**College Football’s Coaching Carousel Heats Up: Buyouts, Blunders, and the Looming Shakeup**
As the 2024 college football season grinds through its second half, the pressure cooker is reaching full boil for a handful of high-profile coaches—and the price tags attached to their potential departures are staggering. Even as programs struggle on the field, their administrators may soon be writing checks for tens of millions just to move on, fueling speculation that this year’s coaching carousel could be one of the most dramatic in recent memory.
### Buyout Madness: Big Money for Underwhelming Results
The landscape of college football coaching contracts has shifted dramatically in recent years, with multi-year deals and enormous buyouts becoming the norm. This season, those buyout figures are coming into sharp focus as several prominent coaches find themselves on the hot seat.
At Penn State, James Franklin’s buyout stands at over $49 million—an eye-popping sum that may soon seem less remarkable if current trends continue. Meanwhile, Mike Norvell at Florida State is also under intense scrutiny. After suffering a fourth consecutive loss, Norvell’s job security is in question, and if the university decided to fire him at season’s end, it would cost them more than $58 million. These numbers highlight the staggering financial stakes involved in making coaching changes at the top level of college football.
The situation is hardly unique to Penn State or Florida State. Down in the SEC, Auburn is teetering toward full-blown crisis mode after dropping its fourth straight game, prompting fans and pundits to speculate about a complete overhaul of the coaching staff. Even Florida, where the Gators managed to squeeze out a win, saw fans voicing their displeasure, booing head coach Billy Napier and calling for his ouster during the game. At LSU, too, questions are beginning to swirl—could the Tigers be the next program to join this buyout frenzy?
The result is a surreal and almost comical atmosphere, where failure on the field is being rewarded with massive payouts. In a nod to Oprah Winfrey’s famous giveaway episodes, one could joke, “You get failure money! And you get failure money! And you get failure money!” The proliferation of such golden parachutes is both a symptom and a driver of the escalating volatility in college football’s coaching ranks.
### The Coaching Carousel: A Coming Storm
All signs point to a coaching carousel this offseason that could rival the tumultuous 2021 cycle. That year, marquee programs like LSU, USC, Florida, Oklahoma, Oregon, Miami, and Notre Dame all made major hires, setting off a chain reaction across the sport. With so many high-profile jobs potentially opening up this year, universities considering a coaching change must ask themselves a crucial question: “Who can we realistically get?”
Timing, as always, is everything. For example, Florida’s decision to retain Billy Napier after last season may prove to have been a costly mistake. Had the Gators made a change a year ago, when the coaching market was quieter and Napier’s limitations were already apparent, they could have positioned themselves as the top available job—potentially luring in a top-tier candidate like Lane Kiffin before he became entrenched in a College Football Playoff run. The lesson is clear: what must eventually be done may be best done sooner rather than later.
At Auburn, the frustration is reaching a breaking point. Head coach Hugh Freeze’s tenure is being defined by a lack of offensive firepower and an inability to win close games. Once known for high-scoring, entertaining football, the Tigers have become mired in mediocrity. Athletic director John Cohen might see his program as a once-proud vehicle now sitting idle—a “jalopy on flat tires with a dead battery,” as the metaphor goes. However, Auburn’s schedule is about to soften, offering a slim chance that the Tigers could salvage a 7-5 record, their first winning season since firing Gus Malzahn. If that happens, it will likely be greeted with only muted celebration—a small consolation, perhaps, but not a sign of real progress.
### Troubles in the North: Wisconsin’s Woeful Offense
While much of the drama is centered in the South, the dysfunction is not limited to the SEC. Wisconsin, a program long known for its rugged efficiency, is suffering through an offensive drought of historic proportions, managing just 20 total points across four Big Ten losses