Why Firing A College Football Coach Has Never Been More Complicated

This week might be one of the best college football slates in recent memory. Saturday features seven ranked matchups as we hit the midway point of the 2026 campaign. I’m headed to Bloomington later this week for No. 5 Indiana vs. No. 4 Ohio State. FOX’s “Big Noon Kickoff” will also be there. If that’s not your flavor of the month, the slate also includes: Buckle up, it’s going to be a wild weekend. The Main Event: The New Math Behind Coaching Buyouts For as much consternation as there has been in certain corners of college football, we haven’t yet gotten our first coach firing of 2026. Is that because of newfound restraint from administrators? Not exactly. It’s never been more expensive to compete at the highest levels of college football. Rosters are ballooning into the $30-40 million range and beyond. Coaching buyouts remain hefty, while bringing in a new staff is equally expensive. Those factors are forcing administrators around the country to make a new-look cost analysis: Is it better to spend $100 million to fire our coach and bring in a new staff? Or, is it better to put another $15 million into the roster and see what happens? “The rev-share piece is definitely coming into play,” an industry source told me. “That’s a factor now when you fire your coach because not only do you’ve got to pay out the coach — you may have to pay a buyout — then you may have to pay this roster off, and then you’ve got to have enough money to go get a new roster.” I spent the past week talking with folks around college football’s world of coaching searches, trying to get a better grasp on the market and sure enough, this conundrum came up in almost every conversation. It’s directly affecting a handful of tenuous situations in the sport. Mike Norvell is still employed at Florida State after entering the season on the hottest seat in America. Shane Beamer at South Carolina — last week’s win over Florida notwithstanding — wasn’t thrown to the wolves after a disheartening overtime loss to No. 15 Kentucky, which had message boards in Columbia molten hot with #takes speculating on who the next Gamecocks coach should be. Both situations — among other factors — can directly be attributed to the hefty costs associated with making a move. “Look at Mike Norvell – he inherited the program in disarray in 2020 and rebuilt the program to a 13-0 undefeated season and ACC championship in 2023,” a second industry source told me. “It’s not like he forgot how to coach. In recent years, Florida State has struggled to find additional resources to support the program and have not been able to keep up with other top schools in the ACC for their roster and talent acquisition.” In a world where patience is not exactly a skill, those who have waited are being rewarded. Wisconsin is perhaps the poster child for this calculus. Head coach Luke Fickell and the Badgers were among the slowest schools in the Big Ten to adapt to NIL, boasting a donor base that was relatively conservative in jumping full bore into athlete compensation. What followed were seasons of 5-7 and 4-8 under a coach almost everyone in America thought was a slam dunk for success in Madison. The Badgers’ brass has since helped Fickell, rejiggering the school’s NIL operation and providing the program with more resources than it had enjoyed in any other year under Fickell. The results — a 4-1 start to the season with an exciting comeback win at Penn State — have followed. “All speculation, but let’s say Maryland and South Carolina want to hire the same guy,” posited a third industry source. “They start upping the salary to make their job more attractive than the other. They start promising higher rev share, they pay a big buyout to get rid of a guy, more than they were doing previously in rev share, more than they were paying their coach, more than they were paying their staff. “It’s like, OK, well, is this new coach that we’re going to hire that much better than what we had previously? Or if we invest more in the guy that at one point we thought was the perfect fit, is that a better math solution than starting all over and investing more?” To be clear, this doesn’t mean there won’t be firings, even if we’re headed for a slower-than-usual coaching carousel following the 17 Power Four jobs that opened last year. Sources indicate jobs like Colorado, Maryland, NC State and South Carolina remain possibilities to open this offseason. There are bigger gigs — USC and Florida State, for example — that could also create their own cascading effect on the coaching market. But as buyouts continue to rise and roster costs grow at a hockey-stick-like pace, a few coaches might find themselves off the hook if they can convince their bosses to invest a few more dollars toward the roster, immediately. Best Quote I Saw This Week Boy, has it gotten hot in College Station over the last week. Texas A&M was run off the field by Missouri on Saturday and head coach Mike Elko had a few, errr, thoughts when asked about fans remaining confident in his efforts. “There’s a difference to me between the fanbase and social media, and so there’s one group that I really don’t care much about,” Elko said on Saturday, per KBTX. “Billy’s cesspool can go be Billy’s cesspool. Our fanbase: Stay with us. Be behind us. We’re going to build something. That’s what we told you we were going to build. We’re in a really bad spot right now, but we’ll work our way out of it.” For the uninitiated, “Billy” refers to Billy Liucci, the head honcho at TexAgs — perhaps the most prominent and influential fan site in college football, and one that has direct dealings with the school’s NIL operations. Elko, a brash New Jerseyan who isn’t afraid to speak his mind, has worked wonders in his short time in Aggieland. But calling out a corner of the fanbase that effectively helped him land the gig two years ago perhaps isn’t the most prescient move for a coach whose offense has been an abomination through six games this fall. Best Deal I Saw This Week It’s not so much a deal as a financial transaction, but James Madison plotting a move to the American Conference makes all the sense in the world. The Dukes have been a force in the Sun Belt since jumping up from FCS in 2022 under head coaches Curt Cignetti and Bob Chesney. Florida castoff Billy Napier has been similarly successful on the field as he has JMU in the midst of a 6-0 start. It’s worth noting JMU has been one of the more aggressive spenders in the Group of Six and has leaned heavily on student fees to bolster its athletic department budget. Say what you will about that philosophy, but it’s paying off in spades. That said, jumping from the Sun Belt to the American boils down to television revenue. The American distributes an average of around $7 million annually to its schools, while the Sun Belt’s deal with ESPN is more in the $1 million range. Even if JMU enters the American — which will happen no later than July 1, 2028 — at a partial share of television dollars, it’s more than likely going to outpace what it was receiving in the Sun Belt.