Culture
Which college football coaches have the hottest seats at the midseason mark?
It’s the midpoint of the college football season and usually, the coaching carousel is spinning much faster. It’s spinning slower this year for a few reasons. First, the past two seasons had much more turnover than initially expected; second, this is the first year of the 12-team College Football Playoff, which is extending the potential waiting time on some search options.
Things could get active at the Group of 5 level soon, though. Here’s our midseason assessment after talking to numerous industry sources about the FBS coaching landscape.
AAC
Mike Houston, East Carolina: 3-3 record this season
Before getting the ECU job, Houston went 37-6 at James Madison and won an FCS national title. He led the Pirates to two bowl games in his first four seasons but went 2-10 last year. His team just got whupped by 31 at Charlotte, now a rival program, and has lost by far its best player, cornerback Shavon Revel, to a season-ending knee injury. ECU still has Army and Navy, both Top 25 teams, plus 5-1 North Texas left. Tulsa, FAU and Temple are all very winnable. Getting to six wins might buy him more time, but his team could use a few wins down the stretch. Temperature check: Warm.
Mike Bloomgren, Rice: 2-4
This is a tough job. The former Stanford assistant got the Owls into a bowl game in his fifth year. Last season was his best: a 6-7 record that included snapping a seven-game losing streak to Houston. The Owls got off to a 1-4 start but just notched a nice, close win against UTSA for their first win against an FBS opponent. Getting bowl eligible looks doubtful, especially with only UAB seemingly looking like a likely win — and that one is on the road. Temperature check: A little warm.
Stan Drayton, Temple: 1-5
It’s been tough for Drayton to get much traction so far. The Owls are 2-16 in AAC play. The program wasn’t in great shape when Drayton took over for Rod Carey, whose teams only won two of his last 15 AAC games before he was fired. The Owls could really use a win at home against struggling Tulsa this weekend to get a little momentum going. Temperature check: Getting warmer.
Trent Dilfer, UAB: 1-5
The former NFL quarterback-turned-TV analyst had a lot of success building a powerhouse high school program in Nashville before getting the Blazers job over then-offensive coordinator Bryant Vincent, who not so coincidentally has done terrific in his debut season as the head man at the University of Louisiana-Monroe. That dynamic isn’t helping the situation for the first-time college coach. Vincent’s team blew out UAB 32-6 in early September. Dilfer went 4-8 last year and the Blazers are really struggling this year. Aside from a win over FCS Alcorn in the opener, this has been rough. They hung around against Arkansas and gave the Hogs a game, but the rest of the slate has been blowouts. They have home games against Tulsa, UConn and Rice. They need to win at least one of two of those to show some progress to quiet some of the critics since this was a fairly high-profile, outside-the-box hire. Temperature check: Getting hot.
Dilfer was a splashy, leap-of-faith hire for UAB, but the Blazers have struggled so far under his tenure. Photo: Wesley Hitt / Getty
ACC
Mack Brown, North Carolina: 3-4
The Tar Heels has been pretty good in Brown’s second stint with the program. In his second season back, they finished No. 18. The Tar Heels have won 17 games the past two seasons but it feels like the program has fallen off quite a bit this year. They’ve lost four in a row, including giving up 70 to JMU at home. The bright side: three of their remaining five opponents have losing records. Getting to six wins isn’t out of the question but there’s been increasing chatter that it might be time for a change from the 73-year-old Brown. Temperature check: Getting a lot warmer.
Big 12
Dave Aranda, Baylor: 2-4
The wild roller coaster ride that has been Aranda’s tenure in Waco, Texas has struggled to ramp back up. He went 2-7 in his first season and then, after overhauling his offensive staff, led Baylor to a 12-2 season, finishing No. 5. Since then, the Bears are 11-20. Baylor almost made a coaching change last winter but showed more patience with Aranda. There were more staff moves made that included Aranda taking over the defense this season. But after some good early signs, that side of the ball is struggling again. The issue has been that Aranda hasn’t recruited well enough or close to the level that Matt Rhule did. Aside from this weekend’s game at Texas Tech, none of the next five opponents have winning records. Temperature check: Hot.
GO DEEPER
Khan: Can Dave Aranda come back from Baylor’s collapse at Colorado?
Big Ten
Mike Locksley, Maryland: 3-3
A fast start has cooled quickly, with two double-digit losses including a dismal home showing where the Terrapins lost by 27 to a middling Northwestern team. Worse still, they’ll probably be underdogs in each of their last six games. A rebuilt O-line has struggled mightily, as has the secondary. Word out of College Park is that Locksley, who is so well-respected locally, has built up so much goodwill in his time there, especially having posted back-to-back eight-win seasons while in the much tougher side of the Big Ten and that’ll afford him a mulligan this year. In the previous 40 years, the Terps had only one stretch of three consecutive winning seasons until Locksley did it from 2021-2023. Temperature check: Lukewarm.
