Just end the season... Through the first four games of the 2025 campaign, the Wisconsin Badgers look like one of the very worst teams in the Big Ten. They had an opportunity to get a relatively easy one at home before their bye week and completely wet the bed. Luke Fickell looks like comedic actor Steve Coogan cosplaying as a Power Four head coach. He cannot even avoid the landmines, brother.
Now saddled at 2-2 on the year and 0-1 in Big Ten play, there is a chance Wisconsin does not win another game the rest of the way. The Maryland home game was the easiest they had left on their remaining schedule, and they got their brains beaten in. If not for one of the most complicated buyouts you will ever see, Fickell should already be out of a job. Is he the next head coach to go?
Here are the latest betting odds when it comes to who the next head coach to be fired could be.
- Florida Gators head coach Billy Napier: +150
- Oklahoma State Cowboys head coach Mike Gundy: +300
- Arkansas Razorbacks head coach Sam Pittman: +500
- Wisconsin Badgers head coach Luke Fickell: +750
- Cincinnati Bearcats head coach Scott Satterfield: +800
- Clemson Tigers head coach Dabo Swinney: +900
- Virginia Cavaliers head coach Tony Elliott: +1200
- Northwestern Wildcats head coach David Braun: +1200
- Arizona Wildcats head coach Brent Brennan: +1200
- Kentucky Wildcats head coach Mark Stoops: +1600
- Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Kalen DeBoer: +1800
- Baylor Bears head coach Dave Aranda: +2000
- North Carolina Tar Heels head coach Bill Belichick: +2500
- Maryland Terrapins head coach Mike Locksley: +3300
Last week's hot seat watch had Fickell in fourth place, but his next head coach fired odds have dropped from +1000 entering Week 4's game vs. Maryland to +750 entering the bye week. At this juncture, he is going to coach in the Michigan game in Ann Arbor. Frankly, his only saving grace is one helluva contractural albatross. Together, he and athletic director Chris McIntosh ruined this program.
Entering Week 5, here are arguably the five hottest seats across the Power Four coaching landscape.
5. Northwestern Wildcats head coach David Braun
You have to feel for Northwestern head coach David Braun. During his first year as part of the program, he was promoted from within to interim head coach in the wake of the Pat Fitzgerald scandal. While he had good success initially with the Wildcats, having to play games in essentially a high school stadium ahead of Ryan Field being renovated has made this a dead football program.
In what will be the saddest game of the weekend, toothless Northwestern will welcome winless UCLA to Evanston to play a game that will make you feel like you are a prisoner in Azkaban. The shame in it all is not even the dementors will want to watch. Somebody has to win this game. A win here for the Wildcats may take some much-needed pressure off Braun. A loss will throw him into Lake Michigan...
If this were pretty much any other Power Four program, people would be asking for Braun's head now.
4. Arkansas Razorbacks head coach Sam Pittman
As it turns out, Sam Pittman's Arkansas Razorbacks were not walking in Memphis. They did not put on their blue suede shoes correctly and fumbled the football on the goal line with the winning field goal in sight. Arkansas' defense is deplorably bad, allowing the Tigers to eke out a wild one at home to potentially be in pole position to win the Group of Five. At this point, is Pittman going to save his job?
The last few years for the Boss Hog has been essentially one pile of .500 crap after another. Arkansas is not a terrible program under him, but his team is too poorly coached at this stage of the game. Few athletic departments have the boosters of Arkansas, and this is the type of coaching effort we get on a regular basis?! It may come down to how Battle Line goes vs. Mizzou if Pittman gets to stay in 2026.
With how well those Tigers are playing, it is starting to feel like it will be Pittman's last year in charge.
3. Wisconsin Badgers head coach Luke Fickell
The Badgers are led by one of three head coaches occupying the current Unholy Triumvirate of Suck. There is nothing positive anyone in Madison can say about the job Fickell is doing. It has gotten so bad at Wisconsin that the program has become nationally relevant for all the wrong reasons. Fickell is a head coach who led Cincinnati to New Year's Six Bowls and into the College Football Playoff before!
He may be a nice guy, but nice guys finish last in this machination of the Big Ten. After seeing him lose the plot for the umpteenth time in three years on the job, when is Wisconsin going to pull the funding on a lab experiment going oh so horribly wrong? Anyone with a brain would have said that running an Air Raid in Wisconsin would never work. Fickell did it anyway. Would he make a goldfish climb a tree?
The only things Fickell have going for him is his buyout figure and the fact he works for an imbecile.
2. Oklahoma State Cowboys head coach Mike Gundy
Mike Gundy is the equivalent of the cheese that fell off your pizza to the bottom of your oven that you have been delaying cleaning for years now. The dude is a legend in Stillwater and was an institution at Oklahoma State up until two seasons ago. The Cowboys have not won a game over a Power Four opponent in about a year, and that was to Arkansas to close out the non-conference a season ago...
Because Gundy is arguably the greatest head coach in program history and the star quarterback during some of their glory years in the 1980s, he has earned the right to coach out the rest of the season. However, what we have seen out of Gundy the last two seasons is that of a man who has completely lost his fastball. He is like Rick Ankiel was on the mound. Who knows what is coming next?
If the circumstances were different, Gundy would have been fired after losing at home to rival Tulsa.
1. Florida Gators head coach Billy Napier
The smart money on the next head coach to be fired is the leader in the clubhouse in that regard in Florida's Billy Napier. There is a chance that he has won his final game in Gainesville. Truth be told, the same principles apply to Fickell in Madison and Gundy in Stillwater. These three sorry teams may not win a game the rest of the year. What have we seen out them that might prove us otherwise in all this?
Florida is on its first of two byes, but he might be gone before the second. After losing three in a row to South Florida, LSU and now Miami, the Gators could conceivably drop their next three vs. Texas, Texas A&M and Mississippi State before the bye ahead of The Cocktail Party. Losing to a much-improved Mississippi State team could be reason for dismissal. Florida needs to hire a new coach...
Napier's team can play some defense, but he is so clueless on calling offensive plays on third down.