranteed wins in their first 10 games. That's not good news for a program that has regularly disappointed in big games and played down to the level of inferior competition under Kelly. Wouldn't be shocked if they started 8-2 or 7-3, but I also wouldn't be shocked if they started 4-6.
listen to mother's wisdom. it speaks to us all.
Brian Kelly, Mark Stoops, DJ Durkin.
I think Durkin is safe for the time being. So I would replace Durkin’s name with Chris Ash.
Agreed on Durkin, everyone knows last years results were largely due to QB injuries. Plus he just had the 4th and 5th best recruiting classes in the Big10. Everyone knows his ceiling in the Big10 East is 8-4 and with the talent he has brought in plus hiring Canada as OC, they should get pretty close to that and everyone will be happy.
And while Rutgers could fire Ash, what decent candidate would be dumb enough to take that job? With PSU back, there is no easy home state recruiting, Maryland is already doing much better on the east coast, and you have at least 4 guaranteed losses a year and more likely 6 or 7.
Chris Ash signed a new 5 year deal after last season. He's got to be safe for at least 2 seasons.
The first coaches fired won't be coming from the Big Ten unless it's for off the field behavior.
Ah I did not know that Ash signed a new deal. I just feel like winning 3 conference games in 2 years is horrible. It is Rutgers they would have trouble finding someone better than Ash. He should just be on the hot seat for giving MSU their only conference W in 2016.
A different poll question; will the first coach get the ax for losing or off the field behavior?
Don't say both, we all know there's more leeway giving to winning coaches.
That one is tough but I would have to choose off the field behavior. Most coaches will at least get a few games to prove themselves. Off the field stuff could happen during fall camp. It always seems like some coach somewhere makes a bone headed decision at the beginning of the season or at camp.
Off the field behavior will be the reason given.
Not sure if serious with Brian Kelly. The guy is a total ass, yes, but his on-the-field results aren't really that close to being on the hot-seat
He's averaging 8.5 wins per season and has only gotten close in 2012 when they survived week after week of eking out wins thanks to 4 INTs from Denard, missed chip shots from Purdue and Pitt, and a goaline stand against Stanford. Then got pounded into oblivion.
I'm biased, I think the guy is a massive tool. But ND and 8-9 wins a year generally don't mix. Especially when you have the vacating wins from 2012 and 2013, the death of a camera guy, and the general embarrassment that he is publicly and on the sideline.
Don't get the vide on Stoops, despite some fans I hear talk down here. Not really sure how many of the "basketball school" fans live and die with the football team. He's been decent enough to where going to bowls every year or two won't put him on the hot seat.
My guess is Ed Orgeron. They play both Miami (YTM) and Auburn in weeks 1 and 3.
That's my guess too. Pretty solid chance LSU is 3-4 after the Georgia game. The four losses would be Miami in the opener, at Auburn, at Florida, and Georgia at home. And that's just not going to cut it at LSU.
Plus after Georgia, you've got Miss St and Alabama so things ain't gonna get a whole lot easier.
Georgia seemed to be the only school that actually escaped the ole "get rid of a decent coach and suffer through two or three worse ones" bit that seems to hit folks. LSU doesn't look like they're escaping it. I like this pick.
I didn’t think about Orgeron for whatever reason. I still can’t believe LSU preferred him over going balls to the wall for Tom Herman. He’s Cajun Brady Hoke and is considerably less ethical.
They did go balls to the wall for Herman. Doesn't matter how hard you go if he'd rather go to Texas.
I'd think schools with low expectations (Illinois, Kansas, etc.) would hold off until firing their coach until after the season. Doesn't really make sense to fire Beaty in week 8 and make some poor interim coach the tire fire the rest of the way, when nobody is banging down the door to come to Kansas (or Illinois). They're not getting a head start on the best candidates available.
I'll go out on a limb and say Clay Helton or Brian Kelly. For Helton, one could picture a 4-3 or even 3-4 start after losing their starting QB, RB, and having a weak defense. For Kelly, I could see Notre Dame falling below .500 in the first weeks of November. I could see both of these schools entering their 11/24 matchup with interim head coaches. Especially so for Notre Dame, who would probably target Jeff Brohm.
Both Helton and Kelly have been pretty underwhelming in recent years and are generally uninspiring faces of their programs. The issue with this coaching market is that the number of coveted young leaders seems pretty slim. Neal Brown from Troy would top my list. Outside of him...???
KU has a new AD. So if Beaty has another shitty year he almost certainly going to get canned.
As much as I agree that Clay Helton is an underwhelming face of the USC program, and I don’t think he will last long term, it would be hard to see him being fired after just this year considering they won the Rose Bowl and then the PAC-12 in the last two years, respectively.
That's certainly true - they'd probably really have to crater this year for him to get canned.
A few names that haven't been mentioned (at least prior to me writing this post):
(1) Ed Orgeron is on a short leash, for sure.
(2) Larry Fedora at UNC - 3-9 last year. That can't repeat.
(3) In mid-major land, Scottie Montgomery has been a disaster at ECU. The Pirates should not be nearly as bad as they have been lately.
(4) A longer shot: Mike Leach. His political comments during the off-season were polarizing and the athletic department has had turnover. Longer shot, but you never know.
Fedora is a good call, the only thing I don't know is how long his leash is/how patient UNC is going to be with its football program. I really have no idea what their expectations are or what kind of deference Fedora has engendered with his bosses.
The key for UNC seems to be their first 2 games --- at California and at ECU.
Neither of those teams are very good, but it's (1) a full cross-country road trip, and (2) an in-state team who would love to beat you and has a coaching staff that needs to "win now" themselves.
