SI:AM | College Coaching Carousel Gets Moving Early With UCLA, Virginia Tech Firings

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I guess we may have overreacted to how good J.J. McCarthy was in the fourth quarter of his debut. His rough showing last night (11-of-21 passing for 158 yards and two picks) sunk the Vikings in a 22–6 loss to the Falcons.

In today’s SI:AM:

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Big jobs open early

The college football season just started, and a couple of high-profile schools are already looking for new coaches.

On Sunday, UCLA and Virginia Tech became the first schools to fire their coaches this season. The Bruins dismissed DeShaun Foster three games into his second season in charge, and the Hokies canned Brent Pry after a little more than three years at the helm. Both coaches suffered embarrassing losses this weekend to drop to 0–3 on the season. UCLA got stomped, 35–10, by New Mexico at home on Friday and Virginia Tech got blown out at home by Old Dominion in a game that wasn’t even as close as the 45–26 final score would make it seem.

It’s stunning to see two power-conference jobs open this early in the season, but it’s also impossible to argue that Foster and Pry deserved to keep their jobs. Last season, the first power-conference coach to be fired was North Carolina’s Mack Brown on Nov. 26. In fact, no FBS coach was fired until Southern Miss’s Will Hall and East Carolina’s Mike Houston were axed on Oct. 20, eight weeks into the season. In 2023, the first coach firings didn’t come until Nov. 12. (That excludes Northwestern’s Pat Fitzgerald and Michigan State’s Mel Tucker, who were fired for off-field issues.)

It’s highly unusual to see coaches let go this early in the season, but give UCLA and Virginia Tech credit for acting swiftly. It’s clear that both teams weren’t going anywhere under the existing leadership, so it’s best to get a fresh start and begin searching for a replacement before the job market gets too crowded.

Foster, a Southern California native and former UCLA running back, was in a difficult position with the Bruins. He first joined the team’s coaching staff in 2013 as a volunteer assistant after a six-year career in the NFL, got his first big coaching break as the running backs coach at Texas Tech in ’16 and returned to UCLA in the same role the following year. When head coach Chip Kelly shockingly left UCLA after the 2023 season to become the offensive coordinator at Ohio State, the Bruins quickly named Foster as his successor. It made some amount of sense to prioritize the stability of the coaching staff by making an internal hire, but it was also a risk to promote someone who had never before held a position higher than running backs coach to take control of the team in its first season in the Big Ten. UCLA went 5–7 in Foster’s first season (3–6 in Big Ten play) but appeared to have taken a step backwards in Year 2, getting blown out by Utah and losing another embarrassing game to UNLV before Friday’s loss to New Mexico.

Pry was more experienced as a coach when Virginia Tech gave him his first head coaching job in 2022. He had previously been the defensive coordinator and associate head coach at Penn State and also served as co-defensive coordinator at Vanderbilt. He took over a Virginia Tech team that had reached a bowl game in each of its previous 28 non-COVID seasons, but his results in Blacksburg were middling at best. After going 3–8 in his first season in charge, Pry led the Hokies to 6–6 regular-season finishes in each of the next two seasons. (They won the Military Bowl in 2023 and lost the Duke’s Mayo Bowl last year.) This year’s 0–3 start marks the first time the Hokies have lost their first three games of a season since 1987. That made it clear that Pry wasn’t about to turn the program in the right direction, and so he was shown the door.

Both programs have the potential to be nationally relevant again. Virginia Tech was consistently among the top teams on the East Coast during Frank Beamer’s legendary tenure and had some success early in Justin Fuente’s time in Blacksburg. As the ACC seems to settle into the second tier of college football conferences behind the SEC and Big Ten, the task of building a winner at Virginia Tech appears less daunting than at UCLA, which has to compete at the highest level while dealing with all the disadvantages associated with long-distance travel. But at the same time, playing in a top-tier conference should be a draw for players in the talent-rich region of Southern California, which will make the UCLA job desirable for plenty of coaches. The pressure is on for both programs to make the right hire and get back on track.

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The top five…

… things I saw yesterday:
5. Fermín López’s long-range goal for Barcelona in a 6–0 beatdown of Valencia.
4. Cal Raleigh’s 54th home run of the season, tying Mickey Mantle for the most homers in a season by a switch-hitter.
3. Colts defensive back Camryn Bynum’s celebration with the team mascot after an interception.
2. Malik Nabers’s long touchdown catch with two defenders on him (and one covering his eyes) to give the Giants the lead with 25 seconds left.
1. Cowboys kicker Brandon Aubrey’s 64-yard field goal as time expired to send the game to overtime. (As a Giants fan, I actually hated this. Not the No. 1 thing I enjoyed seeing yesterday, but an objectively incredible kick.)