College football hot seat: 10 head coaches feeling the heat in 2021

Let’s take a look ahead to one of the biggest storylines every year ahead of next season.

Who’s on the hot seat?

These are the coaches whose teams did not live up to expectations last year and will need to start turning things around in 2021.

Obviously, some seats are hotter than others. The coaches featured early on this list just need to show improvement while those near the end of this list need to win now or get burned.

While you may be able to guess who might make this list, some of the names featured and their order might surprise you (believe it or not, Scott Frost’s seat is not as hot as you think).

Here are 10 coaches who are on the hot seat in 2021.

Honorable Mention: Ed Orgeron (LSU)

This would have been unthinkable a year ago, and yet, Ed Orgeron might start to feel his seat get pretty warm if LSU does not get back on track soon.

The Tigers finished 5-5 last year, but even though they won their final two games, they had a terrible season.

Expectations were already pretty low after almost every notable player from LSU’s 2019 squad had left. Meanwhile, opt-outs and injuries, which included starting quarterback Myles Brennan, ensured that the 2020 sequel would not be as good as the previous year.

However, without the likes of Joe Burrow, Justin Jefferson, Joe Brady, and Dave Aranda, Orgeron looked like an emperor with no clothes.

His subsequent hire of Bo Pelini as defensive coordinator will certainly go down as an all-time blunder after LSU ranked No. 124 out of 127 teams in total yards allowed per game.

A beatdown by Alabama also quickly reestablished the Tide as kings of the SEC while undoing a lot of the goodwill after defeating Alabama the previous year. Perhaps most worrying was LSU’s off-the-field issues that reemerged under Orgeron which resulted in a self-imposed postseason ban.

Orgeron might have won a national championship, but in this business, it is more about “what have you done for me lately?”