Ranking The Top 10 Power 4 College Football Coaches On The Hot Seat

The 2025 college football coaching carousel is shaping up to be one of the most memorable of all time. You have several blue blood programs, including multiple that have won national titles in recent history, looking for a new head coach.

But while jobs such as LSU, Florida, Penn State, and Auburn have all come open, other schools have stayed with their coaches through hard times. Whether it’s due to the belief that said coaches with turn things around, or financial limitations, several athletic directors have stuck with their current coaches despite disappointing seasons.

Those coaches, however, will start the 2026 season on the hot seat.

10 College Football Coaches On The Hot Seat

For the purpose of the exercise, we’ve limited this list to coaches in the Power 4 conferences: The Big Ten, SEC, Big 12, and ACC.

These are all coaches who either haven’t lived up to expectations in big-time jobs or have struggled to turn around programs they were brought in to fix. Only two coaches from our preseason list remain on the list now, although multiple have been fired during the season.

Either way, the pressure is ratcheting up on these 10 head coaches.

10) Dabo Swinney – Clemson

How much time does two national championships and nine conference championships buy you? We’re in the process of finding out with Dabo Swinney and Clemson.

Swinney’s Clemson tenure has been nothing short of incredible, and one day the stadium and/or field will eventually be named after him. But the Tigers haven’t been true title contenders now for several years, and as the ACC has weakened, Clemson has somehow been unable to separate itself from the rest of the conference.

If anything, it’s fallen back toward the pack.

Swinney has never finished under .500 at Clemson and likely won’t this year, barring an inconceivable loss to Furman. But the Tigers are looking at a 7-5 record at best in probably the weakest of the Power 4 conferences. That’s just not good enough for the level of financial investment in the program.

9) Mark Stoops – Kentucky

Two years ago, the Wildcats were doing everything they possibly could to keep Stoops from leaving Lexington for the vacant Texas A&M job.

Ultimately, A&M fans and boosters forced the university in a different direction, and boy, are they glad that they did.

The Aggies are currently 10-0 and ranked No. 3 in the country under Mike Elko. Meanwhile, Stoops is 9-13 since signing a contract extension that pays him $9 million a year.

Yes, Kentucky is one of the toughest jobs in the SEC, if not the entire country. But for that sort of money, like at Clemson, the Wildcats have to expect better results.

8) Bill O’Brien – Boston College

This one is tricky.

O’Brien is in just his second year on Chestnut Hill and went 7-6 a year ago. But that was with players largely recruited by previous coach Jeff Hafley, who then resigned to become the defensive coordinator of the Green Bay Packers.

This year, O’Brien and the Eagles are just 1-10 and one of the worst Power 4 teams in the country. But BC is also one of, if not the, worst Power 4 job in the country.

It has little in the way of financial investment. It’s in a bad recruiting area, and there’s no recent history of success. O’Brien is probably safe for a while because what would the Eagles do if they fired him? But another one-or two-win season next year, and there may be a difficult decision to be made.

7) Dave Aranda – Baylor

When Baylor hired Dave Aranda ahead of the 2020, it was seen as a major coup. Aranda, a former Wisconsin and LSU defensive coordinator, was one of the hottest coaching prospects in the country.

And in 2021, when he went 12-2 and led Baylor to a Big 12 championship and a win in the Sugar Bowl, it looked as if the Bears had nailed that hire.

In the four seasons since, Aranda is a combined 22-26 and hasn’t once contended for a title in a weakened Big 12. Aranda may well survive this offseason, given the chaos in the rest of the coaching carousel, but like the above coaches, he’d better turn things around quickly.

6) Deion Sanders – Colorado

Regardless of how the Deion Sanders Era ends in Boulder, it will have been a good hire by Colorado. For a brief moment, for the first time in a decade, the Buffaloes were relevant on a national stage and he brought a Heisman Trophy winner into the program.

But Sanders’ overall record through almost three full seasons is 16-19, and Colorado appears to be moving in the wrong direction. The Buffs aren’t just losing games this year, they’re getting destroyed.

Between the troubles on the field and Sanders’ health issues away from it, the end of the 2025 season might represent the perfect time for a mutual “parting of ways” for him and Colorado.

