ATHENS — College football is trending in the direction of the NFL with expanded playoffs and player salaries, so perhaps it only makes sense that patience for head coaches is wearing thinner than ever before.
Seven of the NFL’s 32 head coaches were fired or not retained last season, and the firing of Arkansas coach Sam Pittman on Sunday was a reminder of how college football has turned into a high-dollar, performance business.
Pittman’s firing only five games into the season caught some, including Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz, off-guard.
“I was a little bit surprised,” Drinkwitz said on the SEC coaches teleconference this week. “When you look at that job, when he took it over, it was in a really dark place, and Sam did an excellent job making that football team competitive.
“He’s got wins at home versus Texas (40-21, 2021) and versus Tennessee (19-14, 2024).”
Pittman took over an Arkansas program that had gone 2-10 the season before he was hired and had lost 20 consecutive SEC games.
This season’s Razorbacks fell to 2-3 after the loss to Notre Dame, Pittman finishing his 5½-season tenure 32-34 with a 14-29 SEC mark.
But as former Tennessee coach Butch Jones once said, after being fired with two games remaining in the 2017 season, “It’s not what have you done for me lately, it’s what are you going to do for me next?”
That’s how LSU coach Brian Kelly indicated he sees it, when it comes to schools firing coaches in-season.
“I think each individual situation requires universities to decide what it looks like moving forward, instead of where we are right now,” Kelly said on the SEC coaches teleconference. “I think with revenue sharing, and I think with the construction of your roster (under consideration) … are we gonna be better if we stay where we’re at right now?”
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Bobby Petrino, who with his head coaching experience was a quick and convenient choice to be elevated from offensive coordinator to head coach at Arkansas, was blunt when asked by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on the conference call to share his feelings on midseason firings.
“You know, I’m not a big fan of it, (because) I think that when you start something, that you try to finish it,” Petrino said. “We always got to keep the players in mind, but you know, it’s not really up to us as coaches.”
Petrino has fired the defensive coordinator, defensive line coach and co-defensive coordinator after the lethargic performance in the 56-13 loss to Notre Dame that ultimately led Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek to fire Pittman.
The Razorbacks allowed the Fighting Irish 42 points and 420 yards in the first half, with five of the six touchdown drives in the first half going 70 yards or more with a gaudy average of 10.2 yards per play.
“In essence, they were playing against air,” SEC Network host Peter Burns said.
Chris Doering, Burns’ SEC Network sidekick, added “they looked slow, they looked out of position, they had no regard for their defensive assignments, unathletic, uninspired.”
And yet, in this new landscape of revenue sharing and NIL deals, the players will get paid still and are in no danger of losing their scholarships.
Should things not work out for them under Petrino — or any other head coach — players maintain the right to transfer to another school without limitations.
Pittman was the fourth Power Four conference coach fired this season, joining the coaches at UCLA (DeShaun Foster, Sept. 17), Virginia Tech (Brent Pry, Sept. 17) and Oklahoma State (Mike Gundy, Sept. 23).
Mack Brown was the only Power Four conference fired in-season last year. At that, North Carolina allowed him to coach the final game.
The 2024 season was the first in college football with the current transfer rules in place that allow immediate eligibility for all undergraduates.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Georgia coach Kirby Smart said he doesn’t know that there’s ever a good time for a head coach to be fired. But in this new landscape of revenue sharing and unlimited transfers, athletic administrators have become more cognizant of roster management.
“I think maybe the fear in recent years has been, the later you do it, the more you lose your recruiting class, and the later you do it, the more fluid your roster is,” Smart said. “You could say that’s the case by doing it now, but maybe it (also) gives guys on the staff a chance to recover and look and shop (for jobs).”
Or, as South Carolina’s Shane Beamer pointed out, it could give the interim coach a chance to maintain the program without massive turnover.
To Beamer’s point, former Florida and South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier told the AJC that was part of his reasoning when he resigned as the Gamecocks head coach six games into the 2015 season.
“I had a team that basically didn’t listen to a damn thing I said,” said Spurrier, who after an otherwise illustrious head coaching career had seen his team get off to a 2-4 start.
“I was hoping that the interim head coach could get the job and keep a lot of assistants,” he said. “At Arkansas, if Petrino does well, he’ll get the job.”
It wouldn’t be unprecedented, as Beamer pointed out when referencing his cross-state rival at Clemson.
Dabo Swinney, now in his 17th season as the Tigers head coach, began his run as the interim head coach Oct. 13, 2008, after Tommy Bowden resigned under pressure with a 3-3 record following back-to-back losses to Maryland and Wake Forest.
“I hate when you’re a player and you lose your coach in the middle of the season, and in some instances, it can go one way where the team rallies around the interim coach, we saw that at Clemson,” Beamer said. “Dabo Swinney took over and rallied that team, got the job, and you’ve seen what they’ve done ever since.”
“Or, it can go the other way, where players immediately enter the portal or decide to redshirt and they don’t rally around the coach.”
Petrino is mindful of the challenge ahead in the SEC, both on the schedule and in the locker room.
“We’re trying to make sure here that we have our players come into the building every day, have a great attitude, a great work ethic, enjoy themselves and have fun with it,” Petrino said. “You know, give them a way that we can win football games.”
The Razorbacks play at Tennessee before returning to Fayetteville for a three-game home stretch that includes games against Texas A&M, Auburn and Mississippi State.
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