Ryan Walters, Purdue: 1-5
The former Colorado defensive back did outstanding work as Illinois’ defensive coordinator before getting this job. The Purdue offense sputtered in his debut season, managing 17 points or less six times in a 4-8 year. Walters fired OC Graham Harrell early this season and Purdue’s woes have continued. A 49-0 win over FCS Indiana State is the lone victory, but they did show signs of life, almost knocking off No. 23 Illinois on the road last weekend, 50-49, with freshman QB Ryan Browne in his first start. Four of their remaining six games are against top-16 teams. The other two teams are .500 Northwestern and at Michigan. Can the Boilers notch at least one win to show some progress? Two years isn’t close to enough time, so I’d be very surprised if the Boilers made a move. After all, this is a program that hasn’t finished in the Top 25 once in the past 20 years and only had four winning seasons in the past 16 years. Temperature check: Getting a little warm.
Conference USA
Sonny Cumbie, Louisiana Tech: 2-4
He went 6-18 in his first two years. The Bulldogs lost their first three games against FBS teams this season. They hammered a bad MTSU team for their first FBS win of the season last week but weren’t able to build off of that. They lost in double-overtime to New Mexico State. Next up is another woeful team, UTEP. I thought 5-7 looked like where they were headed, but that was before losing to NMSU. Temperature check: Getting hotter.
I think Cumbie can buy himself another year with five wins. Photo: Jaylynn Nash / Imagn Images
MAC
Mike Neu, Ball State: 2-4
A former star QB for the Cardinals, Neu actually led Ball State to a Top 25 season in 2020, when the Cardinals finished No. 23. Neu followed that up with another bowl trip. They’ve tailed off some in the past two years and are off to a shaky start. They escaped with a two-point win against a hapless Kent State team on the road for their first FBS win. With the way their schedule sets up, getting more than three wins seems like a reach. He’s been the head coach for nine years and he’s the only one in school history that ever produced a Top 25 season, although Pete Lembo and Brady Hoke each did have double-digit win seasons. Still, this is a very tough place to win at. Temperature check: Warm.
Joe Moorhead, Akron: 1-6
One of the game’s better offensive minds has struggled to get any momentum here. He had back-to-back 2-10 seasons to start and looks like he might be headed to another one. Beyond Kent State, they won’t play another team with a losing record this season. Temperature check: Pretty warm.
Scot Loeffler, Bowling Green: 2-4
He’s coming off of his best season of his first five years, when the Falcons went 7-6. They are off to a slow start this fall but they’ve had three losses by a touchdown or less, including against two ranked teams on the road — Penn State and Texas A&M. I think they’re good enough to rally for six wins but even if they don’t, it’s hard to think they can expect better than what they’ve had from Loeffler. Temperature check: Sort of warm.
Kenni Burns, Kent State: 0-6
He took over for Sean Lewis, who left to become an OC at Colorado. Lewis led Kent State to its first bowl win and had two seven-win seasons at a place that’s only had three winning seasons since 1987. Burns, a former Minnesota running back coach, won one game in his first season, and is still looking for his first win this season. Losing to FCS St. Francis still stings. Can they knock off Akron in late November to get a win? I think it’s pretty poor form to hire someone and only give him two seasons, but if there is only one win or less in each of Burns’ first two years, it wouldn’t be surprising if the school got itchy. Temperature check: Getting warm.
Mountain West
Tim Skipper, Fresno State: 3-3
A former Bulldogs middle linebacker, Skipper is a well-respected part of the Fresno family and stepped up after Jeff Tedford stepped down for health reasons. Fresno State got off to a 3-1 start before losing the past two games. The Bulldogs have a decent shot to become a bowl team. If Fresno can go on a big run in the second half of the season, maybe Skipper can keep this job. Temperature check: Warm.
Nate Dreiling, Utah State: 1-5
The 33-year-old interim is still looking for his first FBS win. They pounded FCS Robert Morris in the opener and were then blasted in their next five games. Temperature check: They’ll be starting over this winter.
SEC
Sam Pittman, Arkansas: 4-2
After going 4-8 last season, Pittman’s seat was hot coming into this year, but he might be coaching his way to another. The Razorbacks won at Auburn and have a nice win against Tennessee their last time out. They still have 1-5 Mississippi State ahead and 2-3 Louisiana Tech. They may also be capable of knocking off LSU with the Tigers coming off the comeback win against Ole Miss last week. Barring a collapse, I think he’ll earn more time, unless the school is convinced it has a big upgrade waiting in the wings. Temperature check: Hot but cooling off a bit.
