College football’s coaching carousel doesn’t wait for October anymore. One bad Monday night was all it took to reshuffle this board. Florida State walked into Week 1 as the preseason favorite to fire its coach first, and after a 42-16 home beatdown at the hands of SMU, that’s no longer really a debate — it’s just a matter of when.
A handful of other names moved too, some for the worse, a couple for the better. Here’s where the market stands going into Week 2.
Next College Football Coach Fired Odds (Week 2)
| Coach | Team | Odds | Implied Probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mike Norvell | Florida State | +250 | 28.6% |
| Dave Aranda | Baylor | +450 | 18.2% |
| Luke Fickell | Wisconsin | +600 | 14.3% |
| Bill O’Brien | Boston College | +1200 | 7.7% |
| Lance Leipold | Kansas | +1200 | 7.7% |
| Jeff Lebby | Mississippi State | +1600 | 5.9% |
| Bill Belichick | North Carolina | +2000 | 4.8% |
| Shane Beamer | South Carolina | +2000 | 4.8% |
Odds are current as of early Week 2 and will keep moving as games get played, so double-check your book before laying anything down.
Mike Norvell, +250
Nobody in the country had a worse Week 1 than Florida State. SMU came into Doak Campbell and hung 42 on a Seminoles defense that’s now allowed 30-plus points in back-to-back games dating to last season, and Norvell’s offense turned the ball over three times in the process. This is a program that’s won three ACC games combined over the last two years, and now it’s off to a 1-1 start with Alabama looming on Sept. 19. The buyout — north of $50 million — is still the only real thing standing between Norvell and a pink slip, and it’ll probably keep him in Tallahassee through the fall no matter how ugly this gets. But “still employed in November” and “not the favorite to be fired first” are two very different things, and right now the board says he’s the favorite by a wide margin.
Dave Aranda, +450
Baylor’s opener wasn’t a disaster on the scoreboard — a 17-16 loss to Auburn after a failed two-point try to tie it — but a one-score loss to a team picked to finish in the bottom half of the SEC isn’t the kind of result that buys Aranda goodwill. He’s already carrying two straight losing Big 12 seasons into this year, and Baylor’s administration has shown before that it won’t let a coach linger indefinitely without results. A tight loss like this one won’t move the needle much on its own, but it does nothing to slow down a seat that was already warm before kickoff.
Luke Fickell, +600
Fickell opened as a heavy underdog at Lambeau Field against a top-five Notre Dame team, and that’s more or less how it played out — the kind of game most hot-seat trackers had already penciled in as a loss before the season even started. The real story for Wisconsin comes later: the Badgers avoid Ohio State, Oregon, Indiana and Michigan in Big Ten play this year, which is about as favorable a schedule as a coach on notice could ask for. Two straight losing seasons is what put Fickell here, and a $25 million buyout is the only thing that kept him around after the second one. If Wisconsin can’t turn a soft slate into real wins, that number stops mattering.
Bill O’Brien, +1200
Boston College’s brutal opening stretch got off to exactly the start people feared. The Eagles lost 34-15 at Cincinnati, a game where their offense managed one touchdown against a Bearcats defense that wasn’t considered anything special. Up next: Rutgers at home, then Virginia Tech, then a trip to SMU — and BC’s bye doesn’t land until Oct. 10, which gives the administration a clean window to make a move if the record is bad enough by then. A 2024 season that ended in 2-10 bought O’Brien very little patience, and starting a Division II transfer at quarterback isn’t inspiring much confidence that this turns around fast.
Bill Belichick and Shane Beamer, +2000 apiece
Two coaches who were supposed to be in real trouble instead had the best possible start to the season. Belichick’s North Carolina team went into Dublin as a home underdog and beat TCU 15-10 — the same team that hung 48 points on the Tar Heels in Belichick’s college debut last year. That’s about as complete a reversal as you could script, even with his general manager on administrative leave and a defensive coordinator out for medical reasons. Beamer’s Gamecocks, meanwhile, blew out Virginia Tech 24-11 after a 4-8 season that had South Carolina fans openly frustrated. Neither result erases the pressure both coaches were under a week ago, but it buys real breathing room, and it’s why both slid all the way back to +2000 on a board where they were considerably shorter in August.
The Rest of the Board
Lance Leipold’s name shows up here more out of Big 12 competitiveness than any specific crisis — Kansas has had flashes of real success under him, but the margin for error in that conference keeps shrinking every year. Jeff Lebby is only in year two at Mississippi State, which usually buys some patience, though the Egg Bowl rivalry with Ole Miss has ended coaching tenures faster than that before. Lincoln Riley’s name still floats around these lists too, mostly because USC’s ceiling and its results haven’t matched up in a couple of years now — that’s a slower-burning storyline than anything happening at Florida State or Boston College this week.
What History Says About Timing
Nobody should expect a firing this early. Last season, the first Power Four coach to lose his job was Virginia Tech’s Brent Pry, axed Sept. 14 — and even that was considered an unusually quick trigger pull. UCLA’s DeShaun Foster went the same week. From there it was a steady drip: Mike Gundy on Sept. 23, Sam Pittman on Sept. 28, James Franklin on Oct. 12, Billy Napier on Oct. 19, Brian Kelly on Oct. 26, and Hugh Freeze all the way out in early November. Fifteen FBS coaches lost their jobs by the end of last season, with buyouts totaling roughly $270 million — a record. So while Florida State’s name sits at the top of this board right now, the real firing season doesn’t start for another few weeks. Plenty of time for this list to look completely different.
Odds and implied probabilities are for informational purposes only. Confirm current lines with a licensed sportsbook before betting, and gamble responsibly.