College football hot seat: 5 coaches who could be fired in 2026

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The 2025 college football season produced a historic coaching carousel, with 15 FBS head coaches fired without cause and creating a combined buyout price tag of roughly $270 million.

From James Franklin at Penn State to Brian Kelly at LSU (with a staggering $54 million buyout), schools threw record-setting sums at the problem of removing coaches they’d recently paid enormous money to hire. In total, 32 jobs opened across the FBS, and the dysfunction rippled across every conference.

It’s a new reality for college football where programs seem much more willing to part ways with a coach than in previous years and decades. Now, that coaching carousel is ready to get spinning again as some seats are already quite hot before the 2026 season even gets cooking.

Here are five coaches from Power Four conferences who find themselves on the hot seat and might not survive the 2026 season if they don’t turn things around in a hurry.

Honorable Mention: Dabo Swinney – Clemson

Dabo Swinney is a strange case as he is pretty undeniably the most accomplished active coach in college football, with two national titles and 187 wins, making him the winningest coach in ACC history. He has also not met expectations in five consecutive seasons, and his antics are growing tiring when the wins aren’t coming.

After six consecutive top-five seasons, Clemson hasn’t finished in the top-10 in five years, and last season was a legitimate disaster as the team finished with just a 7-6 record – just its second-worst finish since Swinney took over at Clemson in 2008. Swinney hasn’t adapted to the transfer portal and the NIL era, and it’s become overwhelmingly obvious.

The reality is, Swinney has a lot of goodwill built up at Clemson, and his $60 million buyout makes firing him difficult, even if they wanted to. But in a world where Texas A&M paid a $77.5 million buyout to fire Jimbo Fisher and Penn State initially expected to pay $49 million to fire James Franklin, nothing is impossible.

5. Shane Beamer – South Carolina

Shane Beamer is in his fifth year at South Carolina, and the program still hasn’t turned the corner in any meaningful way. In fact, things seem to be going the wrong direction.

After a 7-6 and 8-5 season to start his time with the Gamecocks, things looked optimistic for the young coach. Unfortunately, he’s since failed to make a bowl game in two of the last three seasons, including his worst season yet last season, when the team went 4-8 despite superstars LaNorris Sellers and Dylan Stewart.

If things don’t go in the right direction this season, South Carolina could choose to pull the plug sooner rather than later.

4. Mike Locksley – Maryland

Locksley has been Maryland’s coach for eight seasons, and things haven’t gone exactly well, as he has posted just a 37-49 record with almost no consistency. The best he’s done is back-to-back 8-5 seasons in 2022 and 2023, which felt like a breakthrough before the wheels fell off again.

The last two years have been especially disastrous for Locksley and Maryland, as the team has gone 4-8 overall and 1-8 in Big Ten play in back-to-back seasons.

The reality is that Maryland is probably never going to consistently compete at the top of the Big Ten with teams like Ohio State, Michigan, and Oregon, but Locksley has been consistently underperforming even by Maryland’s standards. If that happens again, it might be over for him.

3. Dave Aranda – Baylor

With a 12-2 record and a Sugar Bowl victory in just his second season, things seemed to be trending in the right direction at Baylor for Dave Aranda. Unfortunately, that 2021 season was as good as it got.

Since that 12-2 season in 2021, Baylor has finished with a losing record in three of its last four seasons. The only winning season came in 2024 when Baylor finished a mediocre 8-5.

Aranda signed a lengthy contract extension following the 2021 season that runs through 2029, but he has failed to come anywhere close to that same success since then. If he fails again in 2026, it’s safe to expect Baylor to cut ties.

2. Luke Fickell – Wisconsin

When Luke Fickell took the job at Wisconsin, he was one of the hottest names in coaching after having unprecedented success at Cincinnati. It was seemingly a splash hire for Wisconsin, but the results just haven’t been there.

After a mediocre 7-6 season during his first year in 2023, there was optimism that things would only improve from there. But that hasn’t been the case at all, as Fickell went 5-7 the following year and 4-8 last year.

Since Fickell took over, Wisconsin has been consistently worse than they ever were under Paul Chryst, whom they fired to hire him. Quite honestly, Fickell is lucky that he wasn’t fired after a 4-8 season last year. If things don’t appear to be headed in the right direction this season, he won’t be so lucky this year.

1. Mike Norvell – Florida State

Back in 2023, Mike Norvell and the Florida State Seminoles were on the brink of a College Football Playoff appearance after an undefeated regular season when an injury to star quarterback Jordan Travis resulted in the committee putting Alabama in the field instead.

Since then, things have been downhill for Norvell and the Seminoles. After beginning the season ranked No. 10 in the preseason AP Poll, Florida State began the season with three consecutive losses to unranked opponents and ultimately finished the season with an abysmal 2-10 record.

The team seemed to be on the verge of a bounce-back season last year when they opened the 2025 season with a 31-17 win over Alabama, but that high was short-lived as the team finished with just a 5-7 record.

We’ve seen the heights of what Norvell can do at Florida State, but the past two seasons have been nowhere close to that. Like Fickell, Norvell is probably lucky to be back with the team this season. But if things aren’t headed in the right direction, he won’t be in Tallahassee much longer.

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