Hiring a college football coach isn’t a science. In fact, the whole process is closer to a complete gamble.
Sure, administrations can do their research and go through the whole vetting process. Good athletic directors will leave no stone unturned when trying to fill a vacancy. But even the most can’t-miss hire can backfire in college football.
Sometimes schools just swing big and miss — or they may be forced to settle after striking out on other targets. Or they just completely whiff on someone they thought would pan out. Whatever the case may be, there are a lot of ways to fumble a coaching search.
There have been plenty of notable mishaps throughout this sport’s history. Some didn’t work out when contextualized with the gift of hindsight. Others were dead on arrival. With peak offseason in full swing, here’s a look back at 15 of the worst coaching hires from the past decade of college football.
15. Chris Ash, Rutgers (2016-19)
Record: 8-32
Ash inherited a bit of a mess left by his predecessor Kyle Flood, but it became apparent rather quickly that Ash was ill-prepared to right the ship in his first head coaching job. Ash only won more than two games in a single season once, and the Scarlet Knights failed to win a single Big Ten game in three out of four seasons under Ash. He was fired midway through the 2019 campaign, and after a brief stint at Texas in 2020, he recently made his return to college football as Notre Dame’s defensive coordinator.
Record: 5-6
Rolovich had the unenviable task of replacing the great Mike Leach, who left Washington State for Mississippi State after eight years with the Cougars. Compounding matters was the COVID-19 pandemic in Rolovich’s first year; it’s understandable that Washington State went 1-3 in 2020. Rolovich made it seven games into the 2021 season, with a 4-3 record, before he was fired for failing to comply with Washington’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for state employees. Off-field developments aside, Rolovich’s Washington State never amounted to much. Wazzu was lucky that Jake Dickert was able to stabilize things, at least.
13. Scott Frost, Nebraska (2018-22)
Record: 16-31
At the time, Frost was a significant hire for Nebraska. He was fresh off a 13-0 season after downing Gus Malzahn’s Auburn in the Peach Bowl. And as we’ll see later on this list, a lot of Nebraska’s early struggles in Frost’s tenure weren’t necessarily his fault. But the high point of Frost’s tenure was a 5-7 2019 campaign. He never made a bowl game won a total of seven games in his final three years. If Nebraska already had one foot in the grave before Frost got there, he ensured the once-proud Huskers were six feet under by the time he left.
12. Kevin Sumlin, Arizona (2018-20)
Record: 9-20
At the time, Sumlin seemed like a low-risk hire for Arizona. He had a solid — if completely average — six years at Texas A&M, posting a winning record in each season. He was fired simply because he was never able to take the Aggies to that next level as 8-4 became the standard. Given the Wildcats’ standing around this time, hiring Sumlin was a fairly positive move that generally received praise, so it was fairly shocking that he drove the program into the ground. Over three years, Sumlin amassed a 9-20 record, with five of those wins coming in his first season at the helm.
Record: 20-14
Tucker had a positive record at Michigan State, so surely his tenure couldn’t have been that bad? Right? Well, 11 of those wins came in 2021 on the back of Doak Walker-award winning running back Kenneth Walker III, a grand-slam transfer acquisition from Wake Forest. That means Tucker won a combined seven games in his other two full seasons. Even worse, Tucker was ousted from the program in 2023 after Michigan State launched an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment.
10. Bryan Harsin, Auburn (2021-22)
Record: 9-12
Harsin was never a good fit at Auburn, even if he came to The Plains with a solid résumé from his time at Boise State. He didn’t have the backing of the boosters, and his pairing with the Tigers was the result of a hectic coaching search run by an athletic director without much big-time experience. Harsin wasn’t ready for the grind of SEC recruiting and put Auburn in a talent hole that it’s still trying to dig out of under coach Hugh Freeze. It’s no wonder that Harsin only got 21 games.
9. Herm Edwards, Arizona State (2018-22)
Record: 18-20
Hiring Edwards was a head-scratcher from the start. His last coaching appointment, prior to the Sun Devils, was with the Kansas City Chiefs in 2008. Not only had he gone a decade without coaching, but he hadn’t been a college coach since 1989 when he mentored defensive backs at San Jose State. His first couple of years were solid enough, but it did not take long for Edwards to prove that he was not ready to adapt to the rapidly evolving college game.
In June 2021, Arizona State confirmed that the NCAA was investigating its football program for recruiting violations. After that year, 17 players, including future Heisman Trophy winner Jayden Daniels, transferred away. Even so, it wasn’t until 2023 that Edwards was fired three games into the year. As a result of the NCAA investigation, Edwards was hit with a five-year show-cause penalty and Arizona State had to vacate nine of its paltry 10 wins from 2021-22. Luckily for the Sun Devils, it seems like they found a real gem with Kenny Dillingham.
8. Jimmy Lake, Washington (2020-21)
Record: 7-6
The 2021 season was rough for coaches in the state of Washington. To condense this entry into a sentence, Lake was not ready to be a head coach. When Chris Petersen stepped down at the end of the 2019 season, Lake, a longtime Washington assistant, was hand-picked internally as his successor. Lake faced plenty of complications in 2020 with the season muddled by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Huskies still found some success and won the Pac-12 North with a 3-1 record.