Billy Napier, Florida: 3-3
Florida doesn’t have a lot of patience with football coaches. The Gators fired Dan Mullen, who’d won 29 games in his first three seasons but got the axe after going 5-6. Jim McElwain won 19 games in his first two seasons and then went 3-4 and got fired. Will Muschamp got four years. Ron Zook didn’t even get three. Napier went 11-14 his first two years after an impressive run at Louisiana. This season has been a mixed bag. The Gators got pounded by Miami in the opener in The Swamp but the team is still battling for Napier. That’s been a big plus, in addition to the tricky timeline now with CFP candidates potentially in play.
There’s been a ton of dysfunction around the university, all the way up to the university president fleeing.
The good news: the Gators thumped Mississippi State in Starkville, Miss., beat UCF by double-digits and almost upset Tennessee in Knoxville before losing in overtime. They have four top-20 opponents left, including two in the top five, vs. Georgia and at Texas. The only team with a losing record remaining is their road trip to 1-5 FSU. They just lost starting QB Graham Mertz for the rest of the season. Can true freshman DJ Lagway spark a strong second half to get Florida to 6-6? If they win this weekend against Kentucky, don’t rule it out. Temperature check: Toasty.
GO DEEPER
Billy Napier beware: Florida has not historically been patient in rebuilds
Sun Belt
Shawn Clark, Appalachian State: 2-4
The former App State offensive lineman is well thought of in the Mountaineer community and he has three seasons with at least nine wins in his first four years. This year has been messy. They’ve lost three in a row, all by double digits and by giving up a ton of points. Just getting to five wins (the game against Liberty was canceled last month) looks dicey. And Appalachian State is not used to losing. Temperature check: Getting warm.
Butch Jones, Arkansas State: 3-3
Under Jones, the Red Wolves have gone from two wins to three wins to six and bowl game last year. I think they should get bowl eligible again. Their next two games are against Southern Miss and Troy, both 1-5 teams. They also have two games against two-win teams, so 6-6 feels like the floor, with seven wins seemingly realistic.
Temperature check: A little warm.
Will Hall, Southern Miss: 1-5
The son of a Mississippi high school legend, Hall, a very successful Division II coach, seemed like an excellent choice when he got this job four years ago. After a solid season season where the Golden Eagles went 7-6 and won a bowl game, they have backslid quite a bit. They went 3-9 last year and are really struggling now. All five losses have been by double-digits. They still have to go to JMU and Texas State. The final two games of the season are against two-win South Alabama and one-win Troy on the road. Temperature check: Very hot.
(Top illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Photos: Adam Davis, James Gilbert, Grant Halverson / Getty)
Where do you turn when you need advice? A chatbot? A life coach? A wise and trusted friend?
How about a poet? Poets may not be famous for making the best life choices, but because they subject the mess of human existence to the discipline of language, they can be as helpful as any therapist or mentor.
Good poets know the rules and when to break them, which is something they can teach the rest of us.
To wit:
Giving advice is a peculiar literary undertaking. It flourishes in certain popular genres — graduation speeches, newspaper columns, country and western songs and poems like this one — but what, in these contexts, is it really for?
I’m thinking of situations when you don’t urgently need help but nonetheless enjoy reading answers to questions you may not have thought to ask. What interests you isn’t the content of the advice — you could get all the life hacks you want from A.I. — so much as the voice of the person dispensing it.
Wendy Cope is an English poet, born in 1945, who has been a fixture of her country’s literary scene since the 1980s. More recently, her short, buoyant poem “The Orange” has been widely memed online, bringing her to the attention of new readers beyond Britain.
Cope favors rhyme, meter, brisk jokes and tart aperçus. She addresses romance, friendship and the petty absurdities of modern life with disarming good humor. The last line of “The Orange” is “I love you. I’m glad I exist.” Somehow she makes it the opposite of cringe.
This isn’t the kind of poetry you would describe as “confessional.” And yet …
Question 1/7
Stop, if the car is going “clunk”
Or if the sun has made you blind.
Don’t answer e–mails when you’re drunk.
Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.Want to learn this poem by heart? We’ll help.
Fill in the missing words below. You can always refer to the reading by A.O. Scott and full
text above.Let’s start with the first stanza.
