College football turned over more than 60 head coaching positions at the FBS level across the 2023 and 2024 seasons. Multiple Power Four programs are now maintaining internal shortlists for coaches entering 2026 on negative trajectory, according to staff-level sources familiar with athletic department planning calls.

The velocity matters. Standard coaching cycles once ran November-to-January. Now coordinators are being interviewed for hypothetical openings before spring practice. One Power Five assistant told Athlon Sports his agent fielded three exploratory calls in February from programs whose current head coaches are still employed and not publicly rumored to be leaving. The conversations centered on offensive philosophy fit and buyout structure, not whether a job would open. The assumption is baked in.

This creates a second-order market most administrators are not pricing correctly. Coordinators with two-plus years of Power Four play-calling experience are now operating as free agents in everything but title. They negotiate raises with the implicit threat that three programs have already called. Athletic directors who lose a head coach midseason are competing not just for the best available name, but for coordinators who have been pre-cleared by compliance, know the transfer portal calendar, and can close recruits during the December window. The time cost of a search is now measured in lost recruiting days, not lost games.

The financial structure has shifted accordingly. Buyouts for head coaches in the $15 million-to-$25 million range are now standard in the SEC and Big Ten, but coordinator salaries have climbed into the $2 million band at programs expecting imminent head-coach turnover. The logic: pay now to retain the internal successor candidate, or pay later to poach someone else's coordinator after your head coach is fired. Several schools are quietly running dual budgets—one assuming continuity, one assuming a full staff reload by January 2026.

What to watch: Coordinator contract extensions announced between now and May. Programs offering raises and term beyond 2026 are signaling either confidence in the current head coach or belief the coordinator is the succession plan. Also watch which Power Four schools add "acting head coach" language to offensive or defensive coordinator deals. Spring transfer portal activity in April will show which rosters are already destabilizing. The College Football Playoff expansion to 12 teams was supposed to reduce pressure. Instead it raised the floor—missing the playoff is now the new losing season.

One ACC athletic director put it plainly in a February booster call: "We're hiring for 2027 right now." The head coach in question has three years left on his deal.