College football coaches being fired midseason is nothing new. Just last season, former Michigan staffers Don Brown and Biff Poggi were both fired midseason by UMass and Charlotte, respectively. However, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve likely noticed head coaches are being fired en masse this season at huge, blue-blood programs. Brian Kelly at LSU, Billy Napier at Florida, and James Franklin at Penn State are the first ones to go, with a few other names potentially on the chopping
block for later in the year.
Today’s discussion question is this — why are so many being fired midseason this year?
As one might expect, the answer is not all that easy. We’ll give you some of our hypotheses before opening this up for a larger discussion.
The first potential cause is the simplest — underperformance. Napier was a casualty of this. Despite given all the resources in the world while located in a recruiting hotbed in Florida, he just didn’t have the success on the field, going 22-23 in a little over three seasons. That’s just not going to cut it at a program like Florida.
The next likely reason is the inability to push a program to the next level. Franklin and Kelly are prime examples of this. Both were successful at their respective schools — Franklin was 104-45 at Penn State and went to the College Football Playoff Semifinals last year. Meanwhile, Kelly went 34-14 at LSU, but never had less than than two losses in SEC play in a single season.
Both were good coaches at programs that expect to compete for national championships, but when it became apparent neither were going to be able to get their team over the championship hump, both programs elected to move on.
Thirdly, I wholly believe NIL and the transfer portal plays a part in the timing of these firings. Ten years ago, firing your head coach meant blowing up your recruiting class, any player with stay/go decisions regarding the NFL Draft was almost assured to go, and most importantly, your program was forced to rebuild.
In the modern era of college football, it’s not like that anymore. Schools like LSU can fire Kelly but keep its recruits enticed with lucrative NIL deals. A new coach can be found and put in place over time, but a lengthy rebuild is not the norm anymore. The new coach can dip into the portal and overhaul the roster almost immediately. There’s significantly less risk to firing your coach midseason now more than ever before.
Lastly, the public pressure by fanbases has ratcheted up in intensity in recent years. Maybe that’s because donors have unprecedented power, or perhaps its’s because social media has reached an all-new apex. Whatever it may be, there’s no denying athletic directors and university presidents seem much less likely to stand by a struggling coach’s side than they may have a decade ago. Firing your coach has become trendy, to a certain extent.
Why do you think all of these big name coaches are getting fired midseason? Which job openings are the best? Who do you think fills each one? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. It should be a wild offseason.
