The Greatest Coaching Hot Seat Escapes of the 2023 College Football Season

As the One-Question Mailbag continues to close out 2023, we now turn our attention to this question: Which college football coach most masterfully avoided getting fired this season?

Max Rego: Jeff Hafley

Heading into this season, this seemed like a given. Boston College backslid in Hafley’s third year at the helm, going 3-9 and finishing in last place in the ACC Atlantic. Through four games, the 44-year-old appeared to be on track to getting canned, with his Eagles’ lone win in the opening third of the season coming against FCS opponent Holy Cross. But then, just then, Boston College turned its season around, perhaps saving Hafley’s job in the process. 

The Eagles, spurred by the dual-threat ability of quarterback Thomas Castellanos and corner Elijah Jones tying for the most interceptions in the conference, with five, ripped off five straight wins, ending the regular season at 6-6 before beating SMU in the Fenway Bowl. Three straight losses before that bowl victory, and a challenging 2024 slate, means that the hot seat is still lurking in the rearview for Hafley, but this was setting up for a “alright, we’ve seen enough here” season up in Chestnut Hill. 

Ryan Nanni: Neal Brown

Neal Brown finished the 2022 season, his fourth at West Virginia, with a 5-7 record on the year and a 22-25 mark overall as head coach of the Mountaineers. His dismissal, at the time, felt inevitable. Brown was 3-12 against ranked opponents, had only one season over .500 in Morgantown (a 6-4 campaign in 2020), and didn't seem to have brought any of the magic of his Troy days with him.

In one limited sense, things didn't improve: West Virginia lost to the two ranked teams they played, Penn State and Oklahoma, by a combined 62 points. But the Mountaineers only lost two other games all season, one to eventual Big 12 Championship Game participant Oklahoma State and the other on an absolutely brutal Hail Mary by Houston.

And while the other nine games weren't necessarily all pretty, West Virginia won them all. Beating the teams you're supposed to, by itself, won't buy you endless patience at most schools, West Virginia included. But it's definitely what Brown needed after four years of frustrating mediocrity.

Kaelen Jones: Dabo Swinney

At 4-4, Dabo Swinney got called out by “Tyler from Spartanburg” on his weekly radio show for underperforming relative to his contract, which pays Swinney $11.5 million per year (he signed a 10-year, $115 million deal in 2022). The 54-year-old (fairly!) rebutted by pointing out how Clemson football has enjoyed its most successful stretch under his guidance. The Tigers are considered a CFB giant now, with success comparable to the likes of Alabama and Georgia over the past decade, so perhaps it’s easy to see how, as Swinney put it, for many Clemson fans “the expectation is greater than the appreciation.”

Realistically, Swinney was unlikely to get fired from Clemson unless things turned completely sour. Impressively, he rattled off four straight wins (starting with a 31-23 win against Notre Dame) to close out the year, silencing critics calling for him to move on. He’s still got some ways to go in regards to ensuring Clemson stays among the sport’s elite, but he put his money where his mouth is.