A rough September has put a handful of college football coaches squarely in the spotlight, with buyout figures as eye-catching as the losses themselves.
The most expensive name on the list is USC’s Lincoln Riley, whose Trojans fell 41-27 to Oregon at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on Saturday. Oregon’s Dante Moore left in the second quarter after a late hit, but the Ducks still finished strong after the game was tied in the fourth quarter.
USC is 4-1, yet Riley’s record against ranked teams at USC is now 5-15, and he still has not gotten the Trojans into the College Football Playoff. Before kickoff, Pete Thamel made the pressure clear: "If they lose Saturday, it's reasonable to say Lincoln Riley is on the hot seat," Thamel said.
USC’s next test comes against Washington, with Penn State, Ohio State and Indiana still ahead. Riley’s buyout is about $72 million.
South Carolina’s Shane Beamer is also feeling the heat after a 49-18 loss at No. 8 Alabama.
The Gamecocks have now dropped seven straight to SEC opponents and 11 of their last 13 against Power Four teams. They’re 2-2 overall and 0-2 in conference play after also blowing a 16-point lead in a 41-34 home loss to Mississippi State the week before.
Beamer owned the moment afterward: "This is on me," he said. The sixth-year coach is 35-32 at South Carolina, which went 4-8 last season, and athletic director Jeremiah Donati was not the one who hired him.
A source close to Donati said last November that Beamer would make it through the first half of 2026 before any review of his future. South Carolina hosts Kentucky on Saturday at 4:15 p.m.
ET before going to Florida. His buyout is about $27.9 million before the season ends and drops to about $22.1 million at the end of December.
At Maryland, the pressure is tied to both the scoreboard and the atmosphere. The Terrapins were hammered 54-3 at home by UCLA, with quarterback Malik Washington throwing four interceptions and two of them going back for touchdowns.
Maryland managed just 39 rushing yards, gave up 475 yards, and students chanted "Fire Locksley" before halftime. It was also the second straight home loss to a first-year coach, after Virginia Tech’s James Franklin won in College Park a week earlier.
Mike Locksley’s team is 2-2 in his eighth season, and the Terps have now gone through back-to-back 4-8 campaigns. They also haven’t beaten a Power Four opponent since a win over Wisconsin on Sept.
20, 2025. Locksley said he still believes in his group.
"I still have a lot of confidence in myself and the staff to get this thing fixed," Locksley said. "That will have to be earned, I won't be able to claim it."
His buyout is more than $9 million if he were fired before the season ends.
Colorado’s Deion Sanders is on the list too after a 23-13 loss at Baylor in the Big 12 opener. The Buffaloes are 2-2, and Sanders is 18-23 in four seasons in Boulder.
A week earlier, Colorado lost 41-7 at Northwestern, and after that game Sanders removed several players from the team following a postgame incident. After the Baylor defeat, he said the performance hasn’t matched the standard.
"We're better than this. It seems as though we're better than our opponents, but the score does not dictate that," Sanders said.
Colorado went 3-9 last season after finishing 9-4 the year before, and the road doesn’t get easier with Texas Tech, Utah and Oklahoma State next. A firing looks unlikely, with a resignation after the season sounding more plausible.
His buyout is about $25.5 million if he’s let go before the end of 2026, then drops to about $17.25 million in 2027.
Rutgers got its first win Friday, a 58-7 rout of Howard that moved Greg Schiano to 100 victories at the school and brought the Scarlet Knights to 1-3. Still, the season opened with a 37-21 home loss to UMass, and Rutgers also fell to Boston College and USC before the breakthrough.
The schedule tightens immediately with No. 6 Indiana coming to town Saturday at 8 p.m.
ET. Athletic director Keli Zinn has publicly stood by Schiano, saying, "Greg and I are on the exact same page with this: I want what he wants and he wants what I want," Zinn said.
His buyout is about $17.3 million, based on roughly $22.5 million remaining on his deal, and it shrinks if he takes another coaching job.
Florida State’s Mike Norvell is dealing with a different kind of pressure after the Seminoles beat Central Arkansas 34-7 to get to 2-2. Central Arkansas is Norvell’s alma mater, but Florida State had already lost to SMU and Alabama, and the school fired athletic director Michael Alford before the Alabama game.
Norvell, a former Central Arkansas receiver, is 40-36 in his seventh season. After a 13-0 regular season in 2023, the Seminoles have stumbled badly, going 2-10 in 2024 and 5-7 in 2025.
Virginia, Louisville and Miami are next in October. His buyout is about $48 million if he were fired now, dropping to about $45.6 million after the season, with 85 percent of his remaining salary owed.
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