Morris served as Clemson's play caller from 2011 through 2014 before taking the head-coaching job at SMU. He was credited with building the framework of a high powered offense that would lead the Tigers to national titles in 2016 and 2018, and was instrumental in recruiting former star QB Deshaun Watson to Clemson. Clemson's offense has struggled without elite QB play in recent years, including a nadir in 2025 in which the Tigers finished 11th in the ACC in scoring offense
The next head coach of the Texas Tech Red Raiders had been a true underdog candidate at the start of the search process. To folks outside the Lone Star State, he was a relative unknown. This wasn't how these searches normally go. A longtime high school football coach with no college head coaching, coordinator or playcalling experience almost never gets to make the leap to the big job.
Briles, a longtime offensive coordinator, has been at TCU since 2023, following stints at Arkansas, Florida State, Houston, FAU and Baylor. The 2015 Broyles Award finalist mentored TCU quarterback Josh Hoover, who set a school record last year with 3,949 yards passing with 27 touchdowns and 11 interceptions as the Horned Frogs ranked eighth nationally in passing offense at 312.9 yards a game.
Among the bigger stories on the latest Bloody Sunday for college football coaches was Michigan State's allegedly imminent hiring of Fitzgerald, the allegedly disgraced former Northwestern coach. The rumors swirled immediately after MSU fired Jonathan Smith, who went 9-15 in his two years in East Lansing, and Fitzgerald's hire became official on Monday. Fitzgerald's only other head coaching job to date came at Northwestern, where he went 110-101 over 17 years at his alma mater.
"I've been offered jobs," Faulk said. "If it wasn't for Coach Prime, I would not even try this. This wasn't even on my list of things to do in the least way. I put crazy hours in when I played, like player and coach's hours in, to become the student of the game that I was. And when I walked away from him, I couldn't believe how much time I invested into the game."
The 2025-26 coaching cycle wasn't expected to be calm, like its predecessor. But few forecasted such a robust line of storms rolling through the sport in the first half of the season. All four power conferences have had a firing. Penn State's ouster of James Franklin, midway through his 12th season and barely 10 months removed from the team playing for a spot in the national title game, sent a message around the sport: Almost no coach is safe.
The calendar said that Frank Leahy was sixty years old on that last night of January 1969. One look at Leahy would have labeled the calendar a fabulist. He still stood erect, five foot eleven, and his waistline barely had wavered from those postwar days when he strode the Fighting Irish sideline, an American celebrity at the peak of his command. But the crevasses in Leahy's face, the ruddy cheeks, and the thinning gray hair indicated the ravages taken by time and leukemia.