Ryan Day’s mission this season is clear

The 2024 college football coaching carousel officially began on Sunday when the East Carolina Pirates fired their head coach Mike Houston following an uncontested 45-28 loss to the Army Black Knights.

The move, which saw the program drop to 3-4 on the season and 27-38 overall under Houston, was expected but far more remarkable When it happened. Houston’s departure was one of the latest in the first midseason firing in at least a decade.

Last year, the Michigan State Spartans released Mel Tucker on September 27th (albeit due to off-field issues). The year before, Scott Frost was released by the Nebraska Cornhuskers on September 12th. The Connecticut Huskies had a chance even earlier in 2021 when Randy Edsall resigned on September 6th after just two games.

The delayed start to this season’s carousel is an indicator that the market for FBS head coaches could be unlike any that has come before it. Athletic directors not only evaluate their own program when deciding whether to transfer, but also consider new factors such as the transfer portal, NIL, the 12-team College Football Playoff and revenue sharing. It’s also about passing the hat to enough boosters to pay ever-increasing buyouts and fund NIL to keep a roster together.

Here’s a look at each FBS conference and who’s on the hot seat and who could get out of it through coaching.

Worth watching: Mack Brown (North Carolina Tar Heels)

Ten of the ACC’s 17 schools have hired a head coach since 2022, and it’s very likely the league will carry over the entire roster heading into the 25 season. The only situation that stands out is Brown, whose second stint in Chapel Hill stabilized the football program but failed to live up to increased expectations. The Tar Heels are currently on a four-game losing streak, which included a tough home loss to a Sun Belt team and a blown three-point lead against the rival Duke Blue Devils.

There is no expectation that athletic director Bubba Cunningham will make a move even if the team doesn’t miss a bowl game this season. However, talk of how long Brown, who turns 74 before next season, will coach will continue to grow louder. It’s possible that Brown could retire in the next year or two, as his contract runs through the 2027 season. If not, Brown and Cunningham could agree to a graceful exit.

In the hot seat: Dave Aranda (Baylor Bears)

Worth watching: Kyle Whittingham (Utah Utes), Deion Sanders (Colorado Buffaloes)

Aranda entered the 2024 campaign with perhaps the most pressure of any coach in a power conference to change things or risk losing his job. That remains the case, as the Bears are 3-4 after one of the more surprising results of the season: a 59-35 win over the Texas Tech Red Raiders on Saturday. The team was more competitive between the lines — it lost to the Colorado Buffaloes on a Hail Mary and played a one-score game against the league-leading BYU Cougars — but the wins are needed, and a bowl game to achieve is probably not the case enough. Since Baylor is a private university, the exact terms of Aranda’s acquisition are unknown, but most estimate it to be more than $15 million. That was an amount the school agreed to pay after last season.

In Salt Lake City, the Utes have already named defensive coordinator Morgan Scalley as Whittingham’s designated successor. The only question is when a formal handover will take place. Whittingham turns 65 next month and it will be a question every year when he finally wants to call it quits.

Sanders is in a unique situation as he coaches two of his sons — safety Shilo Sanders and quarterback Shedeur Sanders — in what are likely their final college football seasons before entering the NFL draft. Could the departures of the younger Sanderses this spring make it easier for the coach to take another job outside of Boulder or simply step away from coaching altogether? It’s also worth noting that Sanders would owe the school about $10 million if he left.

It’s slowly getting warm: Ryan Walters (Purdue Boilermakers)

Worth watching: Kirk Ferentz (Iowa Hawkeyes), Ryan Day (Ohio State Buckeyes)

After being shut out by the Oregon Ducks at home on Friday, things are going from bad to worse for Walters. He’s just 5-14 overall and a winless Big Ten season isn’t out of the question with three top-15 teams left to play. The situation is also looking increasingly desperate: Offensive coordinator Graham Harrell left earlier this month and Walters, a former defensive coordinator, is taking over running the game on a side of the ball with which he had no experience.

Acquiring Walters wouldn’t be completely prohibitive if Purdue athletic director Mike Bobinski were forced to make a move. How the Boilermakers play down the stretch will go a long way.

Ferentz is the longest-tenured head coach in the country and recently picked up his 200th win at Iowa, just five shy of tying Ohio State’s Woody Hayes for the most wins in Big Ten history. It doesn’t look like Ferentz is ready to retire, but retirement is always a possibility.