Go 0-2 in those games, and UNC is likely 1-4 on September 27th (UCF & Miami FLA among their next 3 games). Then a 16-day break before their next game. I could see it happening.
Fedora has to start showing progress in the ACC - at least at home. UNC strongly identifies as a BB school, so he really just needs to consistently exist in the 8-5 or 9-4 territory. Strange to think he was pretending to take his name out of various coaching searches as late as 2016.
UNC is building a new indoor/outdoor practice facility that should be open in time to attract a new head coach if necessary, but I don't see them paying the $4-8 million it takes to get a name HC or promote a sexy SEC coordinator.
Lovie I think gets some slack since he is bringing in some decent recruits and people couldn't expect them to do all too much. I think Kelly for sure could be possible or maybe like Helton at USC could be on the hot seat. SEC just had a merry-go-round so I don't know if anyone there has been in place long enough to consider....
If ND didn’t fire Kelly after he has the blood of two dead students on his hands, first vacated wins in school history, a 4-8 season, and negative ads in the South Bend Tribune.....why would they fire him now? Not to mention we still don’t know what role the current athletic director Savvy Jack had in the Larry Nassar debacle when he was General Counsel for USAG. Interesting that Savvy Jack had that part of his bio scrubbed from the ND website. I know it is a road game at night, but holy hell Harbaugh better not lose to that bastard.
Because disappointing seasons add up and eventually will tip the scales and outweigh the one fluke year they got to the NC game. Every fan base and administration has a tipping point, just because Notre Dame hasn’t reached it yet with Kelly doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
I just think it would be super rare for a school like Notre Dame to fire a coach mid-season pending some sort of full blown meltdown.
And given that they are favored in every single game this season, I just don't see that happening. Also, if you're Notre Dame who are you going to get that's an upgrade on Kelly?
From what I hear, Notre Dame has always interested Urban Meyer. Whether he’d leave OSU is debatable.
Not to mention a young up and coming coach located about 2 hours South currently in Jeff Brohm.
Or take a shot at a guy like PJ Fleck.
Kelly is only averaging 8.5 wins per year. There’s probably quite a few coaches who could do that.
Urban is not leaving OSU for Notre Dame...he literally has the best job in the country, I hate to say it, but it's true. OSU is a Goliath with their only in state competition Cincinnati. Their worst years in the last 50 years with Cooper still consisted of them winning 11 games three times, something we've never done.
I don’t think Urban would go to ND. But I think I remember hearing that ND is his dream job. While I highly doubt it, there’s a greater than 0 chance.
My point was simply that there are plenty of candidates out there that would be interested in ND and can yield the same results or better than Kelly
Meyer isn’t going to Notre Dame unless he feels a personal calling to do so. There is literally nothing ND can offer that OSU can’t.
I think he’s more likely to be tempted by the NFL than by ND, and I think even the NFL is a long shot.
Not happening. Urban is like a fly on a honey covered cow pie. Besides, I want Michigan to beat his ass there and no where else.
The word in SEC land is that Orgeron is safe this year and that the expectations come in next year. Maybe.
I don’t know about that. The guy was hired because the department likes him but the fan base will turn on him if he struggles this season. Fact is he has to beat Alabama. He could be headed for a Hoke like career at LSU
Easy to say that before the games happen, but if he loses to Alabama, Georgia, Miami, Miss State, and Auburn, all games they are underdogs in fans won't be OK with that. Just look at Michigan last year, most preseason projections were 9-3 or 8-4, and yet once fans saw the actual games and felt the disappointment at the loss, most weren't OK with it. If there's a hot candidate out there, don't be surprised if LSU moves faster this time so they don't lost out like they did with Tom Herman.
I just don't buy that. Vegas has LSU at 7.5 wins...which feels high looking at that schedule. ESPN's FPI has LSU as a 6-6 team this year and that feels pretty accurate. If he can get them to 8-4 he's probably safe. Any worse than that and he's done I think.
https://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/ot-which-p5-coach-gets-canned-first-season
I found last year's version in case anyone wants to see how they did.
Urban Meyer fired after murder charges. We can only hope...
Can we avoid actively wishing for someone to be murdered?
To be fair, he didn’t say Urban had to have actually murdered someone, only that he be charged with murder.
Its a joke. I thought the exaggeration was obvious. You also need to learn to read.
this is disgusting
I say Kingsbury at Tx Tech.
Urban meyer Mark Dantonio and nick saban will all be fired on the same day. On a more serious note I would say Lovie Smith
Ed Orgeron. I think that never was a popular hire down there, the schedule is third hardest according to FPI, and I always felt it was downgrade to Les Miles (even the later years of him)
From what I've read Lovie has some slack because of how bad the program was when he took over and the recruiting is good(for Illinois). I don't think it will be a lower P5 team that fires a coach first(unless there is some surprising event like Sarkesian. They don't tend to be in a rush to find a replacement coach the way the top teams are.
I could see Kelly fired early. They have 4 top 30 opponents through week 7 and if the hype about them as a top 10 team is wrong and they end up 3-4 or 4-3 it would not sit well with fans with FSU and USC games looming.
And while it would be drastic, Helton's seat at USC could really heat up if they struggle starting a new QB. Many still aren't sold on him being a good hire and Darnold saved his ass after starting 1-3 in 2017. And they could go 1-3 again with games at Stanford and Texas and WSU at home in their first 4 games.
Orgeron is another who could get fired early with games against Miami and Auburn in the first 3 weeks. And he still has to play Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Miss State, and Texas A&M. The last 3 have new coaches but they inherit solid rosters.