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We're still a month away from the 2026 college football season but for potentially dozens of coaches, this will be their last season at their current team. One analyst has decided to get out in front by putting a bunch of them on the hot seat early.
This week, Andy Staples of On3 came up with his list of college football head coaches that are already on the hot seat. And he put some pretty well-known names on that list.
Analyzing the List
In the Big Ten, USC's Lincoln Riley, Maryland's Mike Locksley and Wisconsin's Luke Fickell all appear to be on the hot seat. Riley was at the top of the ranking, probably due to how he has totally underachieved expectations since his mega-move from Oklahoma.
In the SEC, there's so much new blood that only South Carolina's Shane Beamer is really on the hot seat. He's 33-30 in five seasons and 2025 saw the team go just 4-8 - their worst record since he took over. Everyone else is either coming off a pretty solid season or is brand new.
In the ACC there's North Carolina's Bill Belichick, Boston College's Bill O'Brien and FSU's Mike Norvell. Belichick and Norvell in particular are on thin ice after wildly underachieving last year.
The other two that made Staples' list are Baylor's Dave Aranda and Cincinnati's Scott Satterfield. In the four years since Aranda led Baylor to the Big 12 title and a top-five ranking they've won just 22 games and lost their only two bowl games. Meanwhile, Satterfield is 15-22 in three years at Cincinnati.
But if there's one thing that college football shows us every year it's that there's always one surprise team that underachieves in a big way and winds up getting the ax. Last year it was a combination of James Franklin and Brian Kelly. This year, who knows?
