Forty names, games, teams and minutiae making news in college football (defense sold separately in Lubbock on Saturday, where the old Big 12 made a rousing one-game comeback). First Quarter: Welcome to the Dead Zone.

Second Quarter: Scapegoat Season  

Come November, the most endangered species in the sport is the coordinator of an underachieving unit on a team that had high expectations. When the season turns south, the first person to be blamed is often not the head coach, it’s the second line on the coaching org chart. Four Big Ten coordinators have been fired in the aftermath of poor performances over the weekend.

The most expensive firing was Jason Beck (11), the Michigan offensive coordinator. Arriving this past offseason from Utah with head coach Kyle Whittingham, Beck was believed to be the highest-paid OC in the nation—he had a three-year contract averaging about $3 million a year, plus a signing bonus that took the total package over $10 million. He’s owed the entire amount, though it is subject to offset and mitigation.

This is another high-cost disaster for Michigan, which is hemorrhaging money on football dysfunction. In the wake of the firing of Sherrone Moore last winter, an external investigation into the culture of the football program and overall athletic department cost more than $12 million. In a related development, athletic director Warde Manuel is on the way out at the end of the calendar year, with a buyout of $7 million.

If Beck ends up keeping all the money that’s owed to him, that’s $29 million in less than a year on investigations and separations. And with a 5–4 record and three ranked opponents remaining on the schedule, it very much remains to be seen whether Whittingham keeps his job. His five-year, $41 million contract calls for a 75% payout on the remaining amount, which would be somewhere between $24 million and $25 million if fired after this season.

Then, of course, Michigan would have to spend another pile of money to hire the next guy and his staff.

(None of this takes into account the substantial legal cost of the long-running fight with the NCAA during the Jim Harbaugh era. If there were a ranking of football-related billable hours over the last five years, Michigan would finally be No. 1 again.)

The Wolverines have what most estimates say is a top-15 roster in terms of payroll. That includes the No. 1 quarterback in the freshman class of 2025 (Bryce Underwood) and a top-15 QB from the class of ’26 (Tommy Carr). If your offense is inept with those two guys, these are the deductions: coordinator failure; talent misevaluation; players were pushed into starting roles too soon; some combination thereof.

Underwood was a Game 1 starter as a freshman under Moore and retained his position under Whittingham. He’s been an unremarkable passer and decent runner through 19 starts. He ranked 94th in pass efficiency nationally last season and 98th this season, with four interceptions and zero touchdowns in his last two starts (Minnesota and Penn State in October).

That led to starting Carr the past three games. The results have been no different—his efficiency rating for the season is 124.94, almost identical to Underwood’s 124.30, with two touchdown passes and three interceptions. Michigan is 1–2 with Carr as the starter, scoring six points in each of the two losses and 28 against the Rutgers defense.  

A coordinator change is not an unreasonable reaction to performance this poor. But it underscores the extremely high cost of a big swing and miss in the current market.

Down the road at rival Ohio State, special teams coordinator Robby Discher (12) is the first man overboard as the Buckeyes have fallen apart. If any of the recent spate of coordinator changes reeks of a knee-jerk, just-fire-someone reaction, this is it.

Not that the Ohio State special teams have covered themselves in glory. During the Buckeyes’ two-game losing streak—their first in the regular season in 15 years—the punt coverage unit has had two notable failures. There was a 44-yard return by USC’s Trent Mosley to set up a short-field touchdown, then a depantsing from Oregon on a 30-yard fake punt pass from one linebacker to another. 

Those were big plays in season-turning losses, but not root causes of defeat. A defense that isn’t good on third down and last had an interception on Oct. 3 is a larger factor. Coordinator Matt Patricia might be the next guy who has to keep his head on a swivel in the Woody Hayes Athletic Center.

At Purdue, defensive coordinator Kevin Kane (13) was jettisoned after a dispiriting loss to Maryland that all but eliminates the Boilermakers from bowl eligibility. That’s two coordinators gone in fewer than two years for head coach Barry Odom, with Michael Scherer leaving after the 2025 season.

Midseason upsets of Illinois and Minnesota got the Boilermakers to 3–4, their best record through seven games since Jeff Brohm was the coach in 2022. The backslide since then: home losses to Washington and Maryland, and on the road to Penn State. All three opponents scored more than 30 points. 

Purdue currently is last in the Big Ten in total defense. It was 17th out of 18 last year. Odom, the constant over those two seasons, himself has a defensive pedigree. Just pointing that out.

As noted in The Dash First Quarter, offensive coordinator Dana Holgorsen (14) is the latest staff sacrifice during Matt Rhule’s tenure at Nebraska. Expect an immediate bounce from the Cornhuskers—not due to Holgorsen’s dismissal as much as the opportunity to play Rutgers on Saturday. After that, we’ll see how it goes against Ohio State and Iowa.

In-season staff changes have been known to produce a turnaround, and there are two current examples in the Big Ten. 

Illinois (15) parted ways with defensive coordinator Bobby Hauck in late September after a loss to Ohio State in which the Fighting Illini had only nine defenders on the field at a crucial juncture. Since then, Illinois is 4–1, and over the last three games has allowed a total of 40 points. (It’s a zero-sum game: Hauck’s coordinator replacement, Roger Cooper, gets the flowers after holding Nebraska to 13 points while Holgorsen gets canned.)

After firing head coach Mike Locksley, Maryland (16) actually won a game for the first time since Sept. 12 and was competitive in another (a 20–17 loss to Illinois). Interim coach Aazaar Abdul-Rahim gets credit for the Terrapins’ first Big Ten victory in more than 13 months.

The staff changes and overall angst at so many Big Ten locations is not coincidental to the following truths: Indiana (17) is 35–3 under Curt Cignetti and UCLA is 9–0 under Bob Chesney. When losing programs rise, others must fall. And heads must roll.

Outside the trigger-happy Big Ten, Oklahoma (19) is 1–0 with former NFL star tight end Jason Witten calling plays after ousting offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle. The Sooners’ offense wasn’t much different statistically in a victory at Florida than it was in defeat against South Carolina the previous week, but they did have their second-highest run-to-pass ratio of the season against a power-conference opponent, with 40 rushes and 33 pass attempts. John Mateer resumed dual-threat activity, with a season-high 56 rushing yards.

At Baylor (20), interim head coach Joe Klanderman is now 2–0. His debut was a startling rout of Central Florida on Oct. 30, which can at least be partly attributed to the Knights being hung over from upsetting BYU. But Klanderman and the Bears followed that up by beating Iowa State, 42–31. Quarterback DJ Lagway has had his best two games at Baylor—a combined 548 passing yards and 142 on the ground, with seven total touchdowns.

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