We are one week into the college football season, and here at Aaron Torres Media we decided to do a little something a little bit different.
Prior to the season, everyone in America put out their hot seat coaching candidates lists, but we decided to wait a week. Rather than rush to judgement, we wanted to wait a week and see how things played out.
So with it, here's our updated Hot Seat list after one week - with a bunch of names you'd probably expect to be here... and one new one since the start of the season.
Neal Brown (West Virginia): Neal Brown came into this season with a scorching hot seat, as he has yet to win more than six games in a season entering year five. A loaded schedule that included Penn State in Week 1, with Pitt, Texas Tech and TCU all before October doesn't help.
And while the Mountaineers were certainly respectable Saturday night in Happy Valley - quarterback Garrett Greene is a gamer - a 23-point loss that was never really competitive certainly didn't help things.
If West Virginia starts badly and loses those four games mentioned, then there’s a very good chance that West Virginia fires him mid-season to cut the cord completely. Even if they don't, it's hard to find a lot of wins of a schedule that includes trips to Oklahoma, Houston and Baylor, in addition to the games mentioned above.
West Virginia needs a fresh start, and they might be forced to get one if the season starts bad for Brown.
Tom Allen (Indiana): Tom Allen rejuvenated the Indiana football team in both 2019 and 2020, nearly making the Big Ten title game in 2020.
But since that season, Indiana has gone 6-18 and lost their prized quarterback, Michael Penix Jr., to the transfer portal where he went to Washington.
Allen has struggled since, and an uninspired, three-point effort in Indiana's opener against Ohio State certainly doesn't help. Nor does a schedule with trips to Penn State, Michigan, Illinois and Purdue, with Wisconsin coming to town later in the year.
Another bad year could be it for Allen when it comes to his job in Bloomington.
Dino Babers (Syracuse): Dino Babers was nearly completely safe after the Orange started the season 6-0 last year. However, Syracuse went 1-5 the rest of the way. It doesn’t help that both of Syracuse’s coordinators from last year are gone and one of their best players in Ja’Had Carter is now playing for Ohio State too.
Babers has shown he can take Syracuse to winning seasons, but they’ve been few and far between with just two in eight seasons.
However, there’s still a good chance that he can stay around if the orange hover around .500 and a bowl game again. While the Orange do have a brutal three-game stretch that sees them play Clemson at home, before back-to-back trips to North Carolina and Florida State, the rest of the schedule is largely manageable.
Jimbo Fisher (Texas A&M): The Aggies are paying Fisher a ton of money and they haven’t gotten a return on their investment in the last two years, where Fisher is 13-11. The Aggies just missed the playoffs in 2020 with a 9-1 record, but since, have struggled, most notably with a 5-7 record last year. That came just months after signing what many regard as one of the greatest recruiting classes in college football history.
That disaster of a season led to Fisher being forced into hiring an offensive coordinator, in this case, Bobby Petrino. The early returns last Saturday were good, as the Aggies put up 52 points, after not breaking 40 once last season.
Still, things get much tougher as the Aggies head to Miami this weekend. Go ahead and call this a must-win, for a team that plays in the always tough SEC West, with a cross-division at Tennessee later in the season as well.
Billy Napier (Florida): Had we made this list before the season, we probably wouldn't have included Napier. But after watching an uninspired Gator performance last Thursday, this on the heels of a disastrous 6-7 season a year ago, it doesn't feel out of the realm of possibility that a truly disastrous season could cost Napier his job.
The bottom line is that while some can be blamed on the disaster left by previous coach Dan Mullen, the Gators should never be this bad. That's especially the case after two full transfer portal cycles, including the 2023 winter and spring, where the Gators signed a grand total of zero of the Top 100 transfers according to the Athletic.
Again, it would take a truly catastrophic season for Napier to be let go.
But based on what we saw last week at Utah - where the Utes weren't just down starting QB Cam Rising but several defensive stars as well - what games on their schedule are guaranteed wins?
Not many.
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