5 college football coaches who deserve to be fired for pitiful Week 8 performances

Knock on wood, but no college football head coach has been relieved of his duties just yet this season. Oh, it is going to happen, because big-pocketed boosters love firing people. With the advent of the 12-team College Football Playoff, more and more teams are in it later and later into the season. Through the first 8 weeks of the years, 24 teams have a 10-percent chance or better of getting in.

However, four of these five head coaches I am about to rattle off are leading teams with no mathematical chance of making the playoff. The fifth, well, they have basically zero at 0.3 percent. It is not looking great at all. The one common thread for these programs disappointing has to be the man leading the program. None of their head coaches looked great in their brutal Week 8 defeats either.

Since somebody has to get fired because this is the nature of the business, I am firmly putting these five underperforming head coaches on the hot seat. Some will get the ax, while others will live to fight another season. It is the nature of the beast. What I will say before I really dive into this is a better showing in Week 8 would have lessened the pressure each of these head coaches may be feeling.

Let's start with a head coach who could not score a point at home vs. the No. 2 team in the country.

5. Purdue Boilermakers head coach Ryan Walters

This pains me, but Purdue may need to move on from head coach Ryan Walters at the end of the season. His Boilermakers are now 1-6 on the season and 0-4 in Big Ten play. No, they were not going to beat No. 2 Oregon at home on Friday night, but it was a blackout game in West Lafayette. The crowd at Ross-Ade was hoping an unthinkable upset could happen. Walters' team was utterly listless.

I understand that they were starting a freshman quarterback, but this is not Walters' first season as a head coach. Purdue University is also known at PU, and they stink! This team is was playing in a Big Ten Championship game only two years ago. Yes, I understand that it was because they won the old Big Ten West, but coaching matters! Losing Jeff Brohm to Louisville has Purdue circling the drain.

Truth be told, I have no idea if athletic director Mike Bobinski is going to pull the plug on Walters only two years in. However, Matt Painter's team did play for a national championship back in April. Bobinski is a good and well-respected athletic director. I don't know what direction Purdue goes in if they move on from Walters, but I do have to wonder if the former defensive coordinator got this job far too son.

Purdue is very much in the running to be the worst team in the Power Four this season going away.

4. Florida State Seminoles head coach Mike Norvell

At some point, Mike Norvell has to eat this, just like the Florida State fan who refused to hold up his end of the bargain up until Saturday. Florida State just lost to Duke. Florida State never loses to Duke. For Manny Diaz to beat his alma mater in a primetime affair on Friday night for college football diehards to see, you have to wonder how damning this looks for Norvell and his FSU coaching staff.

On the season, Florida State is 1-6 with the Seminoles' lone victory being at home vs. Cal, a team who still has not figured out how to win conference games yet since joining the ACC. Florida State has not life offensively and a defense that exists to give up in the fourth quarter. If you live by the transfer portal, you die by the transfer portal. This was a team that won the ACC a year ago. What a disaster!

While I think Florida State may end up giving Norvell the benefit of the doubt this season, I think if the Seminoles look utterly pitiful in the Ain't No Sunshine Showdown vs. arch rival Florida this year that athletic director Michael Alford may need to make a move. This thing is becoming increasingly untenable. Florida State might be in worse shape than when Norvell found it, which seems impossible.

If Florida State did not win 13 games a season ago, it would be much harder to stomach this 1-7 slide.

3. Auburn Tigers head coach Hugh Freeze

When John Cohen hired Hugh Freeze to be the next head coach at Auburn, the belief was he would strike fear in the minds of their three rival programs. Over the course of 1.5 years, Alabama, Georgia and LSU think they are merely paper tigers. After losing a brutally bad game to a depleted Missouri team in CoMo, there is a chance that Auburn may not win another football game this season.

Right now, the Tigers are 0-4 in conference play. They still have dates with Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Texas A&M and Alabama. Kentucky is a must-win, but Vanderbilt, Texas A&M and Vanderbilt are all still in the mix to make the College Football Playoff. Their last remaining non-conference game is vs. ULM, who is 5-1 on the season. Would Auburn potentially pull the plug on Freeze should the Tigers lose out?

If Auburn goes 2-10, the powers at be may be left with no choice. Freeze did not take using the transfer portal seriously this past offseason. After being respectable a year ago, Auburn has been anything but that this season. The vibes down on The Plains could not be worse. This is getting to Bryan Harsin levels of brutality. Auburn should have never fired Gus Malzahn during a COVID season.

Should Auburn move on from Freeze, who would ever want to take the SEC's most toxic opening?

2. USC Trojans head coach Lincoln Riley

When LenDale White asks for you to be tarmac-ed like Lane Kiffin, it is so over. Lincoln Riley is more cooked than his Norman Easter Sunday brisket from yesteryear. Has there ever been a bigger fall from grace as a Power Four head coach than this visor wearing clown at USC? With their powers combined, USC and Kevin Warren destroyed the old Pac-12 for this steaming pile of festering crap.

USC has lost four of its last five games, all in Big Ten play. While the Trojans have a league win over Wisconsin, that was at home. On the year, USC has fallen to Michigan in Ann Arbor, Minnesota in Minneapolis, Penn State at home and now Maryland in College Park. All of these losses have been by the most excruciatingly painful manner possible. It's like watching Scott Frost Nebraska reincarnated.

The worst part in all of this is Riley seems to be blissfully unaware of what is going on. When you possess Russell Westbrook levels of self-awareness, people are going to turn on you the instant what makes you relevant starts to fade. Jennifer Cohen did not hire Riley. Mike Bohn did, who was also a clown. USC deserves better than this. Go hire a blue-collar coach who is not addicted to ducking.

This might be worst than homeless dudes field punts at practice when Clay Helton was their coach.

1. Oklahoma Sooners head coach Brent Venables

Fact: Dumb people gotta work somewhere, and one of the dumbest people alive works in the Oklahoma athletic department. Why on god's green earth did long-time athletic director Joe Castiglione give Brent Venables a mega extension this past summer for no reason? It had to have been for self-preservation purposes because in the moment I could not believe how foolish of a maneuver it was.

Venables was a .500 coach in year one at OU. He won 10 games last year, but would not have led the Sooners to the playoff a year ago in a 12-team format. Now in his first year as an SEC head coach, he looks completely overmatched and undeniably over his skis. He has no feel for the game. Benching Jackson Arnold for Michael Hawkins Jr. only to later burn his redshirt is coaching malpractice, folks!

After South Carolina ran roughshod on y'all at Owen Field, you have to wonder if Oklahoma needs to pull the plug on the entire operation. Yes, Texas lost to Georgia and yes, little brother Oklahoma State fell on Friday to BYU, but that is not the point. The point is Oklahoma is ill-equipped to compete in its new league under the current regime. I would say Venables and Castiglione need to be thrown out.

It is unfathomable that this team has actually won four games this season with how much they suck.