This 2023 college football season isn't even over yet, for half of the country's teams at least, but many programs already have their eyes on next year and beyond. Several head coaches have already been fired- including some pretty big names- and they'll all be thinking about their own next steps as many of their programs have already moved on to their next era.
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Let's take a look at some of the most major figures who have already been let go, and where their next stop might be.
Jimbo Fisher
Fisher, who definitely deserved to be fired after consistently failing to make good on Texas A&M's investments in him and the football program, is an interesting case. He's approaching 60 years of age, has coached a pair of massive programs, and has a National Championship in his back pocket, so it's probably not worth his time to take the head coach job with a school that packs much less of a punch than A&M and Florida State.
He's also set financially, and doesn't need to work in any capacity. The school is paying him nearly 20 million dollars in the next few weeks, and will continue to owe him over $7 million per year through 2031. For this reason, he can be extremely selective when picking out his next project; it doesn't have to be the highest bidder, it can be a school where he can rebuild his legacy.
So he's going to take his time. I don't think Fisher will be on the sidelines next season, he could work on TV, or take the notorious "analyst" title with a major program, which would keep him around the game in a low-stakes capacity. Expect him to wait around for the perfect opportunity to open up, which could happen very quickly, take quite a while, or anything in between.
It would take an offer like one from Oregon State to get Fisher to sign quickly, and I wouldn't expect that deal to come across his desk.
Dana Holgorsen
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Houston probably thought they had made a brilliant move bringing in Holgorsen- a coach familiar with the program after serving as the offensive coordinator in 2008 and '09, and also with the Big 12, the conference into which they moved this year. Unfortunately, the transition was anything but smooth. Houston went 4-8, as they won just two games in conference play this year and finished things off with a three-game losing streak, notably including games against Cincinnati and UCF, other new conference members who came over from the AAC.
Unlike Fisher, Holgorsen isn't playing with house money. He hasn't won anything since WVU claimed the Big East title back in 2011, and while the buyout has him set financially for the time being he didn't get a check the size of the oil economy; he needs to find some work.
Holgorsen could take over at San Diego State after Brady Hoke's time there has come to a close, and he could be a candidate for either Syracuse or Indiana, whose situations we will discuss very shortly.
Tom Allen
Over the past three years, after painstakingly building up the Indiana football program, Tom Allen has taken some tremendous backwards steps as he's garnered a 3-24 record within the Big Ten during that time. Allen's buyout of over $15 million is the biggest in conference history, but at the age of 53 he's likely far from done, and doesn't have the name recognition to go on TV.
So where could he go? Allen will have to take a step down, but the question is how big it might be. He might be a candidate to fill one of the three vacant Mountain West jobs, San Diego State, New Mexico State, and Boise State, or perhaps the positions open at UTEP and ULM. It's hard to imagine him staying in the Power Five after the job he did at Indiana, but if some surprising positions open up in the coming weeks, the former Big Ten Coach of the Year is one to watch.
Dino Babers
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Babers has been the coach at Syracuse since 2016 and he's led the Orangemen to exactly two bowls while accumulating a record of 41-55, including 20-45 in ACC play. After he found plenty of success in the Group of Five with Bowling Green and in FCS with Eastern Illinois, expect the former Hawaii player to take another step back.
Syracuse is not necessarily a marquee job in the ACC, on the football side of things, and Babers had a really rough tenure most of the time. As another coach from a basketball-first school who overachieved for a bit but eventually fell flat, expect him to be considered for very similar positions to the ones Allen could be looking at.
