Marcello's Mailbag: Coaches on scorching hot seats; ranking new QBs for top college football contenders
Welcome to Marcello's Mailbag, where college football is always at the top of the pile. This is a safe space to share opinions and ask questions without fear or ridicule. No question is dumb, though you may believe there are dumb answers. Luckily, I'm willing to look like a jester, but more often than not, I will fill your mind with the information you need to understand the most magical sport in the world.
The last semester before the inevitable revenue-sharing era for college athletics is upon us, and though the tectonic plates have settled after years of conference realignment and court battles, are we sure the transformation will soon end, too?
Countless lawsuits challenging players' eligibility standards and earning potential, as well as conference-on-conference courtroom battles, continue to hog the headlines. The NCAA is still trying to sharpen its dull teeth in the enforcement ranks. Schools are preparing to pay players as much as $20.5 million every year. NIL collectives are shifting their business strategy; some are now housed within athletic departments.
The root is money, and there's just not enough to keep the college athletics monster happy. The Big Ten and SEC are defining this new age with weighted voting power in the new College Football Playoff as everyone else mines every piece of land and media for more money. Every pocket is deeper, every appetite is unquenchable. It all seems so apocalyptic and somehow freeing at the same time.
Believe this: The fallout hasn't begun, but it will this fall. The gap between the haves and have-nots will widen, and the stories of fringe programs in power conferences falling out of the national view will only quicken over the next five years as revenue-sharing and NIL payments bleed smaller booster bases, transforming the desperate into disparate. Most schools will navigate this new future well enough, but not all are capable.
Phew! Now that you're depressed, let's open the mailbag … just as soon as I convince coaches to stop canceling spring games.
-- Erik Brown, Bluesky
We can break this into tiers and differentiate programs between on-field competitiveness and off-field budgets, but my quick guttural reaction is Washington State. The program went from contending for Pac-12 titles within the last 10 years to scouring the wilderness as a Group of Five program with no distinct edge in recruiting over similarly profiled Group of Five programs like Boise State and UNLV because of its location and also its instability and uncertain future within the new structure of college athletics. Wazzu and Oregon State maintain the Pac-12 brand and its infrastructure, particularly its broadcast equipment and capabilities under the Pac-12 Enterprises banner, but rebuilding the conference has proven difficult and costly. With no media rights agreement in place yet (which is coming soon, I'm told), the financial future is also uncertain.
Plus, the optics haven't been spectacular since the Cougars were ditched by Pac-12 brethren Washington and Oregon. When Pat Chun left for Washington, the Cougars lost their athletics director to their rival. Coach Jake Dickert also bolted across the country for the gig at Wake Forest, a program without much name recognition but certainly with more resources and support. President Kirk Schulz is also out.
New AD Anne McCoy aims to build a budget of $74 million for the upcoming year, an $11 million cut below last year's total, which was 13% less than its days in a legit power conference. The school also faces debt service of $10 million annually for the next 14 years as it renovates Martin Stadium. Just last week, the university alerted staff and faculty of potential budget cuts and hiring freezes due to federal funding and state budget reductions.
As for the new media rights? The Pac-12 is hopeful it can pay up to $15 million per school, though that's optimistic in the current landscape after fetching $21 million in the old Pac-12 when name brands like USC and Oregon carried the weight.
Not only were Wazzu and Oregon State left behind, but they were left to clean up the mess (legal battles, too) as the conference raided the Mountain West to rebuild itself. Grabbing Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State and Utah State costs money -- and despite the belief out west that they should be considered a power conference, the new Pac-12 is set up to be Mountain West 2.0.
If Wazzu isn't careful, the athletics department could become the new Rice, a program that still hasn't recovered from being left behind when the Southwest Conference dissolved in the mid-1990s.
-- Committed Teacher, X
No one is truly safe in the power conferences if you want to be truthful with yourself. Any coach who goes winless could be fired. That's not likely, I know, but every coach in the sport knows they're just one fall semester away from the unemployment line.
After several hot-seat coaches saved their jobs, the 2024-25 cycle was slower than expected. Florida's Billy Napier and Arkansas' Sam Pittman likely spared us from a countrywide domino effect. I'm told both schools were prepped to hire sitting head coaches at prominent universities, which would likely have affected two more power schools and a handful of G5 programs as the hiring-and-firing process filtered down the wire. Both Pittman and Napier's seats have cooled, but losing seasons likely put them on the firing line again this fall.
