College Football Hot Seat Report

Welcome to the Hot Seat Report, an updating list of college football head coaches with low job security. With each update, coaches will be added, removed and shuffled around based on their performance (note: coaches are listed alphabetically).

Keep up with coaches changes that have already happened on our FBS Coaching Carousel page.

**UPDATED MAY 29, 2025**

YOUR CHAIR IS ON FIRE, SIR

Coaches at the end of the line at their current school. 

• Tony Elliott (Virginia)
  • Virginia has consistently ranked amongst the ACC’s worst in total offense and defense under Elliott, though the team saw minor improvement in 2024 with five wins after managing just three in the two seasons prior. Elliott’s tenure started in tragedy, with the shocking November 2022 shooting on the UVA campus that left three players dead and a fourth wounded, all at the hands of a former player from before Elliott’s time there. So the on-field results for the first couple years are hard to judge too harshly. But this year’s team needs to show improvement on the field or Elliott is going to be done.
• Billy Napier (Florida)
  • Florida fans are not thrilled that the school is paying $7M+ a year to finish below .500, as Napier did in each of his two seasons at the helm. Gator faithful are well past restless at this point, and losing all three of his games against rival Georgia by two or more touchdowns is not helping. The Gators pulled off upsets over LSU and Ole Miss as part of a four-game winning streak to finish the season 8-5 (4-4), which includes a win in the Gasparilla Bowl in Tampa. But when your best record at Florida is 8-5, your seat is about as hot as it can get.
• Sam Pittman (Arkansas)
  • With one of the hottest seats in college football, Pittman is entering his sixth season at Arkansas with an overall record of 30-31. He helped his cause a bit last year, rebounding from 4-8 in 2023 to 7-6 and a bowl victory in 2024, but is still someone who absolutely needs to win more to keep his job. The Razorbacks haven’t won 10+ games since 2011 and the incoming recruiting and transfer classes are middle-of-the-pack by SEC standards. This is the premier league in college sports with a ton of fantastic teams and it won’t take much for Arkansas to slide back down to the bottom of the league in 2025.

THIS SEAT IS RATHER WARM

These coaches need to start winning right now, but that may not even be enough…

• Dave Aranda (Baylor)
  • It was only a few years ago that Baylor went 12-2, won the Big 12 and the Sugar Bowl to finish the season ranked #5 in the country. Since then, Aranda’s teams have gone 17-21 overall and 12-15 in league play, with an embarrassing 3-9 (2-7) mark in 2023 that had many wondering if a change in leadership was coming. The Bears bounced back in 2024, finishing 8-5 (6-3) in a significant over-achievement against pre-season expectations, but lost big to LSU in the Texas Bowl. Starting QB Sawyer Robertson is back, and he will be joined in the QB room by Auburn transfer Walker White, who was one of the top recruits in the country in 2024.
• Trent Dilfer (UAB)
  • UAB took a big swing hiring Dilfer, the former NFL QB and television personality who had only recently gotten into coaching at the high school level when he arrived in Birmingham in late 2022. Through two seasons, he is 7-17 (6-11) with the Blazers and saw his win total drop from four in year one to three last season. Off-the-field comments have rubbed fans the wrong the way, only making the lack of on-field success worse. His buyout drops to $2.4M this year and then $1.2M after next season, so a small improvement on the field might be enough to keep Dilfer on board a little longer.
• Mike Locksley (Maryland) 
  • Locksley’s seat was cooling off going into last year, with three-straight bowl appearances and wins after a very rough start. But the Terps regressed in 2024, winning four games total and just ONE in the Big Ten (USC at home by one point). One damning stat has been Maryland’s record in November under Locksley: the team is 5-16 overall in such games, representative of the fast starts and slow finishes we’ve come to expect from the Terps. Maryland lost its starting QB and a major contributor at RB to in-conference opponents and on paper have a pretty weak incoming group, all pointing to what could be another painful season in College Park. How much longer will Maryland be OK with a middle- to bottom-tier football team before making a change?
• Brent Venables (Oklahoma)
  • Venables took over a Sooners team that went 11-2 before his arrival and has gone 6-7 in two of his three seasons at the helm since then. OU did win 10 games in 2023, but the regression back down to 6-7 last season after joining the SEC certainly has many fans feeling pessimistic about the future. Especially when rival Texas was able to hit the ground running in the SEC – reaching the conference championship game and the CFP. A nice season in 2025 will definitely turn the tide, and transfer QB John Mateer has added excitement this offseason. But expectations are high for the program and fans expect the Sooners to be winning 10+ games and competing for national championships every year.

