Inside the ACC: Football Coaching Carousel Highlights Unsteady Nature of College Athletics

The 2025 college football season has not come to a conclusion yet, but the frenzy of the coaching carousel is already beginning to speed up.

Nov 19, 2025; Blacksburg, VA, USA; Bud Foster, Frank Beamer and James Franklin after the press conference at Cassell Coliseum. Mandatory Credit: Brian Bishop-Imagn Images | Brian Bishop-Imagn Images

In the past week, the Atlantic Coast Conference has experienced some major head-coaching changes in the realm of football.

On Nov. 17, former Penn State football head coach James Franklin, who was fired from the university on Oct. 12 after serving as the Nittany Lions’ skipper for over a decade, became the next head coach of the Virginia Tech Hokies, who currently sit at 3-8 overall and 2-5 in the conference.

Franklin was officially introduced to the team on Nov. 19, just over the two-month mark since Virginia Tech parted ways with former head coach Brent Pry, who used to be an assistant coach for Franklin at both Vanderbilt and Penn State. 

News: James Franklin’s new five-year deal at Virginia Tech includes an average salary of $8.2 million over the course of the deal. The most interesting number is the increase in staff salary pool to $15.5 million, an increase of nearly $7 million. pic.twitter.com/4wqL5gp1Op

— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) November 21, 2025

Pry made it just three games into the 2025 campaign before his firing. His tenure lasted just three full seasons.

On Sunday, meanwhile, California—which joined the ACC in 2024 as one of three expansion teams, including SMU and Stanford—axed off Justin Wilcox from his head-coaching post, which allowed analyst Nick Rolovich to assume the position for the time being.

Wilcox was hired by Cal on Jan. 14, 2017. He went 48-55 over nine seasons with the Golden Bears, who are 6-5 this season—which means Cal is bowl-eligible for the third straight year.

Additional coaching-related news within the ACC-football landscape emerged on Sunday as well, as Florida State announced its decision to retain head coach Mike Norvell despite going 2-10 in 2024 and 5-6 with one game left to play in the 2025 regular season.

Norvell was hired to spearhead the Seminoles on Dec. 8, 2019. He led the program to an ACC title in 2023, when FSU went 13-1 and just narrowly missed out on a College-Football-Playoff berth, which ultimately became the deciding factor in an agreement to turn the CFP into a 12-team playoff from the original four-team format established back in 2014.

With Florida State deciding to retain Mike Norvell for another season, expect changes to come in the front office, including recruiting and personnel staffing https://t.co/O9KKroZtrn

— Andrea Adelson (@aadelsonESPN) November 23, 2025

"This decision reflects a unified commitment to competing in the rapidly evolving landscape of college football, while maintaining continuity within the program," FSU president Dr. Richard McCullough said of the decision to keep Norvell in Tallahassee, Fla.

At the moment, the Stanford football program only has an interim head coach, Frank Reich, who is under contract for just one season as general manager Andrew Luck and the university seeks to lock in a permanent head coach after the 2025 season ends.

This is all to say that the coaching landscape of college football—not just the ACC—is as volatile as ever. More changes are to be expected in the upcoming months as the offseason approaches.

There are programs like Boston College, Syracuse and North Carolina which just hired new head coaches within the past two years, yet all three teams stand in the lowest tier of the conference this year. BC is 1-10, Syracuse is 3-8 and UNC is 4-7.

The nature of head coaches in college football now—and practically within every other major college sport—involves the daily regiment of navigating Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) opportunities, revenue sharing, the transfer portal and high-school recruiting on top of their on-field duties.

All of this responsibility, and more, has expanded the pace of the role to an extent that is unsustainable for many individuals, even those with abundant National Football League (NFL) experience under their belts.

Until the NCAA implements structure into the system, from potentially utilizing a cap on player spending to conference realignment in order to level out competition, the coaching frenzy is likely to worsen overtime. At some point, it is probably going to collapse in the form of a lockout, because that is where college athletics are trending right now.