The hottest seats, however, are not in Gainesville and Fayetteville. If II had to rank the hottest seats among prominent programs, this is how I'd place it today:
Those three names shouldn't surprise you, and I'm leaning toward two of those three programs rebounding in 2025 with successful records.
Auburn is legitimately approaching an inflection point that could define how its athletics department approaches the next decade. The Iron Bowl is ripe for a power shift for the first time since Nick Saban arrived at Alabama in 2007 and Tommy Tuberville left Auburn a year later. The GOAT is gone, and the power vacuum is apparent, but Freeze has not yet found a way to wrestle control from newbie Kalen DeBoer.
The time to strike is now. Alabama is coming off a disappointing debut under DeBoer, and with Auburn winning in-state recruiting battles and signing back-to-back top-10 classes, the Tigers need to win big in Freeze's third season to capitalize. Everything is more difficult for Auburn in the Iron Bowl rivalry, but it's that escalation in competitiveness provided by the rivalry that makes it possible every decade or so to unseat the Tide atop the state's leaderboard. One more false move (another six- or seven-win season) by the Tigers opens the window for DeBoer to wrap his hands around Auburn's throat. If that happens, the mighty men and women on the Plains will have no choice but to fire Freeze in December.
The decision is more straightforward in Oklahoma. Venables has lost seven games twice in three years, and the first season in the SEC was a disaster. The new kids on the SEC's block were bullied and bloodied. That can't happen again, but if it does, OU will fire its head coach for the first time since 1998.
Venables revamped the staff this offseason, most notably hiring Washington State offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle, who convinced John Mateer, the nation's No. 2 quarterback in the transfer portal, to follow him from Pullman. Venables also decided to take over play-calling duties on defense, placing more onus on him to turn things around this fall. Back-to-back road trips to Tennessee and Alabama in the season's final weeks could determine his fate.
Despite the expected one-year contract extension at Wisconsin, Luke Fickell has a lot to prove this fall. He's 13-13 overall and the Badgers' 22-year bowl streak was snapped with a 5-7 record last season. The move from the traditional ground-and-pound offense to the Air Raid under Phil Longo was a disaster, and providing listless performances against rivals Iowa, Nebraska and Minnesota has proven too much for fans to handle. Is this a bounceback year? Eh, that schedule is brutal with road trips to Alabama, Michigan and Oregon to go along with home games against Iowa and national champion Ohio State.
Remember, Paul Chryst was fired after winning 16 games combined in the 2021 and 2022 seasons.
Again, that's how I rank the hottest seats, but I believe Freeze and Venables are in the best positions to flip the script, just as Napier and Pittman did last fall.
-- TJ, Bluesky
The easy answer is Arch Manning. (Oh, here come the emails.) It's an inescapable truth that he is both capable and prepared to take over Texas' offense after playing in 10 games and starting two for the Longhorns last season. He completed 67.8% of his passes for nine touchdowns and two picks, but his 4.3 yards per carry was more impressive. He's more mobile than his predecessor, which should expand Steve Sarkisian's offense. Even if he falls short of the five-star hype and the lofty expectations of being a "Manning," he's more than capable of leading Texas to a top-five finish because of the help around him at receiver and running back. I'm a big believer that Manning has the early advantage as the top quarterback in the country.
Here's how I rank the projected starters among those six teams:
-- Richard, X
Well, neither. Are we sure he owns those vehicles and doesn't lease them from an incredibly friendly and gracious dealership?
The good news is authorities recovered the Miami quarterback's Mercedes-Benz AMG and Hanna Cavinder's Range Rover. The bad news is the Lamborghini Urus hasn't been found. Hopefully, the Lambo will be returned soon -- and all three cars will be housed adequately inside a locked garage.
I'm not a car guy, anyway. Give me a reliable SUV, Jeep Wrangler or truck, and I'll be fine. What I crave is a new business opportunity. I would much rather have the Cavinder twins' 4.6 million followers on TikTok and 388,000 fans on Instagram. I could turn that into big bucks via paid partnerships.
Have a question? Email or tweet me and your question may be answered in the next edition of Marcello's Mailbag.
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