11 more college football coaches destined to be fired after first two dominos fall

We now have four openings in college football! While Fresno State and Utah State are being led by interims after Jeff Tedford resigned and Blake Andersen was forced out very late in the summer, two other Group of Five jobs have just opened up. East Carolina moved on from Mike Houston hours before Southern Miss decided it was time to part ways with Will Hall. Those teams are in total disarray.

The good news for ECU and Southern Miss is they now have more time to identify the right head coach to lead their programs long term. Even though Fresno State and Utah State got a head start on them, that really does not matter. The point is more and more Group of Five jobs and some intriguing Power Four jobs will open up in short order. It is anyone's best guess as to what jobs those could be.

So what I am going to do to is outline a very Spinal Tap 11 head coaches, both in the Power Four and the Group of Five, that I feel are very much on the hot seat. Others will join them on their, while some that are on this list may have a swell November to take all the pressure off them. Either way, we should expect close to 20 jobs opening up this offseason because it is par for the course with 134 FBS gigs.

Let's start with a coach pushing West Coast snake oil to a bunch of Midwesterners who won't buy it.

11. USC Trojans head coach Lincoln Riley

Haters gonna hate, and I hate what Lincoln Riley in part killed the Pac-12 for. He may be making a small fortune to coach some truly passive and uninspired football in the new Big Ten, but I remain skeptical that new USC athletic director Jennifer Cohen is going to pull the plug on Mike Bohn's huge mistake just yet. Then again, I don't want to know what happens if 3-4 USC fails to make a bowl game.

The most storied West Coast program hired an offensive guru to lead their glamor program when in reality they needed to hire a guy with a blue-collar ethos to compete in the Midwest. Nobody saw the Pac-12 dying, outside of USC and former Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren. Riley may have had success year one at USC, but he is looking more and more like the Scott Frost you have at home.

While I may be rooting for it, I highly doubt Cohen is going to pull the rug out from under Riley just yet.

10. Florida State Seminoles head coach Mike Norvell

For reasons similar to Lincoln Riley at USC, it is a bit too premature for Florida State to move on from Mike Norvell. The Seminoles did start last season out 13-0 with an ACC Championship Game victory. Of course, the Noles have lost seven of their last eight games dating back to last year's pantsing from Georgia in the Orange Bowl. At some point, Norvell is responsible for Florida State becoming flat cola.

If you live by the transfer portal, you can also die by it. Florida State is not recruiting on the level that it should with the amount of success the Noles have had on the football field in recent years. I understand that Alex Atkins was out for the first three games because of a show-cause penalty, but Adam Fuller's defense is toothless and nobody can competently throw a football in all of Tallahassee.

While I don't think Michael Alford is going to fire Norvell, what happens if the Seminoles go 2-10?

9. Oklahoma Sooners head coach Brent Venables

You see a trend here, right? One by one, I am touching on one underperforming head coach at a Power Four job who hasn't been in that position for very long. While their albatrosses of contracts are what may be keeping guys like Lincoln Riley and Mike Norvell employed, what on god's green earth are we going to do with Brent Venables? He has already fired his offensive coordinator in Seth Littrell.

When you fire an OU alum off your staff, that speaks volumes. What is crystal clear in Norman is Venables is over his skis as an SEC head coach. If Oklahoma was still in the Big 12, his team's record would be markedly better than 4-3. I understand that the schedule has been brutal for OU, but so has been Venables' mismanagement of the quarterback position. What does this say to future recruits?

Oklahoma needs to drill, baby, drill, so the Sooners can afford a new head coach and athletic director.

8. Auburn Tigers head coach Hugh Freeze

It may only be year two for Hugh Freeze at Auburn, but he might be leading the worst team in the SEC. While Mississippi State may end up with a worse record, I see a team playing hard for new head coach Jeff Lebby trying to figure it all out in the extended wake of Mike Leach's untimely passing. As for Freeze, there are not enough burner phones in the world to call collect on to get him out of this mess.

There is a chance Auburn may not win another game this season. Why did John Cohen leave his alma mater of Mississippi State to hire the disgraced former head coach at Ole Miss at Auburn? The only logical explanation has to be an inside job to bring Mississippi State back to the promised land. Dak Prescott ain't walking through that door, but neither is Bo Chapman Nix down on The Plains at Auburn.

Cohen is not going to fire Freeze this soon because he would be no better than Alan Greene, folks.

7. Stanford Cardinal head coach Troy Taylor

There is a heaping pile of suck in the ACC, and Troy Taylor might be at the bottom of it. I understand that he is only in year two leading the Stanford Cardinal, but this may be the worst team in the ACC. While getting the Friday night win a month ago over Syracuse was a shocking surprise, Stanford was always going to be a bottom-of-the-barrel team in the ACC in its first year joining its new conference.

That being said, Stanford has quickly devolved into being one of the most forgettable programs in the Power Four. Much of this has to do with Mike Bloomgren leaving Palo Alto to lead Rice. David Shaw has moved on to bigger and better things, like helping the Denver Broncos turn it around. In the meantime, Taylor's Cardinal appear to be stuck in neutral. This team is going nowhere fast under him.

