Plenty of coaches entered the season on the hot seat but many of them have started off the season really well … or good enough to make a case to keep their jobs.
In today’s Tuesdays With Gorney, Rivals national recruiting director Adam Gorney breaks down those coaches who are doing enough to possibly not get fired.
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MARIO CRISTOBAL, Miami
Was Cristobal on a really hot seat? Probably not as he had a lot of fixing to do and there literally might not be a better candidate for the job since he’s from Miami and played for the Hurricanes. However, his first two seasons were not all that impressive.
Miami was 12-13 in Cristobal’s first two seasons and didn’t win more than three ACC games in either of those years. But getting quarterback Cam Ward from the transfer portal and developing others across the board has Miami undefeated and ranked sixth nationally. There were back-to-back major scares against Virginia Tech and Cal but the Hurricanes remain unscathed with a schedule left that looks like they could go undefeated in the regular season.
TONY ELLIOTT, Virginia
Elliott, who earned his bona fides during a great assistant coaching stint at Clemson, went 6-16 in his first two seasons at Virginia. The Cavaliers won three ACC games. It looked like things were just not working out for him in Charlottesville, not an easy place to win as UVa hasn’t had a winning season since 2019.
But things have turned this season as Virginia has already beaten Wake Forest, crushed Coastal Carolina and came back after being down big to upend Boston College this past weekend. The Cavaliers’ only loss came to Maryland.
The schedule does get much more brutal from mid-October through the end of the regular season but a 4-1 start has the program going the right way.
CLARK LEA, Vanderbilt
Lea is a hometown boy from Nashville and he played at Vanderbilt plus the Commodores haven’t had a winning season in a decade so expectations are not exactly ratcheted up. The fourth-year coach was 11-29 overall and 2-23 in the SEC heading into last weekend. That’s when everything changed.
Vanderbilt shocked No. 1 Alabama Saturday night in Nashville in one of the biggest upsets in the history of college football. Now, the Commodores are 3-2 with both losses by single digits to Georgia State and Missouri. Just watching Vanderbilt play this season, the team is more competitive, faster, stronger and the recruiting class is better.
An SEC championship is not around the corner but a bowl game certainly could be. That’s a major step in the right direction.
BILLY NAPIER, Florida
A few weeks ago, Napier looked like his time in Gainesville was all but running out. Former coach Steve Spurrier said on a podcast for Napier to just do something “different.” Urban Meyer said the “momentum is gone” at Florida.
Miami embarrassed the Gators in the season opener in The Swamp after Napier talked up his team all offseason and then Texas A&M routed them a few weeks later.
But since that time, Florida has beaten Mississippi State and more impressively UCF to get to 3-2. What happens if, God forbid, the Gators upset Tennessee this weekend and keep winning games? It might be a long shot but Florida definitely looked sharper against the Knights this past season.
The November schedule is absolutely brutal with Georgia, Texas, LSU, Ole Miss and then Florida State, which could be the biggest dud game of all-time in that series considering Napier’s tenuous job status and the Seminoles totally flopping this season.
And perhaps the donors are so fed up with Napier as he’s now 14-16 overall and 7-11 in SEC play so it's a moot point.
But it’s one game at a time for the Gators and Tennessee is up next. A win and suddenly the Napier discussion gets far more interesting.
SAM PITTMAN, Arkansas
Over the offseason, Pittman acknowledged in interviews that he knows he’s on the hot seat after going from 9-4 in 2021 to 7-6 and 4-8 the last two seasons. It was a welcome bit of gallows humor from a coach who’s very liked across the coaching profession but who needed to turn things around and win more games in Fayetteville this season. So far, Pittman has won as many games (27) as he’s lost with the Razorbacks.
But Arkansas is 4-2 after a shocking, field-storming win over Tennessee this past weekend. The Razorbacks also won at Auburn a few weeks ago. And the two losses easily could have gone the other way, as the Razorbacks blew a double-digit lead and lost in overtime to Oklahoma State and was nip-and-tuck with Texas A&M on a neutral field, losing 21-17.
The schedule remains tough and maybe Arkansas collapses, but this team looks much better than recent seasons. Saturday’s win over the Vols could have saved Pittman’s job.
JUSTIN WILCOX, Cal
It’s hard to believe but Wilcox is now in his eighth season at Cal and after going 8-5 in 2019, the Golden Bears have not had a winning season since. That would put most Power Four coaches out of a job, but Berkeley is a different place, and so Wilcox has been given much more time to get things on track.
That looks like it’s happening this season. Cal went to Auburn and won, which isn’t as impressive as most years since the Tigers are struggling, but it’s still a huge win. The program missed a big opportunity to also win at Florida State in a season where the Seminoles can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. And there was a huge chance to stun Miami this past weekend, as what looked like a blowout win suddenly turned into being outscored 21-3 in the fourth quarter and losing by one point.
There were some tough losses and missed chances there but Cal was not only in those games but took it right down to the wire. That’s a major step in the right direction for the Golden Bears, who have to regroup and head to play a tough Pitt team across the country this weekend. A loss puts them right back to 3-3.