5) Mike Locksley – Maryland

In his seven seasons since returning to Maryland in 2019, Mike Locksley is a combined 36-42.

Yes, the Terrapins’ job isn’t exactly the best in the Big Ten. But it’s also not the worst! Maryland sits in a talent-rich area, and the Terrapins have actually recruited pretty well under Locksley.

The problem is that outside of a pair of 8-5 seasons (including bowl victories) in 2022 and 2023, the recruiting hasn’t translated to on-field success.

In the past two years, Maryland has gone a combined 8-14 and is a cellar dweller in the now deeper-than-ever Big 10. Promising true freshman QB Malik Washington probably buys Locksley another year in College Park. But if the team doesn’t show improvement in 2026, don’t expect to see Locksley back in 2027.

4) Shane Beamer – South Carolina

Like Locksley, Beamer has more than pulled his weight as a recruiter. Especially when you consider that recruiting in the SEC is a wild gunfight and that South Carolina isn’t exactly the most predominant name involved in that fight.

But, again, like Locksley, the results haven’t always been there. Beamer is 32-29 across five seasons, which isn’t terrible. And things appeared to be trending in the right direction with a 9-4 record a year ago that saw the Gamecocks almost make the expanded College Football Playoff.

But this year, Beamer and company are just 3-7 and just lost to Texas A&M  in one of the most impressive second-half collapses you’ll ever see. Beamer probably has more safety than some might expect given the lack of outright awful seasons before this one, but there’s a lot of money coming into the South Carolina program, and those donors will expect far better than what they’ve seen this year.

3) Jonathan Smith – Michigan State

Jonathan Smith walked into a bit of a disaster at Michigan State, little of which was his own doing. Mel Tucker left behind a mess and major donor Mat Ishbia decided that the NBA’s Phoenix Suns were his new play thing.

Couple that with the Big Ten welcoming power programs such as USC and Oregon, and suddenly the Michigan State job wasn’t all that appealing.

Still, Smith is just 8-14 through two seasons in East Lansing, and there were murmurs mid-way through this season about the Spartans beginning to look in other directions.

Smith, like Aranda, likely gets to start next season as the head coach due, in part, to the chaos of the coaching carousel around him. But it’ll take an impressive 2026 season to remain in charge at Michigan State.

2) Luke Fickell – Wisconsin

It’s never a good sign when an athletic director has to come out and publicly announce that they’re not firing a head coach.

That’s the case with Luke Fickell and Wisconsin, which just goes to show that nobody knows anything when it comes to what is or is not a good hire.

When the Badgers hired Fickell, it was unanimously praised as a home run hire after he’d gone 53-10 in the five seasons prior at Cincinnati. As it turns out, having superstar coordinators such as Mike Denbrock and Marcus Freeman will greatly help your cause.

And Fickell going 6-7 in his lone season at (an albeit sanctioned) Ohio State in 2011 probably should’ve been a larger red flag than anyone thought.

Through three seasons in Madison, Fickell is just 15-20, the worst three-year stretch for the Badgers since Barry Alvarez went 11-22 over his first three years in charge.

Alvarez then went on to become a legend at the university, leading the Badgers to more or less a decade of sustained success. So maybe Fickell can do the same. But the pressure is on, and his seat is reaching scorching levels of heat.

1) Mike Norvell – Florida State

Norvell, like Fickell, was considered a home run hire when the Seminoles brought him in in 2020.

He then proceeded to go 8-13 over his first two seasons, raising major concerns. Norvell turned this around in 2022 with a 10-3 record and a 10th-place finish in the Coaches Poll.

Things got even better a year later when he led the Noles to an undefeated regular-season (including a win in the ACC Championship game) and what most assume would have been a spot in the College Football Playoff had star quarterback Jordan Travis not broken his leg.

Instead, FSU got left out of the playoffs, smoked by Georgia in the Orange Bowl after several star players opted out, and it hasn’t been the same since.

Florida State went an embarrassing 2-10 a year ago. It briefly appeared Norvell had righted the ship again when the Noles knocked off Alabama to start this season, but they’ve gone just 4-5 in nine games since and once again Norvell is sitting on perhaps the hottest seat in the country.