We're not halfway through October and here are the current openings in college football:

Arkansas
Oklahoma State
Oregon State
Penn State
Stanford
Virginia Tech
UCLA

Oregon State also fired their HC. I know they were 0-7 but he was dealt a pretty bleak hand.

Guy was close to the National Championship last year. That's a tough gig.

You can only get teased so long before you have to find someone who actually puts out.

Ten years is probably time enough to tell that he wasn’t getting them there, but I don’t know if anyone gets them any closer though.

September 12th: Coach of the #2 team in AP Poll
October 12th: fired

At some point you have to win games you aren’t supposed to win if you are going to be a big time college coach and 2-15 as a dog since 2017 just isn’t going to cut it especially so if you are losing games you are supposed to win as well.

I'm guessing Rhule and Cignetti are the top 2 targets at this point. Matt Campbell will probably be begging for the job. He wants out of Iowa State because of their NIL situation.

Kotelnicki will be a hot OC to hire but he passed on head coaching opportunities to coach in the playoffs last year. He has to be regretting that choice.

Cignetti makes more than Franklin did. How open is the check book at Penn Stafe?

I doubt they're paying Franklin's buyout to go cheap on his replacement. I don't know if Cignetti would be interested, but he's from the area and I'm sure Penn State will try to sell him on coming home.

Stuff like this also completely undermines the attempts to limit NIL money. If schools can pay $50-60 mil in buyouts for someone to not coach your team, you've lost all leverage on NIL limits.

I think they've got $700 million being spent on stadium renovations right now, too.

Nothing like college football, man.

Supposedly Billy Napier is finally on his last leg.

I think UF should hire James Franklin. He's a very good coach and arguably the schedule is actually easier right now in the SEC. I think he has a better path to the Natty at UF than PSU.

Seems like it'd be awfully tough for any team with actual high expectations to hire Franklin right now. Be a tough sell to the donors.

UF has a higher NIL budget and more revenue than Penn State. It’s a better job. Penn State’s NIL budget is 100k more than Indiana’s. Florida beats them both by millions.

I have no particular love for UF so I'd certainly be in favor of them hiring the guy, it would assure their ultimate irrelevance and it'd be kind of amusing to watch the meltdown that would come with all the wasted money (both NIL and subsequent buyout)

Franklin is a massive asshole that's difficult to work with. That's very likely why it was so easy to get donor money to step up and force him out. He's definitely a tough sell.

Alex Golesh seems like a guy who would be a really good fit at Florida. I think Rhule makes the most sense at Penn State.

But firing a guy who couldn't beat Top 10 teams in order to hire a guy who can't beat Top 25 teams?

I hope Rhule and Cignetti both stay put and Penn State lands someone else but I’m sure Rhule will end up there. Football is just more fun when there are more good teams and I suspect Nebraska crashes again if he leaves. I really think Cignetti’s age and massive buyout are probably going to turn a lot of teams off even with results so far you can’t ignore that he’s one of the 5 oldest coaches in D1. How much time does he have left to keep rebuilding programs. Matt Rhule is 14 years younger than Cignetti.

I think Rhule is a much better fit there. Matt Campbell too. If the Penn State AD and donors think Franklin is an asshole they haven't seen anything when it comes to Cignetti though. He can get away with his quirks at a non-traditional football power. Indiana has quite the combo in DeVries and Cignetti there.

I don't think the buyout would be much of a problem for Penn State if they decided they want him. They have boatloads of money and Mark Cuban would be a name to keep an eye on to jump in a help out. He's been a Penn State donor in the past and he normally stays out of athletic donations but he's a big fan of Cignetti.

Cuban is currently pumping Indiana where he graduated from. I don’t expect he would jump in to lure Cignetti away from his alma mater.

Sidebar: You guys seen these Allstate college football commercials where some fan does something dumb but at least he was smart enough to use Allstate? The Michigan guy steals a kids cotton candy and it's on the jumbotron. The Texas guy lets Bevo out of the cage and, presumably, Bevo tramples a fan or something. Aren't you alienating your fanbase? I'm in the Detroit area and I keep seeing the Michigan one. I get that this is also a Michigan STATE demographic but a commercial that seems to punk Michigan feels ... counterproductive to me.

