Why Hugh Freeze, Brian Kelly and Brent Venables could land on the hot seat by the end of the season.
Dan Wolken tells Before The Snap why Hugh Freeze, Brian Kelly and Brent Venables, among others, could land on the hot seat by the end of the season.
The 2025 college football season is quickly approaching, and that brings with it the inevitability of coaching changes.
The post-2024 coaching carousel cycle was relatively quiet as schools braced for the financial changes under the impending House v. NCAA settlement, though 28 schools will still enter the 2025 season with a new coach. Now, House has officially taken effect, and we’re likely to see a more active cycle of firings and hirings this fall.
For a few coaches who find themselves in precarious situations heading into the season, that’s not good news. Across the Power Four conferences, there are several who could find themselves out of a job if they don’t turn things around in 2025.
Here are 10 coaches who find themselves on the hot seat entering the season.
Florida State has shown the potential perks of the transfer portal under Norvell, riding a star-studded haul to a 13-1 season in 2023 that would have resulted in a College Football Playoff bid had Jordan Travis stayed healthy. But FSU has also demonstrated its pitfalls, and after hitting the transfer portal lottery again ahead of the 2024 season, Norvell did not have the same success.
The additions, namely former Clemson and Oregon State quarterback DJ Uiagalelei, didn’t pan out. The result was a shocking 2-10 finish in 2024 that featured just one win over an FBS opponent, which came by five points over a .500 Cal team.
Norvell’s case is a unique one thanks to the unprecedented nature of his one-year collapse, and that makes it difficult to assess just how much danger he finds himself in entering the 2025 season. He has once again flipped the roster with a transfer class that ranks sixth nationally, but even with that haul — headlined by former Boston College quarterback Thomas Castellanos — it’s hard to imagine FSU competing in the ACC this fall.
Florida State almost certainly won’t go 2-10 again, but would a finish closer to 6-6 be enough to restore confidence in his tenure in Tallahassee? Maybe not, but the brass at FSU may not have a choice but to keep him around given Norvell’s hefty buyout (roughly $63 million) as the sixth-highest paid head coach in the country.
2. Lincoln Riley, USC
The belle of the ball during the wild coaching carousel cycle that followed the 2021 season, Riley’s tenure at USC likely hasn’t gone as he or the decision-makers inside Heritage Hall expected. Since an 11-3 debut season in 2022 that produced a Heisman winner in Caleb Williams, the Trojans are just 15-11 and are coming off a disappointing 7-6 campaign.
Curiously, a flop in its first season in the Big Ten didn’t precipitate major changes at USC. While he added five former four-star recruits through the portal, Riley didn’t use it to find a quarterback and is instead sticking with Jayden Maiava, who started the final four games last season and delivered up-and-down play.
He did add some help on offense in the form of a pair of transfer running backs, including Eli Sanders, a 1,000-yard rusher last season at New Mexico, and brought in some nice pieces on defense like defensive tackle Keeshawn Silver (Kentucky) and cornerback DJ Harvey (San Jose State).
Riley isn’t exactly operating like a coach under pressure, and that may be due to a buyout that is not publicly known but could be prohibitively expensive. He could restore confidence pretty easily here with a nice bounce-back season, but if USC doesn’t improve, a change is possible.
3. Mike Gundy, Oklahoma State
It’s almost impossible to imagine an Oklahoma State football program without Mike Gundy involved. Tied with Utah’s Kyle Whittingham for the second-longest tenured head coach in the FBS, Gundy has been the head coach at his alma mater since 2005 and has been on staff all but five years since 1990.
Gundy is fairly inarguably the best coach in program history, but after a horrendous 2024 season that saw the preseason Big 12 favorites finish 3-9 overall and 0-9 in conference play, he was almost shown the door. Instead, the longtime Cowboys’ coach agreed to a restructured contract that included a pay cut, with those funds being redistributed into revenue-sharing payments.
Oklahoma State made use of that cash, completely flipping the roster with 41 transfer additions this offseason. That makes this team extremely hard to predict heading into the 2025 season, and while Gundy has engineered turnarounds before in Stillwater, he’s probably going to need another one to stick around for another season after the worst campaign of his 20-year tenure.
4. Brent Venables, Oklahoma
After intense debate about which side won the Lincoln Riley divorce from Oklahoma, both Riley and the coach who replaced him find themselves on the hot seat list as we enter 2025. Venables’ three-year tenure in Norman has featured a 10-win season in 2023, but it was sandwiched between 6-7 finishes in his first and third seasons.
Now, Venables likely needs a fourth season that more closely resembles his second if he’s going to stick around beyond this fall, and he’s relying heavily on new offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle and quarterback John Mateer to do so.
The pair were imported as a battery from Washington State, where they engineered an exhilarating offensive attack against what was the equivalent of a Group of Five schedule. Mateer’s potential in the SEC is certainly intriguing, given his ability with both his arm and his legs, but an offensive line that remains a major question mark could prove to be a limiting factor as he makes that transition.
It’s probably safe to assume that a Venables-coached defense will be solid at worst, but after a lackluster debut campaign in the SEC, this job could open if the Sooners don’t make some noise this fall.
5. Hugh Freeze, Auburn
Off-the-field issues notwithstanding, there was certainly reason to believe Freeze could be successful at Auburn following the disastrous Bryan Harsin era. He was moderately successful at Ole Miss, where he recruited out of his league and managed to knock off Alabama twice during the peak of Nick Saban’s dynasty.
