2026 college football hot seat rankings: Evaluating the status of all 138 FBS coaches

Every college football coach is under some amount of pressure to win, but heading into 2026, only an unfortunate few find themselves squarely in the “hot seat” conversation. Widespread coaching changes over recent years have left more than half of the FBS in a position where their coaching outlook seems pretty stable, barring something crazy. But for a trio of power-conference coaches, hot-seat talk will dominate the conversation until results change.

Florida State coach Mike Norvell, Wisconsin coach Luke Fickell and Baylor coach Dave Aranda each received a 5.0 hot-seat rating average during the annual polling of CBS Sports experts for our 2026 Hot Seat Rankings. That’s the hottest possible seat on our 0-to-5 scale, and the unanimous rating across all of the experts drives home the urgency these coaches face to improve. 

With Maryland coach Mike Locksley close to unanimous at 4.9, South Carolina coach Shane Beamer at 4.3 and North Carolina coach Bill Belichick scoring a 4.1, you can quickly identify the places where the pressure is starting to get turned up the most.

It is worth noting that a high hot-seat rating does not guarantee doom, but recent history shows more firings than not. Last season, five of the eight coaches who received a CBS Sports Hot Seat rating of 4.1 or higher were fired during or after the season. Coaches like Hugh Freeze, Sam Pittman and Mike Gundy were shown the door, but Oklahoma coach Brent Venables and Arizona’s Brent Brennan put together the type of season that reversed the narrative around their tenure.

A better hot seat rating does not guarantee future employment, either. Last season, Brian Kelly had a 3.33 before his midseason dismissal, and perhaps in a moment of CBS Sports Hot Seat Rating history, we saw James Franklin fired by Penn State despite 1.33 preseason rating.

Those three coaches with a 5.0 rating should look at Sonny Cumbie. The Louisiana Tech coach also had a 5.0 rating going into last season and then led the Bulldogs to a fourth-place finish in Conference USA and an Independence Bowl win. Cumbie still faces some pressure with a 3.2 mark, and perhaps a similar adjustment could come for some of those hottest seats in search of cooling.

Below, you’ll find where all 138 FBS coaches stand before the season kicks off, as voted on by CBS Sports college football experts Matt Zenitz, Shehan Jeyarajah, Brandon Marcello, John Talty, Tom Fornelli, Chris Hummer, Chip Patterson, Austin Nivison, Cody Nagel and Brad Crawford. 

Each was asked to rate each coach’s job security on a scale of 0 to 5, and we averaged those 10 evaluations to assign a score. Check out the ratings key, then see where every coach ranks with kickoff just under two months away.

The table below is arranged in alphabetical order by school. Listed is each coach’s win-loss record at his current program and the number of years he’s led that team prior to 2026. If the coach’s rating has changed from the 2025 season, the old rating is listed in parentheses. Asterisks (*) indicate that games won/lost as an interim coach immediately preceding a full-time hiring are included.