WE’VE GOT OUR EYE ON YOU, COACH

Here are those guys that are having a rough year (or two… or three…) but aren’t in total danger right now. 

• Sonny Cumbie (Louisiana Tech)
  • Cumbie went 3-9 in each of his first two seasons at Louisiana Tech before improving to 5-8 (4-4) in 2024. The Texas-native had never coached outside of his home state before taking the Tech job in late 2021 and while he has been able to recruit well – he’s had some of the league’s best recruiting classes and transfer portal hauls since taking over – it is really time to get that talent level to translate to more wins on the field. This is a classic make-or-break year for Cumbie, who needs to prove he can do better than three wins if he’s going to have a future in Ruston.
• Luke Fickell (Wisconsin)
  • Wisconsin scored big on the coaching carousel in 2022, pulling Fickell away from his home state of Ohio after a very successful run at Cincinnati. He went 57-18 over six seasons, with five bowl appearances and three seasons of 11+ wins. Things have not gone as well in Madison, though, and patience is starting to run thin. Fickell went 7-6 and 5-7 in his first two seasons, so the pressure is high for a successful run in year three. The Badgers have one of the nation’s top transfer classes this year as Fickell and company hope to have the program competing in the Big Ten once again.
• Mike Norvell (Florida State)
  • The Seminoles went 13-1 (8-0) in 2023 and only missed out on the CFP because of an injury to QB Jordan Travis, but the Seminoles are coming off one of the worst year-over-year regressions we’ve seen in modern college football. Norvell’s squad went 2-10 (1-7) in 2024 and had just one win over a FBS opponent (14-9 at home against Cal). The pre-season #10 ranking was quickly erased with three-straight losses and things just continued to crater for the Seminoles. It’s hard to believe where this program is right now, but there’s nowhere to go but up and in this era of college football things can turn around quickly – especially with a big brand like Florida State. Norvell added Gus Malzahn, who spent the last four years as head coach at UCF, as offensive coordinator this offseason and is bringing in one of the top-rated transfer classes in the country. The reason he isn’t higher is because his buyout is 85% of his remaining salary, which would be in the $51M range.
• Randy Rahne (Old Dominion)
  • This will technically be year five for Rahne, who has gone just 20-30 in four full seasons at the helm at ODU. He has taken the Monarchs to two bowl games (both losses), but has actually finished below .500 each year and are coming off a 5-7 season. The program’s HS and transfer recruiting has lagged behind the rest of the SBC, losing dozens of players this offseason but not bringing much back in to reload.
• Scott Satterfield (Cincinnati)
  • We had Satterfield on our Hot Seat Report in 2022, but he ended up leaving Louisville on his own to take over at Cincinnati. It was seen as a mostly lateral move that allowed him to get a fresh start and get the critics off his back for a little while. Well, here we are again in 2025 with Satterfield only winning 8 games through two seasons with the Bearcats. He did improve from three wins in year one to five last year, so if he can continue that trajectory upwards he will be in a good place with the program. But this is a team that won 9+ games in each of the five years before his arrival, including a 13-1 mark in 2021, so sustained success will be important for Satterfield’s long-term job security. His six-year deal is fully guaranteed, meaning that Cincy would have to pay him roughly $10M to buy him out this year to make a change.

COACHES THAT ARE SAFE (FOR NOW)

This section is comprised of coaches who were previously in one of the above categories this season or are just starting to feel heat but are not yet in any real danger of being fired.

