Hot Seat Watch, Week 4: Winners and losers

Some coaches on the hot seat had their teams pull out unbelievable wins in Week 4 of the college football season.

After a week where the coaches on the college football hot seat could seemingly not having anything go there way, it was a pretty solid bounce back week. Most of them saw their team put up tremendous fights in wins and losses.

It says a lot about a coach when they might be in a tight spot in their tenure and their team goes out and responds in a big way. For several coaches that had a seat ablaze for much of the start of the year, they just cooled it down a little bit this week.

Not everyone is going to come away a winner despite their teams playing well. At the end of the day, a loss is still a loss for some and a long slide can’t be ignored because a team played well against a much larger opponent. Here are the winners and losers of the hot seat from Week 4.

Loser – Mark Whipple

As seems to be tradition with smaller programs that play Tennessee, UMass gave the Volunteers quite the fight on Saturday night. They battled hard to a tough 17-13 loss on the road against a superior opponent.

While it was an admirable performance, Mark Whipple’s slide continues. They are now 0-5 on the season and this is coming after an awful season last year. Close losses aren’t going to help at this point, but that effort could help his team in conference play.

They’re at that point where they pretty much have to win out or close to it to finish with a winning record. If that type of reality is setting in after just Week 4, then it’s not going to look pretty for his chances.