It may be early in the college football season, but for some coaches, it’s getting late. Some spent the entire off-season on the hot seat. Others, like Alabama’s Kalen DeBoer, are on the hot seat after Week 1 results. But here are 10 coaches who could certainly lose their jobs.
Top 10 college football coaches on hot seats
10. Bill Belichick, North Carolina
Arguably, the greatest coach in football on the hot seat? On one hand, seeing Belichick listed here after a game seems wild. But on the other hand, he’s already been a massive headache, and that one game was a complete humiliation. Carolina didn’t deal with the money and the endless hassles for a 48-14 loss to TCU.
9. Brent Venables, Oklahoma
Venables is 23-17 at Oklahoma, but the hot seat has cooled a bit since new QB John Mateer looked sharp in a 35-3 win over FCS Illinois State. Still, a subpar season could well sink Venables.
8. Billy Napier, Florida
Similarly, Billy Napier’s stock is seemingly on the rise. But it is worth noting that he’s just 20-19 at Florida. DJ Lagway seems to have things moving in the right direction, but Napier’s seat still has some vestiges of warmth.
7. Scott Satterfield, Cincinnati
Satterfield is 8-17 at Cincinnati. He didn’t do exceptionally well at Louisville either, and after a tough Week 1 loss to Nebraska, it’s fair to wonder how much patience the Bearcat administration will have with Satterfield.
6. Mike Locksley, Maryland
Locksley was an odd hire, as he went 2-26 at New Mexico. He had some success at Maryland, but is just 34-41 there. With another subpar season, he’s likely back on the coaching market.
5. Brent Pry, Virginia Tech
With an offensively-challenged game against South Carolina, Pry fell to 16-22 at Tech. The program has slid consistently over the past two decades, but it’s hard to imagine that Pry can keep the Virginia Tech job without a substantial improvement.
4. Lincoln Riley, USC
Riley is 27-14, but the standards at USC are higher than at most programs. He has declined in record in each of his three seasons, and a fourth season that falls below last year’s 7-6 mark would probably send him out of USC. Week 1 was impressive, but the Big Ten could make Riley’s life pretty uncomfortable.
3. Sam Pittman, Arkansas
Sam Pittman is 31-31 at Arkansas. Since the nine-win season in 2021, Pittman has had Arkansas slightly above or slightly below the lower-tier bowl quality. While he has plenty of supporters, Arkansas’s standards are a bit higher than the performances that Pittman has been delivering.
2. Luke Fickell, Wisconsin
Fickell is 14-13, but got his quarterback injured in Week 1 and faces a miserable schedule. The odds of his time running to Wisconsin are climbing by the day. It’s getting steadily harder to imagine Wisconsin as a power in the expanded Big Ten.
1. Kalen DeBoer, Alabama
The expectations of following Nick Saban were absolutely unfair to Kalen DeBoer. But that’s what he has to face. At 9-5 at Alabama, he has already lost to three unranked teams in a season and a game. The seat at Alabama is red-hot, and it’s not hard to imagine a few more performances as lackluster as Week 1’s loss to Florida State ending the DeBoer era in a hurry.
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