College Football Coaches Whose Jobs Are on the Line in 2016
The college football coaching carousel has come to a close, and national signing day is in the books. So as the calendar turns from February into March, the 2016 season is coming into focus more and more with each passing week. With spring football already beginning in parts of the country, optimism is running high just about everywhere you look, with every team even at 0-0 and excited for what lies ahead.
That does not mean all is right in the world. At several major football programs, the offseason is no time to take a vacation or relax. Real work has to be put in by both the players and the coaching staff, or else the latter will be looking for new jobs after the coming season.
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With television money flush in most major conferences and the appetite for a winning team higher than ever for many fanbases, it’s never been easier to show one coach the door in order to bring in another who can be equal parts dream hire and savior. Several coaches will have to contend with such talk throughout the 2016 season, and for good reason: They’re coaching for their jobs this year.
Here’s a look at who’s firmly on the hot seat at both the high and the medium setting and what the road ahead looks like for them.
Charlie Strong, Texas
Strong has seemingly been a dead man walking since his disastrous debut season and enters 2016 firmly on make-it-or-break-it ground among the Longhorns faithful. The new school president and athletic director do seem to genuinely want things to work out with Strong, but the on-field product trumps everything when it comes to keeping loud and rich boosters on the same page.
The bottom line is that Strong is 11-14 after two years, and his teams have been borderline dreadful to watch. The offense has been among the worst at the Power Five level despite access to high-level athletes in a state full of potent attacks. The recent change to new offensive coordinator Sterlin Gilbert may or may not be nothing more than a temporary fix.
Strong knows things need to get better. As he said following a big national signing day, "We needed something positive. Now we've got to continue to build on it."
However, the biggest thing that Strong has to deal with is a lack of consistent momentum. After beating Oklahoma and Kansas State last year, there was a thought the team was turning the corner. That was not the case, as they promptly were shut out by lowly Iowa State. All that love on signing day? Seemingly out the window with Strong’s recent potential involvement in a divorce case back in Louisville. Those types of things can’t happen at Texas. There’s even more pressure on Strong to have a good year, or else the booster jets will be fired up to bring Houston coach Tom Herman to Austin in late December.
Dana Holgorsen, West Virginia
There was a chance Holgorsen was going to be let go after the 2015 season, but winning five of his last six games—including against Texas, Texas Tech and Arizona State—to finish with eight wins seemed to save his job for another year. Still, he’ll go into the season with a very ambivalent fanbase and a new administration that has not exactly come out and given him their full support.
The bottom line is that West Virginia is a much tougher job now than it was a few years ago, when it could post double-digit win seasons with regularity and make a nice bowl game. The Big 12 has brought plenty of revenue but also plenty of challenges given Morgantown’s location. Holgorsen has tried to do his best to navigate things, but sometimes you get dealt a bad hand.
Maybe the most frustrating thing of all for Mountaineers fans has been the offense, something Holgorsen specializes in. But he hasn’t guided it to any form of consistency, nor has he developed a long-term solution at quarterback. He was creative in 2015 by playing to his offensive strengths and leaning on a surprisingly stout defense, but there needs to be some growth as a program. The schedule is much more manageable. If Holgorsen can’t take advantage, he’ll be drinking his Red Bull elsewhere in 2017.
Darrell Hazell, Purdue
When Hazell was retained as head coach for another season late in the year, he probably should have called his agent and said thank you. Let’s face it, if the coach didn’t have such a huge buyout—$6.7 million, according to the Indianapolis Star—Purdue likely would have cut bait after three seasons that have produced a 6-30 record with only a handful (OK, three) of FBS wins.
Perhaps the most maddening thing of all for Boilermakers fans is how inconsistent the team has been under Hazell. Beat Nebraska 55-45? That’s a great win (and just the second in the Big Ten for the coach) had it not been followed up by a 48-14 thrashing at the hands of lowly Illinois the next week.
Also at play, beyond owing so much money to a coach who won’t be leading your team, is the school going through a series of transformative events. To start with, they are investing as much as $60 million in capital improvements that are mostly centered on an updated indoor football facility that brings the program out of the Big Ten basement. Still, that might make more of a difference to the new incoming coach if there are not visible signs of progress under Hazell during year four of his tenure.
Mike Riley, Nebraska
The thought of Nebraska dismissing Riley after just two seasons seems far-fetched until you remember its history of running off a pair of coaches who posted nine wins. Still, even after getting to 6-7 with a surprising bowl win, there’s little question that the well-liked Riley is firmly on the hot seat after such a drastic step back from prior seasons. It probably didn’t help that the team was on the wrong end of so many dramatic endings either.
With a team like the Cornhuskers, losses to teams like Iowa or Wisconsin should probably be tolerated given that those two have made it to the Big Ten title game regularly. It doesn’t make it any harder to stomach, but the days of running through a league schedule to a New Year’s Bowl does not jibe with reality in Lincoln nowadays. What has really tripped up Riley are the losses to teams like Illinois, Purdue and even Northwestern. If he wants to stick around any longer, those have to be wins.
