The clocks went back last weekend, and now that we’re into November, the hiring and firing cycle is very much upon us. We’ve already seen some head coaches fall by the way, but who could be next to join them? Heading out of the Week 11 action, who are the college football hot seat coaches?
5 Coaches on the College Football Hot Seat
Ryan Walters, Purdue
Purdue Boilermakers head coach Ryan Walters has been on the college football hot seat for most of the season. While we haven’t always showcased his pitfalls in this weekly article, they’ve been there and clear to see for all who follow the team closely. After being slaughtered by the Ohio State Buckeyes in Week 11, he returns to the national spotlight as someone fighting for his job.
Hired on the back of his stingy defenses at the Illinois Fighting Illini, Walters’ team ranked 128th in the nation for points allowed during the 2024 season heading into Week 11 of the 2024 college football. They gave up another 45 while slipping to their eighth defeat of the season. It isn’t like the unit is lacking talent, led by All-American safety Dillon Thieneman, either.
Walters fired offensive coordinator Graham Harrell after a sluggish start to the season, but that hasn’t changed the fortunes of the program. Although they put up 49 on his former team, they could only score 20 points on a poor Northwestern Wildcats team. Furthermore, they’ve gone scoreless in the two games against the Big Ten’s best teams. A missed field goal in Week 11 was the closest they came to getting a score on the board.
Walters is now 5-16 overall as the Purdue head coach and has just three Big Ten wins on his resume. With the Penn State Nittany Lions, Michigan State Spartans, and Indiana Hoosiers on the schedule to close out the season, there’s a good chance the Boilermakers end the year with a 1-11 record, the worst for the program since 2013.
Trent Dilfer, UAB
Like Walters above him, Trent Diler has long been on the college football hot seat after a disastrous tenure as the UAB Blazers head coach. The Super Bowl-winning quarterback has taken a once-proud Group of Five program and turned it into a team that is borderline embarrassing and unwatchable. A win over the Tulsa Golden Hurricane offered a reprieve that vanished in Week 11.
With rumors swirling around Dilfer’s departure ahead of the game, if the defeat to the UConn Huskies wasn’t enough to finally force his firing, the manner of the 31-23 loss certainly must hasten his exit. The Blazers gave up 21 points in the fourth quarter alone, leaving the team with a 2-7 overall record that includes just one win in conference competition.
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Dilfer is now 6-15 as the UAB head coach. The Blazers’ AAC record under the second-year college head coach is 4-10. They’ve won as many games in two years as they did in the only season that Bryant Vincent was the head coach. UAB fans (and players) wanted Vincent to be retained as the team’s leader in 2023, and his success at the Louisiana-Monroe Warhawks makes the failure under Dilfer even more difficult to accept.
Between questionable decision-making, deplorable results, and some eye-raising sideline shenanigans, Dilfer has been one of the worst hires in recent college football history.
Stan Drayton, Temple
Look, there’s certainly no shame in getting curb-stomped by the Tulane Green Wave. No team in the AAC has been able to hold the olive and blue tide from washing over their team this season. However, the thumping 52-6 defeat for the Temple Owls was just the latest calamity that could cost Stan Drayton his job.
A history of success and familiarity with the city of Philadelphia were the foundations on which Drayton was hired. Yet, he’s failed to parlay that romanticism into tangible results on the field. A program that was built on the principles of being “Temple TUFF” has been as soft as the cheese the city lends its name to.
Between a shellacking at the hands of Tulane, the calamitous Week 6 loss to UConn where they fumbled on the goal line to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and a 2-7 overall record in 2024, Drayton is legitimately on the college football hot seat as we head out of Week 11.
Turning a program around is no easy feat, and it’s clear that Drayton inherited a team with plenty of work required. However, in his two full seasons before 2024, he failed to outstrip the win total of his predecessor. It certainly looks like he won’t this year. Rod Carey was fired after putting together a 12-20 record as the head coach, and his successor is now 8-25.
Sonny Cumbie, Louisiana Tech
Football is a game of inches. It’s probably the most cliche line wheeled out weekly, but it’s deeply rooted in truth. Inches, seconds, minuscule measurements of space and time that can define the difference between brilliance and the banal, between glory and defeat. Such was the case for Sonny Cumbie and the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs on Saturday evening.
After losing to the Jacksonville State Gamecocks, the Bulldogs are now 3-6 on the year and staring down the barrel of a campaign without bowl eligibility for the fourth successive season. They haven’t endured such a barren postseason run since Jack Bicknell’s teams of the early 2000s.
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The loss itself was expected. But the nature of the defeat could prove to be the nail in the coffin of Cumbie’s tenure. After going toe-to-toe with the CUSA frontrunner against the odds, the Bulldogs looked to have secured a season-altering win. Yet, after giving up a Hail Mary to take the game to overtime, suboptimal play calling saw Louisiana Tech stall out, and fall to defeat.
The program is just one defeat away from three successive losing seasons for the first time since 1993-1995. Joe Peace was fired at the end of that run, and after consecutive 3-9 seasons that could be matched in 2024, Cumbie is very much on the college football hot seat after Week 11.
Shawn Clark, Appalachian State
Remember when the Appalachian State Mountaineers were a preseason favorite to lift the Sun Belt Conference crown and even talked about in hushed corners (of the CFN office) as a potential College Football Playoff Group of Five representative? That was a fun time to be a Mountaineers fan, I’m sure.
It feels like a long time ago and Appalachian State fans have run out of patience with head coach Shawn Clark. The reason they were so widely tipped to succeed in the Sun Belt was because the roster is loaded with talented playmakers. Sadly, Clark hasn’t been able to extract the best from them — or even a modicum of their potential.
The result has been a season that could end up being their worst in program history as an FBS outfit. Clark already has the unwanted “accolade” of guiding Appalachian State to its worst Sun Belt record (6-6 in 2022), but he might fall short of that mark. For a program used to winning the Sun Belt title, that will make his the warmest of college football hot seats.
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