CBS recently released their Hot Seat Rankings for all college football coaches. These five Group of Five coaches had a high temperature but should they be on the hot seat?
On Wednesday, CBS Sports released their 2017 College Football Hot Seat Rankings. Among the half-dozen coaches whose job security is most tenuous, Kent State’s Paul Haynes was included in the mix. Five other Group of Five coaches with at least four years experience were given a hot seat temperature of three on a scale of five.
But what should fan bases really be able to expect at smaller schools? Should these six coaches be on the hot seat at their respective institutions? In the estimation of CBS, the “pressure is mounting” for this sextet of leaders. So let’s evaluate the situation for each of these six head coaches.
Not every school is bound to be a contender for the Group of Five’s spot in the New Year’s Six bowl games. A conference title is not always going to be in reach. But fans should be able to at least expect competitiveness on a somewhat regular schedule. Click through to see which Group of Five coaches CBS put on the hot seat and whether or not they belong in the heat.
New Mexico State might be among the hardest FBS head coaching jobs on the market. No head coach has had a winning record at the school since Warren B. Woodson went 63-36-3 in Las Cruces between 1958 and 1967. After five decades of futility, Aggies fans have relatively low expectations. Even a sniff of their first bowl appearance since 1960 would be enough to keep a coach off the hot seat.
A lot has changed since the 1960s in college football. New Mexico State is hardly a destination program. Headed once again toward the purgatory of independence, the Aggies have not even finished with a winning record since 2002. Martin did help navigate the Aggies through the death of the WAC and a year of independence. Is that enough to let Doug Martin off the hook?
Martin has gone 10-38 in four seasons in Las Cruces. Now New Mexico State is about to become independent after 2017, when they end their relationship with the Sun Belt. Martin offers little to inspire hope, given that his previous head coaching stint ended in a 29-53 record at Kent State between 2004 and 2010. In this case CBS got it right — as he enters his pivotal fifth year at New Mexico State, Doug Martin is indeed on a hot seat.
It is never easy to navigate a transition to the FBS level. It is even harder when you are creating a new college football program from whole cloth. Before 2013, there was no 49ers football program. Brad Lambert has built up Charlotte from scratch, working through two seasons in the FCS before joining Conference USA. He is the only head coach the program has ever known.
If anything, moving to the FBS reset the clock on Lambert’s tenure. The pair of 5-6 seasons at the FCS level are little more than the growing pains of establishing a new program. In two years of Conference USA football, the 49ers have shown improvement. From a 2-10 season without a conference win in 2015, Charlotte went 4-8 after passing their transitional phase in 2016. The team went 3-5 in C-USA play, and lost to FIU and Marshall by one point apiece.
Another step in the right direction for the 49ers program would be promising. But it is probably a bit premature to be throwing Lambert on the hot seat. He was a solid defensive coach at Georgia and Wake Forest, and Charlotte seems to be moving in the right direction. The team is still building depth and returns only half its starters from 2016, so a bowl appearance might still be out of reach. As such, the postseason should not be a referendum on Lambert’s job.
After Gary Andersen left Utah State to take the Wisconsin job after the 2012 season, offensive coordinator Matt Wells took over the reins at his alma mater. The Aggies played in the Mountain West championship game in his first season at the helm, but things have dissipated since. Last year Utah State missed out on a bowl game for the first time since 2010.
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To put things in perspective, though, Utah State played in only six bowl games overall prior to 2011. Their last came in 1997 prior to Andersen’s tenure in Logan. So the 2016 tumble can be viewed in two ways.
On one hand, it could be seen as an aberration. Utah State has evolved from an afterthought into a relatively consistent contender in the Mountain West. Six wins is imminently attainable with the schedule the Aggies face this season. On the other hand, we are seeing the effects of diminished recruiting. Now that Andersen’s players have cycled out of Logan, regression is inevitable.
Either way, Wells probably deserves another year even if the Aggies miss the postseason in 2017. The hot seat is a little drastic at this point for Utah State, given their recent history prior to 2011.
Any Ragin’ Cajuns intent on putting Mark Hudspeth on the hot seat would do well to remember the Rickey Bustle era in Lafayette. Between 2002 and 2010, Bustle went 41-65 without a single bowl appearance. Before Bustle, Jerry Baldwin went 6-27 in three years and Nelson Stokley went 62-80-1. Since moving up to the I-A ranks in 1982, Louisiana-Lafayette had never played in a bowl game before Hudspeth showed up at the school.
Though recent returns have been less promising, Hudspeth deserves the benefit of the doubt. Upon taking the job in 2011, Hudspeth immediately led the Ragin’ Cajuns to four straight New Orleans Bowl victories. After a 4-8 downswing in 2015, Hudspeth returned UL-Lafayette to the postseason with another New Orleans Bowl appearance last season. Though the Ragin’ Cajuns lost to Southern Miss, it was still their fifth bowl in six seasons under Hudspeth.
Thus it seems hasty to throw Hudspeth onto a hot seat, or even a warm one at that. The Cajuns coach must navigate road games against Texas A&M and Ole Miss this season. They also take on both Arkansas State and Appalachian State on the road. Bowl eligibility will be an uphill battle in 2017, but that should not be enough to cost Hudspeth his job in Lafayette.
Life at UMass hasn’t been nearly as easy for Mark Whipple his second time around. In his first stint as head coach of the Minutemen, Whipple went 49-26 and won the I-AA national championship in 1998. His teams won Atlantic-10 championships in 1999 and 2003. Then he left to take the job as the quarterbacks coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, helping to mentor a young Ben Roethlisberger.
After bouncing around the NFL, Whipple returned to Massachusetts in 2014. He took over a program that had regressed after moving up to the FBS ranks. Charley Molnar had gone 2-22 in the program’s first two seasons at the highest level. Whipple has fared little better after his return, going 8-28 in three seasons at the FBS level. The Minutemen were ostracized from the MAC as a result, and enter their second year of independence in 2017.
Whipple cannot be blamed for the program’s decision to move up to the FBS. He cannot be blamed for the MAC’s decision to oust the Minutemen, either. The situation is bleak, but if anyone can help pull UMass out of the morass it is the man who brought them to the pinnacle at the I-AA level. Putting Whipple on the hot seat now seems premature.
CBS put Paul Haynes among the half-dozen coaches who need to start improving now if they are to keep their jobs. Yet that assumes an awful lot of the Kent State job. Haynes had the misfortune of taking the Golden Flashes job right after Darrell Hazell had taken them higher than they had ever been in history. Kent State was due for a fall back to earth, and Haynes is in many ways the victim of the regression than the cause of that stumble.
In 2012, Kent State played for the MAC title. For the first time since 1972 under Don James, the Golden Flashes went bowling. Then Hazell left for the Purdue job, and Haynes was hired away from Arkansas to take over the program. Fans hoped that Haynes could maintain the momentum, but Hazell benefitted from a rare group of recruits as he vaulted to a Big Ten job. Kent State regressed immediately once players like T.Y. Hilton were gone.
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Recruiting since then is definitely on Hayne. But landing game-changing talent is always going to be difficult for a Group of Five program. Like most of the other coaches on this list, the hot seat seems a bit drastic for Haynes. While they return some decent talent from last season, they also have to play on the road against defending College Football Playoff champion Clemson and defending Heisman winner Lamar Jackson and Louisville.