There’s a ton of returning starters, so the hope is that things return to normal in 2016. The schedule does not do Riley any favors, with a nonconference game against Oregon, and Ohio State, Iowa and Wisconsin among the five Big Ten road trips. Hovering around .500 or additional dramatic finishes that see Big Red on the losing end won’t help Riley at all as he navigates a very pleasant fanbase that has already seemingly turned on the nicest man in college football.
Gus Malzahn, Auburn
When Malzahn was hired at Auburn, he was hailed as somewhat of a savior for the program given his ties to the school’s national title in 2010 and the success he briefly had as a first-time head coach. That seemed to ring true after he took the Tigers from 3-9 to the BCS national title game the next season and came agonizingly close to delivering another championship to the Plains.
Some regression was expected in his second season, but few could have predicted that Auburn would be the most disappointing team in the country in 2015, going from trendy playoff pick to barely around .500 for the year. It doesn’t help things either that Malzahn shares a state with Nick Saban, fresh off another national title and recruiting well enough to win another in 2016.
That puts an enormous amount of pressure on Auburn to get back to relevance this upcoming season. The program has recruited plenty of talent to campus. Both sides of the ball should be near the top of the conference in year four under Malzahn. Auburn ran Gene Chizik out of town two seasons ago after a national title. The same could hold true for its current head coach if things don’t get any better this year.
Derek Mason, Vanderbilt
The James Franklin era spoiled Vanderbilt fans like no other, and how could it not? Nine wins, two years in a row, at Vandy? It was as remarkable then as it is now, and it is through that lens that Derek Mason is being judged in 2016 and beyond. The end result is the first-time head coach could be done after just three seasons in one of the toughest gigs in the country.
Mason’s speciality, defense, has not been the problem. The Commodores had one of the better units in the country in 2015 despite not getting any help from their offense. That’s chiefly because Mason himself took over as coordinator. What has been the problem is the offense, which has had a rotating door of quarterbacks and never found much success at all even in winnable games.
Vanderbilt is just 4-17 against FBS teams during Mason’s tenure. If that record doesn’t improve, it’s going to be tough to see him sticking around with another tough season. Perhaps Vandy’s brass will take a longer view of things and of their head coach, but the team needs to at least look like it can get to a bowl game if there’s any possibility of year four for Mason.
Les Miles, LSU
The drama surrounding Les Miles, with one of the best coaching resumes out there and a hefty buyout, was one of the most fascinating storylines to follow in 2015. Indeed, it looks even more surreal to see in February after he signed another top-10 recruiting class and likely heads into 2016 as one of the league and national title favorites.
Still, this is the state of Louisiana we’re talking about, so anything is possible. The political climate is toxic, and the fact is that Miles and athletic director Joe Alleva have not been on the same page in a while.
Should LSU fall short of expectations—say, two or three losses in the SEC and/or a sixth straight loss to Alabama—maybe the fanbase gets on the same page as the powerbrokers and a mutual parting happens. It may seem far-fetched after he did a great job hiring Dave Aranda to be the defensive coordinator and getting the program back on track, but as we saw last fall, crazy things are possible in Baton Rouge.
Mark Stoops, Kentucky
Stoops has said all the right things and done a remarkable job on the recruiting trail. But at some point you are what your record is. That, perhaps more than the big buyout, may be what causes Kentucky to part ways if 2016 doesn’t see the team make major strides. It’s a tough job at the bottom of the country’s most relentless league, but there are few programs that are OK with going 4-20 in the conference and failing to close strongly at all in October and November.
Should Stoops get the team to a bowl game in 2016, that will probably be enough for him to stick around. If they start hot again and then fizzle down the stretch like they have on a consistent basis, there’s likely a change to be made among the impatient Wildcats faithful and administration.
Bringing in Eddie Gran as offensive coordinator was a good move this offseason for Stoops, and there are plenty of resources being made available for football at the longtime basketball school. At some point, though, there has to be a return made on all those investments, and it looks like this season will be a determining factor.
Mike MacIntyre, Colorado
MacIntyre was a remarkable turnaround artist in taking San Jose State from one of the worst programs in the country to the Top 25 and a regular postseason spot. His challenge at Colorado is right on the same level, but 2016 is more likely than not to decide his future in Boulder given how much time he’s had to get the Buffs back in shape for the Pac-12.
This is year four for MacIntrye. The expectations are high enough that four wins is not going to cut it this season at Colorado. He’s overhauled the roster significantly and taken the team from not-at-all competitive for a Power Five program to a contender in nearly every Pac-12 game it plays.
The past two years have shown plenty of progress on the field, but coming up short in the win column will only be tolerated for so long. Athletic director Rick George has helped improve the facilities significantly and might be a little impatient if there aren't any wins to follow. MacIntyre has done good work in turning around Colorado, but it’s pretty clear that it’s bowl game or bust in 2016.
Group of Five coaches on the hot seat for 2016: David Bailiff (Rice), Craig Bohl (Wyoming), Ron Caragher (San Jose State), Doug Martin (New Mexico State), Paul Petrino (Idaho), Brian Polian (Nevada)
Bryan Fischer is a national college football columnist for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter at @BryanDFischer.
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