There are plenty of coaches on the hot seat entering any given year, 2025 is no different. Obviously, there are many more than just the five listed here, but they are the ones with the most to lose.
Luke Fickell - Wisconsin
The coach who took Cincinnati to the college football playoff once upon a time took the Wisconsin job in 2023, and has not impressed since. Although the expanded, new look Big Ten looks different, Wisconsin should be a team who are capable of competing with, and beating everyone but the true top dogs of the league. The Badgers have not made a major bowl game since the 2019 season, where they lost in the Rose Bowl to Oregon. Prior to that, they won at least ten games every year from 2014 to 2017.
Previous coach Paul Chryst was really not doing a bad job before his mid-season firing in 2022. Although the recruiting efforts were lackluster, the on-field results were not terrible, and for the most part, lost to good-great teams. In 2021 (the year before his firing) the Badgers lost to Penn State, Notre Dame, Michigan, and Minnesota. In the 3 losses prior to his firing in 2022, the Badgers lost to a Cam Ward led Washington State team, number three Ohio State, and an Illinois team that finished 8-4. While those three losses came early in the year, it felt like Chryst was fired for only losing to good-great teams, and felt the need to increase the standard.
All this to say, the standard and expectation that was to be met under Luke Fickell, has come nowhere close. In 2023, the Badgers finished 7-6, worse than any record a Paul Chryst team led. In 2024, it got worse, finishing 5-7, Wisconsin’s first time under .500 since 2001. Their only wins came against: Western Michigan (MAC), South Dakota (FCS), Purdue (finished 0-9 in-conference), Northwestern (finished 2-7 in-conference), and Rutgers (finished 4-5 in-conference).
What is most surprising about this entire ordeal, is that Fickell got an extension following the 5-7 2024 season. In 2022, Fickell signed a seven year contract, paying him nearly $8 million per year. Following the poor performance this season, he got another year added to the deal, keeping him there through 2031, and also put another $6 million onto Wisconsin, and into the buyout. The important context to this is that Wisconsin always does this with coaches across their entire athletic body. However, this isn’t an automatic aspect of a pre-determined contract, it is a decision from the athletic board and directors, upon acceptable performance. It is essentially policy at the University of Wisconsin. It may be time to reevaluate the policy. If Chryst’s performance was not acceptable, what was acceptable about Fickell's? As well, some have called into question the legitimacy of Fickell’s success. In his most productive stint, with Cincinnati, Fickell had the current Notre Dame head coach, Marcus Freeman, who is one of the best coaches in the country, as the defensive coordinator on his staff.
Fickell’s buyout is over $40 million, likely making him too expensive to fire.
Lincoln Riley - USC
The coach who took Oklahoma to three playoff appearances, had back-to-back Heismans in Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray, and an overall 55-10 record, has severely underwhelmed as the head coach at USC. His first season with USC looked great, finishing 11-3, and had the Heisman winner in Caleb Williams. Since then, USC has gone 15-11, just getting into bowl eligibility both times. The adjustment to the Big Ten was especially difficult for the Trojans, as they went under .500 in conference play, and were consistently dominated in the trenches. Despite a very good receiver room, Miller Moss struggled as the starter, and some have begun to question whether Lincoln Riley is truly the quarterback whisperer we believe him to be, or if he has simply coached Mayfield, Murray, Hurts, and Williams.
Another reason for Riley’s place on the hot seat watch is his struggle to finish on the recruiting trail, and losing USC’s spot as the most popular landing spot for blue-chip recruits on the west coast. While it looked like Lincoln Riley and his staff finally had the recruiting scene figured out at USC, holding the number one ranking for a time during the 2025 cycle, they received fourteen de-commitments, four of whom were five star prospects. A true disaster class in Los Angeles.