• Mike Gundy (Oklahoma State)
  • Gundy is an OSU lifer – he played for the Cowboys in the late 1980s and has spent the vast majority of his 35-year coaching career in Stillwater, the last twenty as the head coach. There have been some incredible highs during his tenure, with eight seasons of 10+ wins and  several of those teams finishing ranked in the Top 10. But a streak of 18-straight bowl appearances (12-6) ended this past year with a 3-9 dud that harkens back to Gundy’s first year on the job (his only other sub-.500 season). All of the key contributors from last year’s team are gone to the NFL or transfers, and the classes coming in are middle-of-the-road even by Big 12 standards. The league opened up considerably with Texas and OU leaving, but OSU going winless in the first season without them does not inspire much confidence. Gundy fired both his OC and DC and agreed to a restructured contract this offseason, which takes $1M from his annual salary and puts it towards revenue share.
• Thomas Hammock (Northern Illinois)
  • We first added Hammock to the list in 2023 but he’s led the Huskies to back-to-back bowl appearances since then (winning both). The NIU program has established itself as one of the best in the MAC and fans expect to be competing for a league title (they won it all in 2021, Hammock’s third year) every season. The positive momentum (and the massive upset over #5 Notre Dame in South Bend) has pushed Hammock into the safe zone and another solid year will drop him from the list completely – his latest contract (signed in 2021) has him in Dekalb through the 2026 season.
• Butch Jones (Arkansas State)
  • Jones enters year five in Jonesboro after three-straight years of win total improvements, including a 8-5 finish in 2024 with a bowl victory over Bowling Green. Arkansas State has been a very successful program the last two decades, with head coaches like Hugh Freeze, Gus Malzahn, Bryan Harsin and Blake Anderson parlaying their success into bigger jobs. So Jones and company will need to keep the momentum going, otherwise he will be back on the hot seat.
• Clark Lea (Vanderbilt)
  • Lea has been the head coach at Vanderbilt for four seasons in he has gone winless in the SEC twice, finishing 2-10 (0-8) in both 2021 and 2023. In any other scenario, he is clearly at the top of this list. But after Vanderbilt fired head men’s basketball coach Jerry Stackhouse – and reportedly paid him as much as $15M on the way out – the athletic department may be looking to avoid another buyout for now. The Commodores improved to 7-6 last year, scoring an upset over then-#1 Alabama in October (their first win over the Tide in 40 years) and reaching a bowl game for the first time since 2018 (a win over Georgia Tech in Birmingham), but sustained success will be the goal.
• Lincoln Riley (USC)
  • Fans are not pleased with how the last two seasons have gone, but Riley has one of the largest buyouts in college football – USC does not need to publicly release this information, but it’s estimated to be in the $65-75M range in 2025. He’s not going anywhere unless he takes another job voluntarily. However, for his own legacy and reputation, Riley needs to get back to winning ways. 11-3 in year one with a Heisman winner, down to 8-5 (5-4) in year two with Caleb Williams still under center and then 7-6 (4-5) last season after joining the Big Ten. Those numbers aren’t going to cut it, but all of the leverage is on Riley’s side of the table so he will have time to turn it around.
• Justin Wilcox (California)
  • Wilcox is entering his ninth season at Cal and second as a member of the ACC, going 6-7 (2-6) last year with a loss to UNLV in the LA Bowl. His tenure in Berkeley has had its ups and downs, with some major positives being four-straight wins over rival Stanford (Wilcox is 5-3 overall against the Cardinal) and four bowl appearances. But the Bears are just 1-3 in those bowl games and have finished below .500 six times in eight years. Starting QB Fernando Mendoza transferred out and there has been major staff turnover, though their is definite optimism with two former head coaches joining the program in Bryan Harsin (OC) and Nick Rolovich, among others. At the end of the day, there are lots of question marks around Wilcox and Cal, but his contract is fully-guaranteed through 2027 (buyout in the $9-10M range).