2026 College Football Hot Seat: Coaches With the Most Expensive Buyouts

What happens on the field in the next couple of months will dictate how active the annual college football coaching carousel will be, how much money schools will eventually have to spend to correct the mistake they just made, and how much they’ll have to invest in the mistake they’re about to make.

Hopefully for the coaches potentially on the chopping block, the 2026 cycle won’t be as active as the 2025 reshuffling, where almost three dozen jobs changed hands and major names like Brian Kelly and James Franklin got the ax.

What college football head coaches on the proverbial hot seat – or warm seat or lukewarm seat – would cost schools the most this season to fire?

Mike Norvell is coaching for his job in 2026

2026 College Football Hot Seat: Coaches With the Most Expensive Buyouts — IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

Florida State almost pulled the plug on Norvell last offseason coming off a forgettable 5-7 effort, only really sticking with him because of the estimated $45-50 million price tag that would come with a separation, not to mention a recent nine-figure investment in its football facilities.

Just two full seasons ago, Norvell led the Seminoles to a 13-1 mark that included an undefeated regular season and an ACC championship, only to controversially be kept out of the College Football Playoff in favor of one-loss SEC champion Alabama.

Florida State has collapsed since then, winning seven total games and losing 17 others, beating all of three ACC opponents in that time. Improving on that mark will prove challenging when looking at a Noles schedule that includes road tests against Alabama and Miami.

Luke Fickell has not adjusted to the Big Ten

Fickell looked like the next big young thing in coaching after taking Cincinnati to the College Football Playoff once and earning a pair of top ten AP rankings.

But his new life at Wisconsin has not gone according to plan, culminating in a meager 17-21 overall record and coming off his worst outing yet with a 4-8 campaign a year ago that included a personal-worst 2-7 mark in Big Ten play and ranked second-worst nationally in total offense and scoring.

Instead of doling out the reported $20-22 million that Fickell’s buyout would cost them, the Badgers took another approach: putting that money into buying better players, including quarterback Colton Joseph and running back Abu Sama. A novel idea. We’ll see if that works in 2026.

Man of Troy: Use it or lose it

USC dumped a pile of money into Lincoln Riley to resurrect its football program, and initially it looked like a great investment, as the Trojans won 11 games and quarterback Caleb Williams won the Heisman Trophy in that first season.

Since then, it’s been 8-5, 7-6, and 9-4, with a dozen Big Ten losses, some miserable defense, and two unranked finishes, not remotely in the same universe of what USC expects, especially in a world with 12 playoff spots to compete for.

It’s well past time for Riley, and his third defensive coordinator, to get into the national title race, or else force the school into a decision that will cost a reported $60 million to admit its mistake, the highest amount of any coach in college football.

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