Day’s situation is far more nuanced than any other. He understands the expectations of the program as well as anyone and has been given every resource available to give it his all through 2024. The narrow defeat in Oregon changed little about the current situation: beating the school in the north and chasing a national title.

Anything but that — especially if another game against struggling rival Michigan doesn’t go according to plan — and it’s worth watching how tense things get at OSU. It all sounds a bit ridiculous that a coach who is 61-9 and has only lost four times in conference play in six seasons would end up on the hot seat at the end of the season. This is even more true considering that a takeover would cost Day and his employees more than $40 million.

But this is Ohio State, a state with a donor base that isn’t particularly harmonious right now and a new athletic director who recently made a name for himself by paying $77 million to have Jimbo Fisher leave at his last stop.

In the hot seat: Billy Napier (Florida Gators), Sam Pittman (Arkansas Razorbacks)

Worth watching: Hugh Freeze (Auburn Tigers)

Most of the heated discussion centered around two potential vacancies in the SEC, both of which could ultimately prove to be market drivers for further merry-go-round exodus.

Napier, who is 4-3 this season, enters a critical week before playing the Georgia Bulldogs. He’s still hoping for his first winning season with the Gators, but the team has been playing better lately and all three losses (including one in overtime) have come to teams currently ranked in the top 15. There are some notable building blocks: quarterback DJ Lagway and tailback Jadan Baugh are emerging as true newcomers to the starting lineup.

The problem is a schedule that features No. 2 Georgia, No. 5 Texas and No. 8 LSU. A talented group of Ole Miss Rebels is also waiting for you in the Swamp just before Thanksgiving. This is a gauntlet unlike any other in the country, and Florida will need to pull off at least one upset to win a bowl game. Things have calmed down somewhat after emotional home losses to the Miami Hurricanes and Texas A&M Aggies, but there is still great expectation that the school will make the change that supporters have been demanding for the last month and a half.

There are two things that make things a little more complicated for Napier and the program. The coach is owed a little more than $27 million if fired, half of which would be due within 30 days. Second, there are questions about whether athletic director Scott Stricklin is making a third straight football hire and doing so under an interim school president who isn’t well-versed in athletics.

None of these things will prevent a breakup, but it won’t be a clean and easy process if things take a turn for the worse on the field.

At Arkansas, Pittman is 27-28 overall after Saturday’s loss to the LSU Tigers and will need a strong finish to the season to have another season. He earned a lot of goodwill with a win over the Tennessee Volunteers two weeks ago, and he has four winnable games through the end of November.

A situation that should also be kept in mind is freeze. At this point in his tenure, he is worse than his predecessor Bryan Harsin (a damning statement in itself for many), and the lack of a productive offense (Freeze’s specialty) is particularly galling.

Freeze has a stellar recruiting class on board and would face a $20 million buyout, two factors that would typically push an actual decision to 2025. But this is Auburn, so anything is possible.

Open: Fresno State Bulldogs, Utah State Aggies, East Carolina Pirates, Southern Miss Golden Eagles

In the hot seat: Mike Bloomgren (Rice Owls), Stan Drayton (Temple Owls), Sonny Cumbie (Louisiana Tech Bulldogs), Mike Neu (Ball State Cardinals)

It’s getting warmer: Trent Dilfer (UAB Blazers), Biff Poggi (Charlotte 49ers), Don Brown (UMass Minutemen), Kenni Burns (Kent State Golden Flashes), Charles Huff (Marshall Thundering Herd)

Worth watching: Joe Moorhead (Akron Zips), Shawn Clark (Appalachian State Mountaineers), Butch Jones (Arkansas State Red Wolves), Jay Norvell (Colorado State Rams)

There are already four vacancies in Group 6 and more are expected to open up this winter in what is arguably the most active part of the coaching carousel.

One thing some athletic directors have to contend with when weighing a move is an ever-shrinking pool of real candidates. Position coaches in the Big Ten and SEC often make more than they would as head coaches at the lower levels, and many prominent coordinators looking to move up are becoming increasingly picky about their next move — even within the power leagues .

Add to that the growing trend of head coaches moving in the other direction to take coordinator jobs at big schools or even the NFL, and there could be multiple waves of vacancies that last well into the new year.