Even in this wildest, most unpredictable of 2024 college football seasons, one thing is inevitable. As the clocks turn back and the calendar turns to November, teams whose seasons have been less than successful are starting to evaluate a change at the head coach position. Heading out of the Week 10 action, who are the college football hot seat coaches?
5 Coaches on the College Football Hot Seat
James Franklin, Penn State
Since arriving in Pennsylvania as the Penn State Nittany Lions head coach ahead of the 2014 college football season, James Franklin has had just one losing season (the disrupted 2020 campaign). He’s taken the team to a bowl game every year (except 2020), and with four games left to play, he could lead the team to a sixth double-digit win campaign during his tenure.
Franklin has tallied 88 victories (fourth in Penn State history), and four of his campaigns have resulted in a top 10 ranking in the final AP Poll (with the potential for a fifth in 2024). It’s a level of success that most programs can only dream of achieving and the sort of results that should buy you the level of job security to keep you off college football hot seat lists forever.
MORE: Simulate the College Football Season with CFN’s College Football Playoff Predictor
Yet, Franklin’s spectacular inability to take Penn State over the edge from good to great has to whip up the winds of change. The Ohio State Buckeyes were there for the taking this year. Yet, after losing to their familiar Big Ten foe, a place in the College Football Playoff might have slipped through their fingers in a season where expansion and realignment were meant to help.
13-26 against AP Top 25 teams. 3-18 against Top 10 teams. 1-13 against Top 5 teams. 1-10 against Ohio State. It’s a resume of failure in the biggest of moments that raises the question of what constitutes success. What are you happy with as a program? Those questions could haunt Franklin as much as the off-field ones he refuses to answer during press conferences.
Hugh Freeze, Auburn
There was a time when a defeat to the Vanderbilt Commodores would be a death knoll all of its own. However, in the wildest of college football seasons, Clark Lea’s team is no longer the whipping boy of the SEC. That said, the 17-7 defeat in Week 10 isn’t a one-off shock defeat in the scheme of things for the Auburn Tigers under Hugh Freeze. It’s the new norm in 2024.
In Year 1, Freeze’s Auburn team matched the same SEC record as in Bryan Harsin’s first campaign. Unless they win at least one of their remaining conference games (against the Texas A&M Aggies and Alabama Crimson Tide), Year 2 is going to match the record that Harsin and Cadillac Williams left behind. It simply isn’t good enough for a program struggling for SEC relevance.
Freeze has succeeded in previous stops with his recruiting prowess and ability to extract the best from his quarterback. There’s no denying that his “snake oil salesman” charm routine has had positive results in recruiting for the Tigers. They currently sit fifth in the 247 Sports recruiting rankings for the 2025 cycle, with 17 four-star recruits committed.
However, his handling of the Auburn QB situation — sheer blind faith in Payton Thorne to suddenly flick the switch and become a game-winning SEC quarterback — has left fans frustrated and the offense stagnant. For the third successive season, Diego Pavia made his team look foolish, exacerbating the offensive struggles that put Freeze on the college football hot seat.
Kevin Wilson, Tulsa
Last week, I wrote out two paragraphs for the college football hot seat article about Kevin Wilson and how he was in danger of losing his job as the head coach of the Tulsa Golden Hurricane. At the time, they were 35-7 down against the UTSA Roadrunners and looked listless on both sides of the ball. Somehow, they rallied late in the game and escaped with a 46-45 win.
That joy was short-lived. In Week 10, Wilson’s team was 45-7 down at the half and never recovered. The worst part? The game was against a UAB Blazers team that was 1-6 without a conference win before facing Tulsa. There’s a real chance that this Golden Hurricane team will end 2024 with as many AAC wins in two seasons as the final year under Philip Montgomery and the worst overall record for the program since 2018.
Sonny Cumbie, Louisiana Tech
When Sonny Cumbie was hired by the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs, it was his reputation (and results) as an offensive coordinator that earned him the job. Great things were expected of the program with his innovative mind at the helm.
Well, after two and a half years, he gave up offensive playcalling duties, and, with mixed results, the chance that he’ll be relieved of head coach responsibilities seems to get higher with every passing week. The Bulldogs currently rank 112th in the country for scoring offense.
FREE: Sign up for the College Football Network Newsletter to receive unique stories from the world of college football directly to your inbox!
After scoring just three points in defeat to the Sam Houston Bearkats in Week 10, the Bulldogs are staring down the barrel of a losing season once again. They haven’t had three successive losing campaigns since 1993-1995, when Joe Peace was fired.
Yet, Cumbie has gone 3-9, 3-9, and could conceivably put up the same record again, with the matchup against the Kennesaw State Owls the only game where Louisiana Tech is favored by the College Football Network Football Playoff Meter (FPM).
Sam Pittman, Arkansas
“We got out-played, out-coached, out-physicaled.”
With the eyes of the college football world upon them as the ESPN game in the Noon window, Sam Pittman’s Arkansas Razorbacks wet the bed in the most dramatic way possible. The secondary was abysmal as Ole Miss Rebels QB Jaxon Dart ruthlessly picked apart the defense on his way to 515 yards and six touchdowns in a 63-31 Ole Miss win.
Far from being a tough hog, Arkansas was a piece of streaky bacon on Saturday and got absolutely cooked. Like Franklin above him on the college football hot seat, Pittman’s fate is inextricably linked to expectation. If your expectation of the Razorbacks is a 6-6 season with a bowl game, the current head coach is your man.
If you think that Arkansas has the potential to return the glory years of Bobby Petrino, Houston Nutt, and Ken Hatfield, then Pittman is likely not long for the head coach role.
College Football Network has you covered with the latest from the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC, and every Group of Five conference and FBS Independent program.