Lincoln Riley could find his way off of this list, as he is finally surrounding himself with adequate talent on the defensive staff. Longtime NFL coach Rob Ryan was hired to be the new linebackers coach and assistant head coach, pairing with second year defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn. The Trojans will have to sure up their trenches on both sides of the ball, but especially defensively if they want to be the big name, national brand that the program has been accustomed to. Perhaps the bigger story of the offseason was the hiring of Chad Bowden, who will serve as general manager. The general manager title is quickly changing in college football, more closely replicating the duties of a NFL GM. Bowden served as the assistant athletic director and general manager of rival school Notre Dame previously. He believes that USC is a “sleeping giant” in college football.
The issue that has plagued the team under Lincoln Riley has been consistency, in every way, both on field, and recruiting. A progressive increase in the consistency of the program as a whole will immediately point them in the right direction. If the tides do not begin to turn, Lincoln Riley’s seat will be very hot.
Riley’s buyout is around $90 million, making it near the top of any in all of college football. Regardless of the Trojans on field and recruiting performances, Riley is almost certainly too expensive to fire, even with the riches at USC’s disposal. The recruiting progress shown in the 2026 cycle needs to be matched with sufficient on field results.
Kenni Burns - Kent State
Taking on any head coaching job in the MAC is as hard as it gets. All the schools are clustered together into (mostly) Ohio and Michigan, which are not exactly the recruiting hubs of America. On top of the numerous recruiting disadvantages, the conference can turn on its head from one year to the next, and none of the schools have an NIL pool worth noting. Even with all those factors, Kent State head coach Kenni Burns has had an incredibly difficult time in his two years in the role. Many were left surprised that he had not been fired following the 2024 season.
The Golden Flashes are traditionally not a great team, but were right around .500 in the two years prior to Burns’ hiring. Since Burns was hired, Kent State is a combined 1-23. Those 23 losses include losses to St. Francis (PA), who play in the FCS, and their only win came against Central Connecticut State, also a FCS team. To boot, they have not even been competitive, especially in 2024. They lost to Tennessee and Penn State in back to back weeks by a combined 127-0, and had a full season point differential of –362.
The hiring of Burns was slightly curious from the beginning, as many MAC coaches are usually power-conference coordinators looking to elevate their careers and take on a head coaching job for the first time. Burns was a longtime assistant on PJ Fleck’s staff at Minnesota, serving as the running backs coach. Burns was also given the assistant head coach title during his stint at Minnesota. Even with the “AHC” title given to him, his resumé was not on the same level as many other G5 head coaching hires, even at schools similar to Kent State.
As previously mentioned, the recruiting landscape in the MAC is incredibly difficult. Even the most successful teams of recent memory like Toledo, do not have strong geographic recruiting advantages like other recent G5 conference champions Tulane and Jacksonville State. Without a strong NIL collective, turning a program around quickly via the transfer portal is incredibly difficult. Although Burns and his staff have made small recruiting improvements since his first year on the job, it is not anything to sniff at, even at the group of five level.
So, what would it take for Burns to get off the hot seat? It may not be much at all. Reaching bowl eligibility feels like a massive leap forward, four wins seems difficult, especially considering their non-conference slate consists of Texas Tech, FSU, and Oklahoma, all on the road. However, they do open with FCS Merrimack at home, who had a losing record a season ago, which could end up as the only game they are favored in all year. Two or three wins should be attainable, especially considering anything can happen in the MAC, but that may not be enough for Burns to save his job.
Burns’ buyout is about $1.5 million, should he be fired at any point during or after the 2025 season.
Sam Pittman - Arkansas
Since taking over for Chad Morris, Sam Pittman and Arkansas have a 30–31 record. While this is a respectable record for a reasonably low expectation team in the SEC, it may not be enough. The job Pittman has done in his time has not been all bad, considering Chad Morris’ teams were a combined 4-20, over a two year span. Pittman’s first conference win as Arkansas’s head coach broke a twenty game in-conference losing skid. Two seasons later, that team achieved a nine win season (2021) under Pittman. The 2021 season certainly signaled an upward trajectory for Arkansas. However, the Razorbacks have yet to get back to that level, winning four games, seven games, and four games in the three years since.
