Welcome back to a bye week edition of Five Wide Fullbacks. If it’s too cold this weekend, don’t be afraid to grab an air fryer and serve up yourself some delicious cheeseburgers as we sit back and watch the rest of the country while Notre Dame rests. In this week’s edition we are discussing the game of the 2025 so far, the best open head coaching positions, the problems with the MAC, updates to the Heisman race, and a legend to come back and help the Irish on the field this year.

1) There are 11 head coaching jobs that are currently open in college football. Can you rank the jobs from best to worst?

Here are my rankings right now:

#1 Penn State
#2 Florida
#3 Virginia Tech
#4 UCLA
#5 Arkansas
#6 Oklahoma State
#7 Stanford
#8 Oregon State
#9 Colorado State
#10 UAB
#11 Kent State

I think the easy choice should be Florida in the top spot. I’m pushing back on that for a couple reasons. The Urban Meyer era is approaching 20 years ago (it’s true!) and outside of 2 or 3 nice but not amazing seasons, the Gators have been pretty average for a shocking amount of time. From 1990 through 2010, Florida led the damn country in win percentage. Since then they’ve been hanging back in the low 30’s nationally.

Kids these days aren’t remembering the loaded Florida teams from the early 2000’s. Also, this is all too real–the Gators’ schedule remains brutal. Next year there will be Georgia, Florida State, Auburn, Oklahoma, Ole Miss, Missouri, and Texas. There’s just no breathing room to build a new culture.

Penn State doesn’t have the higher ceiling in recruiting but it’s well situated in the northeast and Midwest. The resources and money are there, too. With a far more manageable schedule, I think Penn State is a more appealing job for someone to walk in and grab 9 or 10 wins right away and get the ball moving forward. It may not be the place more likely to win a National Championship compared to Florida, but it’s far more likely to be the spot where you’ll coach for 10 seasons.

UF would be the unquestioned top job…15 years ago. 

Many would place Arkansas higher, but that’s a bad job within the SEC. Expectations feel like they are too high–it’s basically a poor man’s version of Michigan State in the SEC. Virginia Tech and UCLA are more appealing with lower standards where 7 or 8 wins a season can be very rewarding.

Oklahoma State looks to have lost its mojo and that’ll be a tough job to dig out of from for a new head coach. Would anyone place Stanford higher than 7th? I can’t do it. We’ll get to the MAC in a second, I only need to point out that things at Kent State are in a dark, dark place. Their terrible head coach was fired back in the spring for personal credit card violations (not joking) and heading into the weekend the program has won 2 games since the beginning of 2023.

2) Is MACtion dead? What has happened to this once proud conference?

The MAC definitely doesn’t seem as prominent in the national consciousness as it used to be. Why though? First, I think the weekly football calendar got way too oversaturated. Tuesday and Wednesday night MACtion was a welcome addition for the conference when they opened that up in the month of November. Now, we’re getting G5 games all throughout the week. For instance, there are 5 college football games at the FBS level this week prior to Friday night.

Surely the NIL era has accelerated problems, although the MAC worsening really seemed to be happening prior to 2-3 years ago. I realize Notre Dame recently lost to Northern Illinois! That was a huge win for the MAC and today the Huskies are 1-6 overall in 2025. A run of sustained success piling together a handful of quality seasons just doesn’t seem to happen in the MAC these days. Right now, the top ranked team in SP+ within the league is Toledo (54th) followed up by Western Michigan (92nd).

The small conferences are slowly drowning in recent years. 

The Cradle of Coaches just isn’t cradling, either. Jason Candle has been DGT™ at Toledo for a long time and at nearly 46 I’m kind of shocked he hasn’t moved on to a bigger job. Where are the next good young coaches? Who are the MAC leaders in the recent past to go on to make waves at a higher level? Lance Leipold, P.J. Fleck, Matt Campbell, and Dave Doeren are guys who left the MAC for their current power conference jobs. A nice list, but they left the MAC 5 years, 9 years, 10 years, and 12 years ago respectively.

Our friend Chuck Martin is 57 and in the middle of year 12 at Miami (OH). After a slow start, he’s been doing well and can probably stay with the program for another 5 years easily. It’s likely a retirement job, he’s not being recommended to take over at Virginia Tech or elsewhere.

3) What has been your favorite game of the 2025 season so far?

I have to pick a game that I watched most of in real time to qualify for this award. For me, it’s a no brainer: Oregon at Penn State.

That game was only 26 days ago! It feels like a million things have changed since then and Penn State went from having all this momentum, coming back from down 17-3 in the 4th quarter, and finally picking up that ever-elusive big game victory. If they pulled it out, the Nittany Lions (#3 in the AP at the time) would’ve been getting 1st place votes if not outright threatening to be the #1 ranked team in the nation.

In overtime, Oregon scored a touchdown but failed on a 2-point conversion. It was all right there for Penn State! Then, Drew Allar throws a really lazy interception on the very first play from scrimmage in the extra frame.

Game over.

Life comes at you fast. 

As we now know, it was also the end of an era. Only 15(!) days after this loss, following heartbreak against UCLA and Northwestern, James Franklin was gone from Penn State after just under 11.5 seasons and a $50 million buyout price tag.