Coming off a successful stint at Liberty, there was a pretty clear vision for this hire. And while Freeze has managed to recruit well, signing top-10 classes in each of the last two cycles, it hasn’t translated to success. He has a losing record on the Plains and followed a 6-7 Year 1 with a missed bowl in Year 2 after finishing 5-7.
The Tigers have been solid defensively, but the play of quarterback Payton Thorne left a lot to be desired on offense. Now, Freeze has brought in former elite recruit Jackson Arnold after things didn’t work out at Oklahoma. With former five-star recruit Cam Coleman entering his second season, the offense could markedly improve if the Arnold addition ultimately hits.
Freeze’s seat isn’t blazing right now, and a solid step in the right direction will probably be enough for him to cool things off entirely. But if the Tigers are hovering around .500 again in Year 3, a change could be coming.
6. Scott Satterfield, Cincinnati
Hiring Satterfield to replace the coach who led the Bearcats to the College Football Playoff always felt a bit uninspired, but through two seasons with Satterfield, Luke Fickell’s accomplishments at Cincinnati now look like yeoman’s work.
Cincy wasn’t exactly poised to immediately compete in the Big 12, but it’s been a rough go of things in its first two seasons as a power conference team. It improved from 3-9 to 5-7 in Satterfield’s second season, but even in a league so unpredictable that its reigning champion was picked to finish last entering the 2024 season, the Bearcats making noise this season feels unlikely.
If there’s a point of optimism, it’s quarterback Brendan Sorsby, a transfer addition from Indiana last season who had a solid first season at Cincinnati. Defensively, the Bearcats also return a First Team All-Big 12 selection from last season in defensive tackle Dontay Corleone.
Having a couple of pieces doesn’t make you a contender, however, and while Satterfield avoided a potential firing at Louisville when he left to take this job, he finds himself back on a pretty warm seat entering 2025.
7. Sam Pittman, Arkansas
Pittman occupied what many saw as one of the hottest seats in America entering the 2024 season, and while the Razorbacks improved from four wins to seven with a win over a CFP team in Tennessee, it didn’t exactly change Pittman’s situation.
He’s still just 30-31 overall in five seasons in Fayetteville, and while he’s well-liked and has earned some deserved leeway after guiding Arkansas out of the hole former coach Chad Morris left it in, Pittman is still trying to replicate the 9-4 season in 2021 that remains his best in this job.
Taylen Green is an exciting player at quarterback, but he has a pretty heavily portaled offense around him this fall. On defense, the Hogs return quite a few starters from a group that wasn’t particularly good last season, so your mileage may vary.
Pittman managed to stick around for another season in 2025, but given a quirk in his contract that would reduce his buyout considerably if his record since the 2021 season drops below .500 (it’s currently 27-24), it could be his last if the Razorbacks don’t exceed expectations.
8. Luke Fickell, Wisconsin
Fickell’s 57-18 record and CFP appearance at Cincinnati made this hire look like a no-brainer at the time, but for a number of reasons, it just hasn’t worked out so far. Fickell made an eyebrow-raising decision when he was hired, bringing in an offensive coordinator with air raid ties in Phil Longo as he attempted to move away from Wisconsin’s historic ground-and-pound mentality.
While the ambition is admirable, his gambit failed miserably. After transfer quarterback Tyler Van Dyke was lost for the year early in the 2024 season, the Badgers stumbled to a 5-7 finish in Fickell’s second season, and Longo was fired. In comes former Kansas offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes as Fickell looks to salvage things in Madison.
Grimes’ hiring doesn’t exactly induce a lot of excitement, nor does the addition of transfer quarterback Billy Edwards from Maryland. But if Fickell is going to earn a fourth season at UW, he’ll need both to work out.
9. Tony Elliott, Virginia
Elliott — understandably — did quite a bit to ingratiate himself with the UVA fanbase in his first season in 2022 as he led the team through the tragic shooting that killed three Cavaliers players and injured another. Through his first three seasons, even evaluating him in terms of wins and losses felt like it was missing the point.
But eventually, the on-field success has to show up, and Elliott hasn’t had much of it in Charlottesville. Virginia improved marginally from three wins in 2023 to five in 2024, but it lost exciting-if-erratic quarterback Anthony Colandrea to the transfer portal as well as All-ACC receiver Malachi Fields, who plays for Notre Dame now.
Elliott is 11-23 at Virginia, and while this isn’t a program with massive expectations on the football field, it’s hard to imagine he could survive another sub-.500 season.
10. Mike Locksley, Maryland
DC native and former Alabama recruiting ace Mike Locksley seemed like a savvy hire for a Terrapins program that hasn’t found consistent success since moving to the Big Ten. But while Locksley has held up his end of the bargain in some ways, raising the floor in College Park, he hasn’t really moved the needle.
Locksley is 33-41, but he did seem to have things trending in the right direction after Maryland won eight games in both 2022 and 2023. The Terps regressed a lot in 2024, however, and their 4-8 finish was the worst since Locksley’s first season in 2019.
The one strength under Locksley has been recruiting, and that may be what ultimately buys him another year at Maryland. True freshman quarterback Malik Washington, a top-100 recruit in the 2025 class, could start under center this season, and the Terrapins currently hold a commitment from five-star Baltimore edge rusher Zion Elee, the No. 2 player in the nation in the 2026 class.
Because of the talent Locksley has managed to bring in at a lower-tier Big Ten job, he may have the runway to stick around even if the Terps disappoint again this fall. But with a new athletics director in the picture, Locksley probably at least needs to get back to a bowl to feel safe.