The on-field results have not been all bad necessarily, they have had impressive wins over #4 Tennessee in 2024, #14 Ole Miss, and #23 Cincinnati, both in 2022, and have been bowl eligible three times. The issue for Pittman and his staff have been mostly on the recruiting trail. In Pittman’s full recruiting cycles, the Razorbacks have yet to go higher than #9 in the SEC recruiting ranks, and twice been second last, right near Vanderbilt at the bottom. Successful recruiting directly translates to successful seasons, and Pittman is simply not doing a good enough job on the trail to be competitive in the SEC.
Another factor that could play into Pittman’s potential firing is his age, and the age of some staff surrounding him. Pittman is 63, and offensive coordinator Bobby Petrino is 63. The trend for the great coaching staffs across the nation is generally youthful coaches, something that Arkansas does not have in two of their most important coaches. Relatability to recruits is a major factor on the recruiting trail, and Pittman could very well be lacking that.
The Arkansas schedule will do no favors for Pittman’s chances at retaining his job. At a glance, they host Notre Dame, Texas A&M, Auburn, and Mizzou, among others. If that isn’t bad enough, they go on the road to Ole Miss, Tennessee, LSU, and Texas. If the Razorbacks go 2-6 through those games, it should be considered a massive success.
The good news for Arkansas: quarterback Taylen Green returns for his last season of college football, a dynamic rusher who has shown several flashes of electric QB play during his time for Boise State and in the 2024 season with Arkansas. Bringing in twenty-two total transfers (pre-spring) indicates that there are immediate fixes needed, especially to fill the holes that the several Razorbacks who are onto the NFL left. Twenty-two transfer commits ties Arkansas with Ole Miss for the most portal commits of any team in the nation.
Pittman’s buyout sits in the eight-figures, but it is incredibly incentive based. The worse Arkansas performs, the lower his buyout gets, so an incredibly disappointing season would make Pittman somewhat affordable to fire.
Mike Norvell - FSU
Flashback to December 2nd 2023. Florida State just beat Louisville in the ACC championship, becoming 13-0, while starting a backup quarterback. Nobody would believe you if you said that one calendar year later, FSU missed a bowl game, let alone finished the season 2-10. It was an absolute disaster in Tallahassee, their worst season since 1974.
Mike Norvell will be entering year six as the head coach of the Seminoles. Excluding the shortened 2020 season, he has a 30-21 record with FSU. He was previously the head coach at Memphis, where he hired and guided two of the best head coaches in college football, ASU’s Kenny Dillingham and Oregon’s Dan Lanning.
Norvell and his staff play a risky game in the offseason. They rely on the portal at a fairly high rate, which can allow for record discrepancies year-to-year. Even with that, an eleven win difference from one year to the next was unexpected, and “unacceptable” according to Norvell and FSU’s standards. The 2024 Seminoles had a difficult schedule for the ACC, and their non-conference schedule featured Notre Dame, Memphis (one of the best group of five teams in 2024), FCS Charleston Southern, and a red-hot Florida Gators in rivalry week. None of their losses were “bad” losses if they were an average ACC team, or even a good one, but the standard at FSU is to compete at the national level, and to have the ability to play with anyone in the country. The Seminoles were far from that.
With Norvell and FSU’s portal-reliant strategy, the record could turn on its head in one season yet again. Before the spring portal, they have the #7 portal class, and brought in the #18 overall class. Maybe the most interesting of any commit is Thomas Castellanos, the former Boston College quarterback who was benched in their week nine matchup with Syracuse, and subsequently stepped away from the team. The Sems brought in some nice options for Castellanos to throw to, including former Tennessee receiver Squirrel White, and USC transfer, former five star receiver Duce Robinson. The portal class is loaded with offensive linemen, who should be expected to compete for starting positions day one. If Castellanos can really reach his potential in Norvell and first year offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn’s offense, FSU could have a significantly different season in 2025.
What would it take for Norvell to keep his job? Some may say that it is a return to the double digit win range, but realistically, any record that points to an improvement, at least reaching bowl eligibility would be good enough. Firing Norvell would make FSU reach very deep into their pockets. Even with the restructured contract completed in December 2024, the school would owe him over $60 million if he is fired, making him too expensive to fire.
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