Paul Finebaum: 'We are nowhere near the end' of prominent jobs opening in college football

There’s been a surprising amount of turnover at some of college football’s top programs this season. James Franklin was fired at Penn State, Billy Napier at Florida and most recently, LSU rid themselves of Brian Kelly, among others.

Paul Finebaum doesn’t believe we’ve seen the end of prominent, high profile jobs opening. He predicted that we’re going to see a couple more come to light over the next couple of months in the sport.

“We’re nowhere near the end of that,” Finebaum stated, via McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning. “I mean listen, if you’re sitting there in Kentucky this morning and your program is just crashing and burning, are you going to be able to sell your fan base on, ‘Hey, listen, we just can’t afford to buy the coach out’? That makes you look like you’re not even in the same league as everybody else.

“Rightly or wrongly, Auburn — would we be having this conversation if Auburn hadn’t come back in the second half? I mean, I don’t think anyone is really safe anymore. That’s the conclusion of the last couple of weeks. I hate to keep saying the same thing, but we are seeing the same thing every couple of weeks, things we’ve never seen before.

“I’ve never seen anything like Penn State. But in some ways, this is even more dramatic because it’s a shorter time period. This is not a bad coach. This is a good coach with a good program that’s lost to two top-10 teams, and will likely lose to another top-10 team in about 12 days.

“I think Kelly just set himself up. Whether the ‘fit’ conversation was legitimate or not, he never felt comfortable there. That just may be who Brian Kelly is. He’s a very good football coach, but he has an extremely cold personality to most people.”

There’s certainly a bevy of coaches on the hot seat at the moment. Mike Norvell at Florida State comes to mind, as well as Jonathan Smith at Michigan State and Luke Fickell at Wisconsin. Additionally, it remains to be seen if Bill Belichick stays in Chapel Hill for Year 2 in North Carolina.

Continuing, there ripple effect of the hires LSU, Florida and Penn State will make will certainly be a cause for change, as well. Don’t forget about the NFL — it was reported by Dianna Russini of The Athletic that Steve Sarkisian has interest in moving to the professional level, even if the Texas leader’s agents came out and refuted it afterwards.

We’ll see if Finebaum’s prediction is right, and more coaching moves are made throughout college football. LSU, Florida and Penn State represent a massive trio of openings already. It seems there may be more in the future.