But with lofty expectations and one of the Pac-12’s most talented rosters entering 2021, Washington fell flat on its face. The Huskies lost to Montana in the first game of the season and followed that up with a 21-point defeat at Michigan a week later. Lake was suspended without pay in November that season after shoving a player in a loss to Oregon and fired six days later.
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7. Mike Riley, Nebraska (2015-17)
Record: 19-19
The monkey paw really curled when Nebraska fired Bo Pelini for, in the words of then-athletic director Shawn Eichorst, not winning “the games that mattered the most.” One would think that since consistent nine-win seasons weren’t enough for Nebraska, the administration would swing for the fences with its coaching search.
Instead, they settled on Mike Riley, an accomplished coach but an odd fit. His 2015 debut was the program’s first losing season (6-7) since 2007. He rebounded in 2016 with a 9-4 showing but regressed once more in 2017 as the Huskers finished 4-8. That led to Nebraska moving on from Riley, whose 19-19 career mark with Nebraska was the worst for any Huskers coach since 1961… until Frost came along.
6. Geoff Collins, Georgia Tech (2019-22)
Record: 10-28
Collins is the college football definition of all flash, no substance. He carved a solid reputation as a top-shelf defensive coordinator through stints at Mississippi State (2011-14) and Florida (2015-16) followed by a decent, if unspectacular, two years as the head coach at Temple. Apparently, his 15 wins with the Owls — a program that had 20 wins under coach Matt Rhule from 2015-16 — were enough to sell Georgia Tech on the largely unproven Collins as program legend Paul Johnson’s successor. He never won more than three games in a single season and had an average finish of sixth out of seven teams in the ACC Coastal.
5. Jeremy Pruitt, Tennessee (2018-20)
Record: 5-19
Pruitt, who coached under the likes of Jimbo Fisher, Mark Richt and Nick Saban, was one of the best defensive coordinators of the past decade. It seemed like a matter of time before he earned a power-conference job. Tennessee made that a reality in 2018, tabbing him as the team’s leader after a bungled coaching search. That, in itself, is a story for another time.
His real legacy lies in the NCAA investigation into recruiting violations that led to his firing for cause following a 3-7 2020 campaign. The NCAA Committee on Infractions found the Pruitt’s program responsible for more than 200 individual violations, including 18 Level I in nature. All of his wins from 2019-20 were vacated, and Tennessee was hit with a scholarship reduction that hindered new coach Josh Heupel until recently — plus an $8 million fine. Pruitt will likely never coach college football again. Given what he left Heupel, it’s a miracle that he has won 37 games in four years.
4. Willie Taggart, Florida State (2018-19)
Record: 9-12
Taggart had an interesting pedigree when he arrived at Florida State. He spent just one season with Oregon beforehand, leading the Ducks to a 7-5 record. Prior to that, he coached at Western Kentucky (2010-12) and South Florida (2013-16) with just a 40-45 record combined. He did build South Florida from a 2-10 team in 2013 to 10-2 in his final year with the program while steadily building it into a competitor. He inherited a relatively talented Seminoles roster that was in stable condition after coach Jimbo Fisher resigned, but he was fired after winning just nine games in two seasons. To add insult to injury, Taggart’s firing incurred a near-$18 million buyout for the Seminoles.
3. Ryan Walters, Purdue (2023-24)
Record: 5-19
Jeff Brohm proved that despite Purdue’s inherent disadvantages in the Big Ten, a creative, experienced coach can get plenty out of the Boilermakers. So Purdue replaced Brohm with an unproven defensive mind in Walters. Time quickly showed he was absolutely not ready to run a program. Purdue plummeted from a paltry 4-8 in 2023 to 1-11 last season, with those 11 losses coming by an average of 30.8 points per game. It didn’t take long for Walters to entirely demolish what Brohm built. Time will tell if new coach Barry Odom can pick the pieces up.
2. Les Miles, Kansas (2019-20)
Record: 3-18
Miles’ hiring at Kansas came completely out of left field. He succeeded at LSU, competing in the ferocious SEC West, with one national title win and two SEC titles. When he was fired in 2016, it seemed like the then-65-year old Miles was content on calling it a career. The Jayhawks luring him out of retirement was stunning, to say the least. Things unraveled quickly, and in March 2021, he was placed on administrative leave amid an investigation into inappropriate conduct with female students while he was at LSU. Three days later, Kansas and Miles agreed to mutually part ways.
1. Chad Morris, Arkansas (2018-19)
Record: 4-18
Morris made his name as an offensive coordinator at Clemson from 2011-14 and had deep ties to Texas’ high school community. His three years at SMU were OK — the Mustangs improved incrementally but had a sub.-500 record under Morris — and he was clearly overmatched at Arkansas. He finished with an 0-14 record in SEC play, making him the only full-time coach in Arkansas history to depart without a single conference win. He also had just two victories against FBS opponents and was canned before he could complete two full seasons in Fayetteville. Calling the whole saga a disaster would be generous.
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