A strong sense of place can deeply influence a story, and in some cases, the setting can even feel like a character itself. This week’s literary geography quiz highlights places where authors were born (or lived) that later became locations in their books. To play, just make your selection in the multiple-choice list and the correct answer will be revealed. At the end of the quiz, you’ll find links to the works if you’d like to do further reading.
AMERICA, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries, by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
For those of us in the national memory-keeping business, anniversaries hold near-totemic power. Satisfyingly round units of time, ideally bearing fancy, Latin-derived names, serve as the overburdened pegs on which to hang think pieces and museum exhibits, revisionist documentaries and maudlin public ceremonies. The arbitrary nature of such occasions is precisely what gives them their charge, inviting us to set aside complacency and submit to a comprehensive check-in.
In his new book, “America, U.S.A.,” Eddie S. Glaude Jr. presents an intriguing variation on the genre, seeing the country’s 250th birthday as an anniversary of anniversaries: 50 years since the malaise-ridden, schlock-heavy Bicentennial. A century since the subdued Prohibition-era Sesquicentennial. A century and a half since telegraphed reports of George Armstrong Custer’s defeat by the Lakota and Cheyenne at Little Bighorn rudely interrupted the Gilded Age Republic’s 100th birthday party.
If an anniversary offers a snapshot of a moment, the core of Glaude’s book is an old-timey photo album, a collection of notable episodes from earlier national reckonings, long-ago glances in the mirror. An estimable scholar of Black history, politics and religion at Princeton — best known for “Begin Again,” his 2020 meditation on James Baldwin’s relevance for our times — Glaude focuses, as his subtitle puts it, on “how race shadows the nation’s anniversaries.”
Such celebrations, he contends, have never really been the moments for honest self-reflection they are often advertised to be. Instead, the nation usually shatters the mirror, refusing to accept what it prefers not to see. “American anniversaries are often moments to turn a blind eye to the evils of the past and the present,” Glaude writes, “to suppress the fact of America’s divided soul.”
It’s a clever concept, and, needless to say, perfectly timed. Last year, Glaude notes, the Trump administration executed a hostile takeover of the government’s studiously bipartisan 250th anniversary planning. It is now preparing a program that is certain to conceal more than it reveals about the country ostensibly being celebrated.
Glaude, in no mood for celebration, argues that such omissions and evasions also defined commemorations in the past. In 1875, Frederick Douglass predicted “one grand Centennial hosannah of peace and good will to all the white race of this country.” He was right: The nation reached 100 years old at a crucial moment in the post-Civil War fight over racial equality, with white Northerners ready to give up on Southern Reconstruction. The occasion would help the once-warring sections to reunite around a shared commitment to white supremacy. On May 10, 1876, at the opening of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, the police tried to bar Douglass from the grandstand, until a white politician vouched for him.
The 150th anniversary came soon after a resurgent Ku Klux Klan successfully pushed for a restrictive immigration law aimed at keeping America a “Nordic” nation. At the lavishly funded, lightly attended celebrations in Philadelphia, Black veterans of World War I were excluded from marching in the opening parade. A writer with The Associated Negro Press wondered “what was in the breast of those black men who fought to make America safe for Democracy and on Monday stood on the sidelines, forgotten, as the Nordic strode by in all his vain pride.”
By 1976, when the nation marked its Bicentennial, the violence of the ’60s had destroyed any semblance of consensus. Vietnam and Watergate had eroded trust in the government. The commission initially tasked with organizing the anniversary was disbanded amid reports of corruption. Corporations filled the vacuum, Glaude explains, with “star-spangled whoopee cushions; patriotic toilet seats; Liberty hamburgers; red, white and blue beer cans.” The author, around 8 years old at the time, dimly remembers donning a pair of tricolor trousers.
A half-century later, Glaude is refreshingly honest about the depths of his despair. “I do not love America, and never have, especially now,” he writes in one of the more startling opening sentences I’ve read in some time. He dismisses this year’s Semiquincentennial as reaching back “to a storybook America that requires either the banishment of Black people from view or the reduction of our role in the country’s history, so as to affirm America’s ongoing quest to be a more perfect union.”
Undoubtedly true. But Trump doesn’t own the country, at least not yet, nor the 250th anniversary of one of the most radically liberatory and confusingly contradictory events in world history — an inspiration, as Glaude shows, even to critical observers of the American experiment, like Douglass. Far from the revanchist MAGA-palooza in Washington, I suspect this summer’s unasked-for invitation to national soul-searching may surprise us yet.
Despite his despair, Glaude concludes that “the past still offers resources for us to freedom-dream.” So, too, does this book.
AMERICA, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries | By Eddie S. Glaude Jr. | Crown | 270 pp. | $31
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