This feels mean, but Taylor has provided no juice to a program that once excited us not that long ago.

6. UCF Knights head coach Gus Malzahn

This caught me by surprise. After a 3-0 start, Gus Malzahn has the UCF Knights riding a four-game losing streak heading into the final week in October. While it remains to be seen if UCF will actually move on from their head coach, I don't think seeing relative Big 12 newcomers like BYU and Cincinnati having success while UCF struggles is a good thing. The same applies to Arizona State and Colorado.

Over the course of a month, UCF went from being the mathematical favorite to winning the Big 12 to being completely out of the College Football Playoff picture. Coaching matters, and sometimes I wonder if Malzahn's lack of scheme puts him at a disadvantage at a job where he may not have the most talent. You can do hurry-up-and-run and a place like Auburn, but probably not forever at a UCF.

Mike Norvell and Billy Napier have received more flack this year, but Malzahn is the one I worry about.

5. Kent State Golden Flashes head coach Kenni Burns

Without question, this is the one I feel the absolute worst about. He may only be two years in, but Kenni Burns may already be cooked at Kent State. The Golden Flashes are the only team in FBS that has been mathematically eliminated from making a bowl game eight weeks in. Cody Williams and I had to pour one out on the latest episode of False Start with Kent State being 0-7 on the year already.

Sean Lewis leaving to be Deion Sanders' offensive coordinator for part of last season revealed just how bad of a program Kent State is. This is the worst program historically in the FBS. While we have seen the Golden Flashes have flashes of brilliance before, they are always fleeting. I don't know if moving on from Burns is the right idea, but you cannot be leading a team after going 0-12, man...

The bottom of the MAC is about as bad as it gets, but there is another MAC coach feeling more heat.

4. Akron Zips head coach Joe Moorhead

The rise and fall of Joe Moorhead needs to be a sports documentary nobody would ever spend two seconds to watch. The former Fordham head coach was a revelation as an offensive coordinator at Penn State before briefly driving Mississippi State into the ground. He sort of reinvented himself as Mario Cristobal's offensive coordinator at Oregon before taking over at Akron, who is Kent State bad.

Historically, the Zips struggle on the football field as much as the Golden Flashes do. For as bad as Akron has been under his guidance, the reason Moorhead may need to go is the Zips hired a name to be their head coach as opposed to hiring an ascending head coach. Surely, there is a better offensive mind out there on the rise who can one day get the Zips back to respectability. It is not Moorhead...

There is one other head coach in the Midwest who might be more cooked that even Joe Moorhead.

3. Purdue Boilermakers head coach Ryan Walters

After what I saw last Friday night at Ross-Ade, the Ryan Walters era of Purdue football needs to end after this season. He may have been Bret Bielema's hot-shot defensive coordinator at Illinois two years ago, but he is so over his head as a Power Four head coach. One day, he may be ready for his next opportunity, but right now, I would argue that Purdue is the worst program in the Power Four.

The fans showed up in droves with Oregon coming to town. They dressed the part for the blackout, and the Purdue offense could not score a single point! I understand that Walters is a defensive mind, but firing Graham Harrell as the offensive coordinator seemed like posturing to me. Losing Hudson Card at quarterback for an extended time shows how far of a drop-off Purdue got from its coach.

Jeff Brohm to Ryan Walters might be the biggest drop-off in that regard over the last two seasons.

2. North Carolina Tar Heels head coach Mack Brown

I get to see Cody Williams go through it every week on False Start. Mack Brown did great things leading North Carolina over two different stints, but he needs to retire. The Tar Heels won their first three games of the season, but may not win another, and this includes a road date to his equally awful alma mater of Florida State. The defense is atrocious and the quarterback play is not much better.

While I don't think Bubba Cunningham is actually going to fire him, Brown will be asked to take the golden parachute and retire from the coaching profession at the end of the season. North Carolina is doing irreparable damage to its football brand with each passing week. It is the flagship university of a relatively talent-rich state, but why is it so painfully difficult for UNC to be regularly good at football?

Cunningham has his work cut out for him, but he has to know Brown is so far past his expiration date.

1. UAB Blazers head coach Trent Dilfer

UAB was brought back to life as a football program only a decade ago, only to be essentially be led by the Deion Sanders you have at home. I have interviewed Trent Dilfer before. He is a great football mind and a very nice person to talk to, but he is in over his head leading the UAB Blazers. Hiring a notable former NFL player who was having success at a Tennessee private school was a big mistake.

You can only put your Super Bowl ring on the table so many times before recruits stop looking at it. At 1-6 on the year, the Blazers have more quit in them than Bobby Hill. UAB was expected to be a halfway decent team in The American this year. Instead, they have devolved into the sad bag of crap before and after Roddy White first made us care about the Blazers on the gridiron. They need to reboot this.

Once Cody Williams brought it to my attention that Dilfer needed to go, I have been fully persuaded.