College Football Coaching Hot Seat Watch: Ryan Day’s Mission This Season Is Clear

A look at every FBS conference and who is on the hot seat and who could coach their way off it.

Ohio State Buckeyes head coach Ryan Day / Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

The 2024 college football coaching carousel officially kicked off Sunday when the East Carolina Pirates let go head coach Mike Houston in the wake of an uncompetitive 45–28 loss to the Army Black Knights.

The move, as the program dipped to 3–4 on the season and 27–38 overall under Houston, was expected but far more notable for when it happened. Houston’s departure was one of the latest dates for the first midseason firing in at least a decade.

Last year, the Michigan State Spartans fired Mel Tucker on Sept. 27 (albeit for off-the-field issues). The year prior, Scott Frost was axed by the Nebraska Cornhuskers on Sept. 12. The Connecticut Huskies had an opening even earlier in 2021 as Randy Edsall resigned after just two games on Sept. 6.

The delayed start to this season’s carousel is an indicator the market for FBS head coaches could be unlike any that came before it. Not only are athletic directors evaluating their own program when determining whether or not to make a move, they also consider new factors, such as the transfer portal, NIL, the 12-team College Football Playoff and revenue-sharing. There’s also the matter of passing around the hat to enough boosters to pay increasingly hefty buyouts and fund NIL to keep a roster together. 

Here’s a look at every FBS conference and who is on the hot seat and who could coach their way off it.

ACC

Worth monitoring: Mack Brown (North Carolina Tar Heels)

Ten of the ACC’s 17 schools have hired a head coach since 2022, and it seems quite likely the league will carry over the entire roster to the ’25 season. The only situation that sticks out is Brown, whose second stint in Chapel Hill has stabilized the football program but failed to live up to increased expectations. The Tar Heels are currently mired in a four-game losing streak that included a blowout home loss to a Sun Belt team and a blown three-score lead to the rival Duke Blue Devils.

There is no expectation athletic director Bubba Cunningham will make a move even if the team misses out on a bowl game this season. However, the chatter will only continue to increase about how much longer Brown, who will turn 74 before next season, will coach. It’s possible Brown retires in the next year or two as his contract runs through the 2027 season. If not, Brown and Cunningham could agree to a graceful exit. 

Big 12

On the hot seat: Dave Aranda (Baylor Bears)

Worth monitoring: Kyle Whittingham (Utah Utes), Deion Sanders (Colorado Buffaloes)

Aranda entered the 2024 campaign with perhaps the most pressure of any power-conference coach to turn things around or risk losing his job. That remains the case with the Bears sitting at 3–4 following one of the more surprising results of the season: a 59–35 beatdown of the Texas Tech Red Raiders on Saturday. The team has been more competitive between the lines—losing to the Colorado Buffaloes on a Hail Mary and playing a one-score game against the league-leading BYU Cougars—but the wins have to come and getting to a bowl game likely isn’t enough. Baylor is a private university so the exact buyout terms for Aranda are not known, but most peg it as north of $15 million. That was an amount the school considered paying after last season.

In Salt Lake City, the Utes have already named defensive coordinator Morgan Scalley as Whittingham’s designated successor. The only question is when a formal handover will be made. Whittingham turns 65 next month, and it will be a yearly question as to when he’ll want to finally hang up the whistle.

Sanders is in a unique situation given that he is coaching two of his sons—safety Shilo Sanders and quarterback Shedeur Sanders—in what is likely their final season of college football before moving onto the NFL draft. Could the younger Sanderses’ departures this spring make it easier for the coach to take another job outside Boulder or simply move on from coaching altogether? It’s also worth noting Sanders would owe the school roughly $10 million if he left.

Big Ten

Starting to get warm: Ryan Walters (Purdue Boilermakers)

Worth monitoring: Kirk Ferentz (Iowa Hawkeyes), Ryan Day (Ohio State Buckeyes)

After getting shut out by the Oregon Ducks at home Friday, things have gone from bad to worse for Walters. He is just 5–14 overall and a winless Big Ten season isn’t out of the question with three top-15 teams left to play. Things are looking increasingly desperate, too, with offensive coordinator Graham Harrell exiting earlier this month and Walters, a former defensive coordinator, taking over play-calling duties on a side of the ball he had no experience with.

Walters’s buyout wouldn’t be completely prohibitive if Purdue athletic director Mike Bobinski is forced to make a move. How the Boilermakers play down the stretch will go a long way.