Yes, I liked watching all of this unfold for Penn State. However, this was genuinely a great football game with an impressive nighttime atmosphere that ended up having enormous repercussions for college football. I’ll remember it for a long, long time.

4) In the playoff era, should the Heisman Trophy remain a regular season award? Among the top 3 in the current betting odds who has the best chance to win the Heisman this year and can anyone jump ahead of those 3 with less than half a season remaining?

Let’s start with the odds. Most sportsbooks have the top 3 players in the Heisman odds ahead of week 9 as follows:

Ty Simpson – Alabama
Fernando Mendoza – Indiana
Diego Pavia – Vanderbilt

Some places have Mendoza and Pavia flipped, or Julian Sayin is inserted in there somewhere but right now the national consensus really seems to be rallying around just the 3 above.

I’ll start with Pavia. He has very good passing numbers (15th nationally in passer rating) although not at your typical amazing Heisman level. However, he’s added 438 yards on the ground (leading the team!) and probably encapsulates the spirit of the Heisman better than anyone in the country right now.

Mendoza is gathering steam in the “amazing story out of nowhere” category and, perhaps crucially, is the only one from this group still on an undefeated team. He had a forgettable redshirt freshman season at Cal, followed up by a sneaky good season, and has looked unstoppable at times with Indiana. He’s tied for the national lead in touchdown passes and leads America in passer rating. Elite numbers and a great story (his brother is even a backup quarterback on the team!) is going to win a lot of votes.

Simpson is currently 10th in passer rating and he’s been playing at an extremely high level as Alabama has beaten 4 straight ranked opponents. He leads the odds right now so it’s safe to say his so-so performance in the season opening loss against now reeling Florida State has been forgiven.

The Heisman should stay a regular season award, although it’s too bad that conference championship games can hold so much sway right before ballots are due. This year, ballots are due on Tuesday, December 8th just 2 days after the last league title games are played.

No one saw this coming. 

With that in mind, should Vanderbilt make it to the SEC Championship and win it then Pavia is the most lock of all lock Heisman winners in the history of college football. There could be a case where Vanderbilt loses the SEC Championship and Pavia still takes home the Heisman. He’s probably out if they don’t make it and finish 9-3, or whatever.

Simpson has been on fire and he’ll have plenty more opportunities (LSU, Oklahoma, Auburn) to make an impression before a potential SEC Championship Game.

I’m really not sure about Mendoza, though. Indiana’s strength of schedule is horrid led by an embarrassing out of conference slate and a final stretch of games where the toughest opponent is UCLA, Maryland, or dumpster fire Penn State? I don’t know, take your pick! It’s going to be hard for Mendoza to have a ‘moment’ in these last weeks, but a the Big Ten Championship looms large.

I’m curious about Sayin lurking and maybe someone like Gunner Stockton at Georgia, too. Sayin is having the best season no one cares about in recent memory (2nd nationally in passer rating) and what if they murder Michigan and then Ohio State soundly defeats undefeated Indiana in the B1G Championship? Would Jeremiah Smith take away too many votes from his teammate? Also, what if Georgia keeps winning, faces an undefeated Georgia Tech in the finale (that would be an awesome game), wins there and then Stockton balls out in a rematch victory over Alabama in the SEC Championship?

Can Jeremiyah Love actually do this thing? Irish fans, he has a 0.0% chance of winning the Heisman. He jumped into the top 10 at the sportsbooks with his USC performance but it’ll be tough to really get much higher than this without premier matchups remaining on the schedule. An invite to New York for the ceremony is his ceiling, and that would be really cool!

5) If you could pull any player from Notre Dame history to help the team from this point forward through the end of season, who would it be and why?

I started out thinking this would be an easy answer but the more I think about the more options I agonize over. With the injury situation I’m tempted to bring back Quenton Nelson but I’ll stick to my guns and say that offensive line is a little overrated, plus there’s hope that starters will be coming back later in the season anyway.

Could this team really, really use a game change in the secondary? Maybe not if everyone at corner can get healthy but the depth is so poor right now. When the bullets are flying in a potential playoff game against someone like Ohio State, would it be Xavier Watts at safety whom I’m begging for?

I’d love to see a prime Louis Nix (may he rest in peace) and his ability up front for this defensive line. Ask me today and I think this is the team’s biggest need, and frankly, has been since spring ball. Of course, a certified game-wrecker pass rusher would be amazing (if I can go way back I’d pick Ross Browner) but I believe someone elite in the middle would open up way more opportunities for someone like Traore on the edge.

Is he the answer?

If we’re looking at close games in the post-season being a feature, perhaps kicker Justin Yoon is the number one pick for this team right now??

I’m probably looking at receiver, though. While Will Fuller is always a good option, and I’m personally more attached to Golden Tate’s exploits, I’ve found myself really wishing Michael Floyd was helping this offense. For as well as CJ Carr has played this year, he’s being forced to throw the ball to a lot of smaller receivers and winning those 50/50 balls with Pauling and Faison isn’t going to work very often. I’m also happy that Malachi Fields is here–and he has a similar body-type to Floyd–but he is not Michael Floyd.

Floyd had that possession receiver game mastered, but also made a highlight plays in one-on-one coverage, while also being deceptively quick on slants and screens where he could turn a short pass into a 20-yard gain. The offense could use everything he brought to the table.