It's a story as old as time. A college football coach has a winning record, gets his team to the postseason on the regular, and overall has a successful program. With one small exception...
He keeps losing to the biggest rivals.
If you lose to the rivals more than just an occasional 'whoops!', then the fans, boosters, and non-donating alumni will all come hard and demand justice. That kind of poor performance against the teams that matter most has spelled doom for more than one college football coach.
Oklahoma's Brent Venables knows this all too well, and doesn't want that smoke. He needs to beat Texas this year and improve his 1-3 record against the Longhorns, or the mob will be knocking at his castle door.
If Venables falters again, he could end up on this list of coaches who lost to rivals far too often, and then lost their jobs.
These CFB coaches couldn't beat the rivals, and that likely led to their firing
James Franklin - Penn State
Overall Record: 104-45
Record against Michigan and Ohio State: 1-10
Credit to James Franklin for restoring order in Happy Valley after a very tumultuous time in the post-Paterno era. His time at Penn State was marked with a lot of wins, but not nearly enough against Top 10 opponents, and certainly not enough against the Big Ten's best.
Losses to rivals wasn't the sole reason Franklin was sent packing, but it certainly had a lot to do with it. Now that he's at Virginia Tech, he won't have quite the two-headed monster of rivals to contend with, just Virginia and West Virginia.
John Cooper - Ohio State
Overall Record: 111-43-4
Record against Michigan: 2-10-1
John Cooper is another example of a coach who had a very long tenure and was given plenty of slack because of his success. But one thing is certain, if you are coaching at Michigan or Ohio State, and you prove time and time again that you can't beat the other one, you are eventually going to be escorted out of the building by security.
On top of his losing record to Michigan, Cooper also had a 3-8 record in bowl games, lowlighted by a 24-7 loss to unranked South Carolina in the 2001 Outback Bowl, which turned out to be the final straw.
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Jim Donnan - Georgia
Overall Record: 40-19
Record against Auburn, Florida and Georgia Tech: 5-7
Jim Donnan's arrival in Athens was a breath of fresh air for many Georgia fans following the Ray Goff years, and credit Donnan with getting the program back on track. He left things in a pretty healthy place for his successor, Mark Richt.
But a 5-7 record against the three biggest rivals, capped by three straight losses to Georgia Tech, was all the Bulldog Nation could stand before moving on from the now Hall of Fame coach.
Brian Kellly - LSU
Overall Record: 34-14
Record against Alabama and Texas A&M: 2-6
There's probably an entire laundry list of reasons Brian Kelly was dismissed at LSU, but not being able to match up against Alabama and A&M for more than two total wins really stuck in the craw of the LSU boosters.
Kelly rubbed a lot of people the wrong way from the beginning, and his teams got off to some horrendous starts to the season, but a lot of that probably could have been overlooked or even forgiven if he could have beaten the teams LSU fans hate the most.
Mike Gundy - Oklahoma State
Overall Record: 170-90
Record against Oklahoma: 4-15
Mike Gundy's tenure at Oklahoma State is more a case of "How the hell did this guy last that long?" While he did have a winning record overall, his tenure was laced with plenty of tense moments and facepalms that most coaches probably would have been fired for.
But in the end, all the antics and bad seasons were highlighted by a 4-15 record against the Cowboys' only true rival. For all his swagger, Gundy didn't deliver in the game that mattered the most.
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