Ferentz is the nation’s longest-tenured head coach and recently picked up his 200th win at Iowa, just five away from equaling Ohio State’s Woody Hayes for the most in Big Ten history. It doesn’t seem like Ferentz is ready to step away, but retirement is always a possibility. 

Day’s situation is far more nuanced than any other. He understands as well as any what expectations are for the program, and he’s been given every resource available to go all in for 2024. The close loss at Oregon did little to change the situation at hand: beat the school up north and chase a national title.

Anything short of that—particularly if another game against stumbling rival Michigan doesn’t go to plan—and it will be worth monitoring just how tense things get at OSU. It all sounds a bit ludicrous that a coach who is 61–9 and has lost in conference play just four times in six seasons, may wind up on the hot seat at the end of the season. It’s even more so considering a buyout would run north of $40 million for Day and his staff.

But this is Ohio State, one with a donor base that isn’t the most harmonious at the moment and a new athletic director whose recent claim to fame is paying $77 million for Jimbo Fisher to go away at his last stop. 

SEC 

On the hot seat: Billy Napier (Florida Gators), Sam Pittman (Arkansas Razorbacks)

Worth monitoring: Hugh Freeze (Auburn Tigers)

The bulk of the hot seat chatter has surrounded two potential openings in the SEC, both of which could end up being market drivers for further churn of the carousel.

Napier, at 4–3 on the season, enters a critical off week before playing the Georgia Bulldogs. He’s still looking for his first winning season with the Gators, but the team is playing better as of late and all three losses (including one in overtime) were to teams currently ranked in the top 15. There are some notable building blocks in place with quarterback DJ Lagway and tailback Jadan Baugh showing flashes as true freshmen in the starting lineup. 

The problem is a schedule that features No. 2 Georgia, No. 5 Texas and No. 8 LSU. A talented Ole Miss Rebels squad awaits just before Thanksgiving at the Swamp, too. That is a gauntlet unlike any other in the country, and Florida will need to pull at least one upset just to make a bowl game. Things have cooled down a bit after emotional home losses to the Miami Hurricanes and Texas A&M Aggies, but there is still a wide expectation the school will make a change boosters have been clamoring for over the past month and a half. 

There are two things that make things a bit more complicated for Napier and the program. The coach is owed a little more than $27 million if fired and half would be due within 30 days. Second, there are questions hovering over athletic director Scott Stricklin making a third straight football hire and doing so under an interim school president who is not well-versed in athletics. 

None of those things will prevent a separation, but it’s not going to be a clean and easy process if things turn south on the field. 

At Arkansas, Pittman is 27–28 overall after Saturday’s loss to the LSU Tigers and will need a strong close to the campaign to get another season. He earned plenty of goodwill with a win over the Tennessee Volunteers two weeks ago, and there are four winnable games between now and the end of November.

One situation also worth tracking is Freeze. He’s worse at this point in his tenure than predecessor Bryan Harsin was (a damning statement for many on its own) and the lack of a productive offense (Freeze’s specialty) is particularly galling.

Freeze has a stellar recruiting class on deck and would be owed a $20 million buyout, two factors that would normally push an actual decision to 2025. But this is Auburn, so anything is possible.

Group of 6

Open: Fresno State Bulldogs, Utah State Aggies, East Carolina Pirates, Southern Miss Golden Eagles

On the hot seat: Mike Bloomgren (Rice Owls), Stan Drayton (Temple Owls), Sonny Cumbie (Louisiana Tech Bulldogs), Mike Neu (Ball State Cardinals)

Things are warming: Trent Dilfer (UAB Blazers), Biff Poggi (Charlotte 49ers), Don Brown (UMass Minutemen), Kenni Burns (Kent State Golden Flashes), Charles Huff (Marshall Thundering Herd)

Worth monitoring: Joe Moorhead (Akron Zips), Shawn Clark (Appalachian State Mountaineers), Butch Jones (Arkansas State Red Wolves), Jay Norvell (Colorado State Rams)

There are four Group of 6 jobs open already, and several more are expected to open in what should be the most active part of the coaching carousel this winter.

One thing a number of athletic directors will have to come to grips with when weighing a move is an increasingly shrinking pool of real candidates. Position coaches in the Big Ten and SEC often make more than they would as a head coach at the lower levels, and many buzzworthy coordinators inclined to take a step up are being increasingly picky about their next move—even within the power leagues.

Throw in a growing trend of head coaches departing the other way for coordinator spots at major schools, or even the NFL, and it could make for several waves of openings that last well into the new year.