Coaching Carousel · 2026-27

The pre-firing-season Hot Board for the 2026 cycle, as of November 5, 2025, has more meaningful heat on it than any cycle since the 2021 Lincoln-Riley-and-Brian-Kelly week that reshaped half of college football's coaching map in 96 hours. The structural conditions are similar: a Power Four ecosystem in which the gap between the SEC/Big Ten and everyone else has widened, a CFP expansion that has elevated the cost of underperformance for any program with structural playoff aspirations, and an AD class that — across roughly six of the most-watched programs in the country — has the institutional permission to make a change if the season's last month produces the kind of evidence that justifies one.

We are starting this thread now because the next eight weeks are going to produce the chapters this thread is built around. The work of tracking a coaching carousel is the work of recording, in something close to real time, what the names being whispered are, what the structural conditions of the openings are, and what the eventual hires actually mean. We are doing it with the trade-publication discipline Bruce Feldman, Pete Thamel, and Brett McMurphy have spent the past decade modeling. We are doing it with the discourse-synthesis layer that the boards and the podcast circuit produce around each name. The chapters are what they are. We will write them as they land.

“Every November in this format is the November where everyone who isn't winning is about to lose their job. That is the format.”

The Hot Board, as Brett McMurphy had it on Action Network on November 4, has nine seats with measurable heat:

Hugh Freeze, Auburn. Year three. 6-3 with three games remaining (Texas A&M, Mercer, Alabama). The board has been hot since the loss at Vanderbilt in early October, which Auburn fans have spent six weeks processing in a register that is recognizably distinct even by Auburn standards. Freeze's buyoutThe sum a school owes a coach (or a coach owes a school) to end a contract early — the price tag on firing or leaving. is approximately $20 million. AD John Cohen, who hired Freeze, has not publicly commented on the head-coach status since mid-October. The structural read is: a win at Texas A&M makes the Iron Bowl the deciding game; a loss makes the Iron Bowl an exit interview. McMurphy's piece said the quiet part: "Auburn's institutional patience is not what it used to be. The buyout is steep but is not prohibitive. The 2026 cycle's most-likely SEC opening is here unless the next three weeks produce significantly different football than the past six have."

Mike Locksley, Maryland. Year seven. 5-4 with three games remaining. The Big Ten's structural elevation that we tracked in the Big Ten Reasserting thread has been particularly difficult on Maryland, which has spent the past two seasons being the conference's second-worst program by S&P+ behind only Purdue. AD Damon Evans, who arrived in 2018 and has been Locksley's institutional partner throughout the run, has reportedly told a small circle of confidants that the program's competitive ceiling under Locksley has been reached. The buyout is approximately $14 million. The Maryland board's mood, on a long thread on TestudoTimes, has shifted from defensive of Locksley to resigned to a change. "We are not winning the Big Ten," one reply read. "We are barely even competing with the bottom half. The hire was the right hire in 2018. The program has not built what we hoped it would build. The change is overdue."

Lance Leipold, Kansas. Year five. 5-4. Less hot than the others, but on the board because Kansas's improvement has plateaued and because the Big 12 has become more competitive than KU's structural ceiling can sustain. The buyout is small (~$7 million). The AD relationship is good. The most-likely scenario is Leipold finishes the season, gets a contract extension, and stays. The chapter is on the board because there is a 25% scenario in which Leipold takes a Power 4 opening that opens this cycle and Kansas does its own search.

Dan Lanning, Oregon. Not hot in the seat sense; on the board because Lanning's name is the name every premium program with an opening will start its search with. "Lanning is the candidate of this cycle," Pete Thamel wrote in his ESPN Hot Board column on November 1. "He is not leaving Oregon for a non-marquee opening. He may leave Oregon for a marquee opening. There are two or three programs in the country whose search would credibly include him. We will find out which two or three when the openings open."

Eli Drinkwitz, Missouri. Year six. 7-2. Not on the seat-temperature board; on the candidate board because Drinkwitz is the SEC's most-watched second-tier head coach and because if a marquee SEC opening happens, his name will be on the short list. The Drinkwitz scenario is the chapter we will pick up if any of the following programs open: Auburn (most likely), LSU (low probability — Brian Kelly's seat is not actually hot in '25), Texas A&M (low probability — Mike Elko's first year went well), or Florida (medium probability — Billy Napier remains on the long-tail risk list).

Billy Napier, Florida. Year four. 5-4 with three games remaining. The board's longest-running narrative. Napier has survived three offseasons of "this is the cycle" speculation. The fourth one may be the cycle. AD Scott Stricklin has institutional patience that exceeds Auburn's; the patience is not infinite. If Florida loses two of its remaining three (at Ole Miss, Florida State, at Missouri), the cycle becomes the cycle. McMurphy's read: "Napier's seat has been hot for two years and he is still here. The reason he is still here is that the alternative — the cost of a search, the buyout, the recruiting disruption — is not clearly better than the alternative of letting another year play out. That math may break this cycle. Vegas has Napier at 60% to be back."

Trent Bray, Oregon State. Year two. 4-5. Not hot in the firing sense; the program is in the rebuild we noted in the Realignment Endgame thread when Oregon State and Washington State got left out of the Pac-12 expansion. The chapter is on the board because the program's structural condition is precarious enough that a poor season's ending could produce a forced change. Buyout is small. Probability is low.

Sam Pittman, Arkansas. Year six. 5-4. The board's quietest watch. Pittman's seat has been on the long-tail risk list since 2023. The program's ceiling under him has been set. The buyout is the structural protection. The 2026 cycle could be the cycle. Probably is not.

Brent Pry, Virginia Tech. Year four. 6-3. Not hot. On the candidate-board side because if a Power 4 opening happens, Pry's name will be in the second tier of conversations.

What we are watching for, in the next four weeks, is the kind of November we wrote up in the 12-Team Playoff Settling thread — the kind where structural elevation produces structural pressure on the bottom of programs' coaching ranks because the playoff math does not let underperformance compound. Eli Drinkwitz, in his media availability after the Missouri win at Mississippi State on November 1, said the line that Cover 3's Andy Staples called the most-honest thing said by a coach in October: "Every November in this format is the November where everyone who isn't winning is about to lose their job. That is the format. The format is the format. We have to win in November."

Chapter 2 picks this up after the Black Friday weekend, when the firings are likely to start.