The kids voice in the Texas one is like fingernails on a chalkboard. Whomever cast him should be thrown off a bridge.

Indiana extends Cignetti through 2033 at $11.6 million a year.

https://x.com/IndianaFootball/status...14872730484763

https://www.sportingnews.com/us/ncaa...bfbeec51cfcf1a

Paul Finebaum sounds so bitter that Curt Cignetti just got a big extension by Indiana. He says the money at Indiana is going to dry up and this is going to look bad like Indiana hasn’t been a top 15 revenue school for a long time. They can afford to pay a coach top dollar.

Cignetti isn’t an idiot. He sees Indiana for what it is. A fringe top 10 revenue school with a fringe top 10 NIL budget Prolonged success could actually improve both prospects (Penn State only has 100k more in the NIL fund than Indiana with all that history everyone likes to talk about at Penn State.). He can win there consistently. This isn’t 10 years ago. NIL and the transfer portal exist and teams with large NIL budgets can reload every single year if the coach knows what he is doing. And even if he has a “down year” I don’t think the fan base is going to complain about a few losses.

Paul Finebaum is a know-nothing SEC shill.

In the NIL era, I would rather have a Big 10 job than an SEC job. Sorry, but those schools just have way more money to play with going forward. Indiana has no football tradition but they have a shitton of wealthy businessmen who went there and will throw money at players.

Same goes for the Penn State gig that I think is about as good a spot as any for a coach. School is loaded with people in finance running hedge funds and shit. These schools will all dwarf what Auburn can do financially. shortly.

Carson Beck is having one of his signature nights it seems.

Miami getting the full "Carson Beck Experience "

How can a 5-0 #2 team in the nation have such a terrible QB?

The guy can be a world beater. Make every throw. Look like a top tier quarterback....until he gets rattled. Then he just descends into madness.

The good news for Miami is that in the current climate of they win out they are still in the playoffs. The bad news is that Beck just looked like an average FCS QB playing against a D1 defense.

There's the Carson Beck we all know and expected

At no point have I considered them a legit #2 team in the nation, and have been completely baffled how anyone else did either.

PSU fired James Franklin so they could hire a guy who is 17-15 at Nebraska?

I think I'd hire PJ Fleck before Rhule, not that either would be an upgrade from Franklin.

Joe Flacco is getting paid about a million dollars less season than Beck.

I hope things fall just right to get GT vs Vandy in the playoffs.

and Haynes King and Diego Pavia as 1-2 (either order) for Heisman.

My gut is that GT is going to be the only bright spot in my entire CFB weekend.

I have lower expectations for Ole Miss than I did for Miami and I fear this is the week that the Vols get their own version of Carson Beck at QB

Carnell Tate is a top 5 receiver.

I don't see how Fickell makes it through the season. It's going to be a brutal hiring environment this offseason.

We probably still have Florida and Florida State jobs opening up.

With the stadium rebuild and the ACC lawsuit they just finished, I don't think FSU has the money.

This Georgia team feels just like the old teams under Mark Richt. Offense moves the ball and scores, but the defense absolutely can't stop anyone.

Got off to a slow start against MSU, but we’ve scored a touchdown on every possession.

Georgia's defense has been waiting to show to the second half. This game they waited till 10 minutes left in the fourth quarter. Can't believe they won that. Stockton had a game.

I fear the ceiling for Ole Miss has been reached. 11-1 or more likely 10-2 in a year where they had to replace Dart isn't a terrible record ... but it also isn't particular relevant in 2025 either.

I suspect this game, barring a sequence of events that gets them into the playoff (which I don't see happening)is probably what sends Kiffin elsewhere.

Julian Sayin reminds me of Joe Burrow. He doesn't have the perfect QB body, but his accuracy is absurd. He knows where to go and puts the ball in the perfect spot.

Whoa, Tennessee just screwed the pooch