Three Power 4 schools looking for a midseason shakeup fired their coaches before the end of October and turned over their programs to assistants on an interim basis.
For one day anyway, those coaching changes led to immediate improvement. Two of those interim coaches earned big victories, while another one kept things considerably closer than his fired predecessor had.
NC State
- Out: Dave Doeren
- Interim: Todd Goebbel
- Result: Beat California 31-10
After the Wolfpack started the week by firing Doeren, they rallied around Goebbel and routed a struggling Cal team to improve to 4-4, 2-3 in the Atlantic Coast Conference. After the game, they handed the game ball to their interim coach, the AP reported.
Baylor
- Out: Dave Aranda
- Interim: Joe Klanderman
- Result: Beat UCF 41-9
The Bears were coming off of a loss to struggling Kansas that cost Aranda his job, and were facing a UCF team fresh off the biggest victory in program history — a double-overtime stunner of then-No. 2 BYU. That made it easy to expect a blowout. But not this way: The Bears were the ones doing the routing behind four touchdown passes from DJ Lagway.
MarylandÂ
- Out: Mike Locksley
- Interim: Aazaar Abdul-Rahim
- Result: Lost to Illinois 20-17
It would have been easy for the Terrapins (3-5, 0-5 Big Ten) to mail it in after Locksley was fired Oct. 21 after going 10-21 since the start of the 2024 season. They lost their first three Big Ten games by 25 or more points apiece before falling to Rutgers by a touchdown, a defeat that cost Locksley his job. Abdul-Rahim rallied the Terps, who led Illinois 17-14 when Javari Barnett opened the fourth quarter with a 64-yard touchdown run. But the Fighting Illini rallied, giving Maryland its sixth straight loss by kicking a 26-yard field goal on the final play.Â
Could Florida State, others take heed of the interim coach bump?
Obviously three coaches isn't the largest sample size, and not all of them were even victorious on Saturday. Still, it's hard not to notice the bump in energy and execution that comes with a new voice in the locker room. Which begs the question: Could that growing trend convince other programs to finally pull the trigger and get rid of their incumbents?
In the era of NIL and the transfer portal, program momentum is paramount. So, too, is roster retention, and you can help mitigate the adverse effects of firing your head coach — and losing the players he recruited to campus — by both keeping things in house and providing proof of concept moving forward.
Florida State, for example, would no doubt love to avoid having to pay Mike Norvell's giant buyout. Then again, it seems pretty clear that the Seminoles have stalled under his watch. And at a place like TCU, where the vibes have turned rancid under Sonny Dykes, wouldn't turning the keys over to an interim give you a chance to salvage an already-lost season?
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