$54 million college football coach among favorites to become Florida's next HC

Lane Kiffin may still be the favorite to become the next head coach at Florida, but another surprise contender may have emerged in the race to replace Billy Napier when looking over the latest betting lines.

This week saw the emergence of a new potential candidate to take over the Gators, as current Washington head coach Jedd Fisch now places second on the list to take over at the school, according to the prediction market Kalshi.

Fisch sits as a distant second behind Kiffin, the current Ole Miss head coach who has a strong 58 percent chance to succeed Napier in the Swamp, according to those figures.

Initially ranking under 10 percent on the Kalshi leader board, Fisch saw his chances take a sudden jump recently, with the gap between he and Kiffin narrowing considerably just in the last day.

Where Jedd Fisch has been

Fisch may seem like an outlier possibility for the school, although he does have a connection to the Gators program, albeit very brief, and quite a long time ago.

He served under then Florida head coach Steve Spurrier from 1999 to 2000 as a graduate assistant while he earned his degree at the school, before moving on to a series of NFL and collegiate jobs, a total of 11 stops since 2008.

Other than the Gators, Fisch would appear to be an attractive option for several of the notable head coaching vacancies across college football.

He has coaching experience across the country at both levels, and is also credited with helping revive the Arizona Wildcats program, where he went from 1 win to 10 wins in three seasons before taking the job at Washington.

After going 6-7 in his debut with the program, Fisch’s team is 6-2 entering this weekend and was sitting outside the bubble for the College Football Playoff until a surprise loss against Wisconsin, one of the worst teams in the Big Ten.

Fisch addresses the rumors

Whatever the bettors or analysts are saying about who will coach where, it’s safe to say Fisch doesn’t put much stock in anything they think.

“I would say those lists are made by people that have no idea what’s going on, honestly,” Fisch told reporters recently amid rumors he could make a move.

“They don’t know what’s happening in our program. They have no idea how excited I am about the youth in our program... I don’t think that they would know how I enjoy coaching here, that we’ve spent a ton of money into building this program the way we want to build it, that I had a great hand in all the facilities.”

He added: “I think, unfortunately, what happens is they just want to tie coaches to lists, and then we have to sit there and defend it, rather than just be able to tell our fans, our players, our coaching staff, myself, my family, we love the University of Washington,” he said.

“Not only does that affect recruiting. It affects our team. It affects our staff. And my hope is that our players, our coaches, our families, understand how much we love it at Washington.”

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