2025 Next College Football Coach Fired Odds: Wisconsin's Luke Fickell Feeling The Heat

By Bill Speros Oct 28th, 2025 10:21 AM EDT

These Wisconsin cheerleaders could be speaking for the Badgers fanbase when it comes to the fate of Luke Fickell. (USA TODAY)

The 2025 Next College Football Coach Fired hot seat shifted to "fully engulfed" after Week 9.

Among the coaches dispatched this season: Sam Pittman (Arkansas), Mike Gundy (Oklahoma State), DeShaun Foster (UCLA), Brent Pry (Virginia Tech), James Franklin (Penn State) and Billy Napier (Florida), and now, Brian Kelly (LSU).

Wisconsin's Luke Fickell holds the top spot of our 2025 Next College Football Coach Fired list entering Week 10.

Next Coach Fired Candidates Far & Wide

Angry, angst-ridden, and agitated fan bases never stop the chatter about moving on from their current head coach. Their favorite team loses to its biggest rival or ends up crushed by its top intra-conference foe. No matter. Never mind whiff when it comes to college football betting odds.

Multiple big-name schools replaced their head coaches since Ohio State won the national championship in January. Meanwhile, thanks to NIL and the portal, rosters remain in constant churn. There are several teams whose coaches may still find themselves on our 2025 Next College Football Coach Fired as their teams struggle this season. 

Let’s look at our weekly 2025 Next College Football Coach Fired odds.

2025 CFB Next Coach Fired Odds

Our latest 2025 Next College Football Coach Fired odds in the First Power 4 College Football Coach (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, ACC) Fired during the 2025 season break down the top candidates.

(Power conferences only; Coaches at Virginia Tech, UCLA, Oklahoma State, Arkansas, Penn State, Stanford, Florida, LSU have already been fired)

Names To Watch On The CFB Coaching Hot Seat In 2025

Our top candidate to be the 2025 Next College Football Coach Fired is still Luke Fickell of Wisconsin, who enters the week at +250 (or 28.6%) to get fired next after limping his way to a 2-6 mark with the Badgers this season, moving his four-year total to 15-19 (.449) at UW.  

In 34 games with the Badgers, Fickell has gone to one full season bowl game, that being the 2023 ReliaQuest Bowl, which Wisconsin lost to LSU, 35-31, followed by a 5-7 dud in 2024 and the team’s 2-6 start this season.  

While Fickell’s tenure in Madison has fallen far from expectations after going 57-18 with a CFP berth with the Cincinnati Bearcats, the former Ohio State nose guard is far from the only CFB coach on the hot seat. SEC stalwarts Mark Stoops (+350) of Kentucky and Auburn’s Hugh Freeze (+500) are sitting on simmering situations in Lexington and on the The Plains.  

In Stoops’ case, 13 years is a long time to stay at a given school, with the UK coach going from the high of leading the Wildcats to a bowl game in eight straight seasons from 2016 to 2023, before crashing to earth in a disastrous 4-8 campaign last fall and going 2-5 this season.  

Freeze, like Fickell, has failed to match expectations at Auburn to date, going 6-7, 5-7 and 4-4 to date, while losing the Tigers’ lone bowl game during his time with the team, that being the 2023 Music City Bowl, which ended in a 31-13 rout at the hands of Maryland.  

For those keeping score at home, the team at CBS Sports reports Fickell’s contract buyout at 80% of his initial deal at UW. That falls to $25 million if he’s fired at the end of the year, while Freeze’s total is a more palatable $15.4 million, per CBS Sports.  

That number balloons when you look at Stoops’ deal with Kentucky, as Pat Forde of Sports Illustrated reports the UK veteran’s latest contract is rumored to pay him $38 million if he gets the boot in 2025, which could impede any movement in Lexington this football season.  

Who Else Could Go Next?  

Bill Belichick (+750) joins our 2025 Next College Football Coach Fired list after another tough-luck loss in the ACC. This time, the Tar Heels failed to score 3 times in the red zone and fell short on a missed 2-point conversion – 17-16 – in OT to Virginia. The Heels have yet to beat a Power 4 school under Belichick, but they’ve covered 2 weeks in a row.

A potential wild card name here: Rich Rodriguez. A 2-6 start in his first year back at West Virginia includes five straight losses against Kansas, Utah, BYU, UCF and TCU. Those teams beat the Mountaineers by a combined total of 117 points.  

Per USA Today, Rodriguez’s buyout would be roughly $7.6 million. That ranks 55th out of the 105 FBS programs surveyed by the national publication. No matter those numbers, the former Michigan, Arizona and Jacksonville State head coach stands at +1000.  

When it comes to firing longshots, keep an eye on Colorado and Clemson.

Coach Prime and the Buffs have fallen hard and fast in the past 2 seasons, going from the cover of Time magazine to 3-5 and 12th in the Big 12 this season. A 53-7 loss to Utah marked the worst conference defeat in Sanders’ term in Boulder. Sanders (+1400) continues to wrestle with serious health concerns.

Dabo Swinney’s Clemson bunch has crashed and burned to a 3-4 record this fall, with a 35-24 loss to SMU in Death Valley being the Tigers’ latest flop in 2025.  

Overall, we have Swinney at +1800, though the two-time CFP championship coach holds a whopping $60 million buyout, per CBS Sports, potentially preventing the South Carolina institution from making any drastic decisions this season.

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