Sunday's college football: Boston College, Ole Miss, USF fire coaches
South Florida fired coach Charlie Strong on Sunday after three seasons in which the Bulls won fewer games each year.
USF made the move two days after finishing a 4-8 season with a blowout loss to rival UCF. That left Strong 21-16 overall but 4-14 since starting the 2018 season with seven straight victories.
“I have tremendous respect for Coach Strong and his dedication to recruiting and developing young men of talent and character and leading them with integrity. He has represented USF with dignity and class and we wish Coach and his family the very best,” USF athletic director Michael Kelly said in a statement.
The former Texas and Louisville coach was hired by USF to replace Willie Taggart after the 2016 season. Strong led the Bulls to a 10-2 record in that first year in Tampa behind star quarterback Quinton Flowers. After starting 7-0 in 2018, the Bulls ended the season with six straight losses, and this season has been filled with lopsided losses.
The 59-year-old Strong, who was a longtime defensive coordinator in the Southeastern Conference with plenty of recruiting ties to the state of Florida, is 74-53 overall in 10 seasons as a head coach.
USF has been playing major college football for 23 years and has had some high-level success, with 10 seasons of eight victories or more and 10 bowl appearances.
Adios Addazio
Boston College fired coach Steve Addazio after seven seasons in which the Eagles never surpassed seven wins.
Wide receivers coach Rich Gunnell will serve as interim coach.
Addazio was 44-44 since taking over in 2013, reaching bowl eligibility for the sixth time in seven years after beating Pittsburgh 26-19 on Saturday. The 60-year-old coach spent much of his postgame news conference talking about the program’s future, insisting, “It’s not about me.”
Boston College won seven games in five of his first six seasons, but he could never get the Eagles back to the level they reached in the early 2000s, when they were often ranked in the AP Top 25 and occasionally playing for a conference championship. This year, they lost to Kansas — a team that hadn’t beaten a Power 5 opponent on the road in 11 years — and needed to beat Pitt in the final regular-season game to qualify for a bowl berth.
Luke ousted
Mississippi has fired football coach Matt Luke, three days after his third non-winning season ended with an excruciating rivalry game loss.
Athletic director Keith Carter said the decision to change coaches was made after evaluating the trajectory of the program and not seeing see enough “momentum on the field.”
Luke, a former Ole Miss offensive lineman, was elevated to interim head coach about two weeks before preseason practice started in 2017 when Mississippi fired Hugh Freeze.
Luke guided the Rebels, who were already banned from the postseason by the NCAA, to a 6-6 record that helped him land a four-year deal through 2021. With the program facing another bowl ban in 2018 and other NCAA sanctions, Luke and the Rebels went 5-7.
Ole Miss finished this season 4-8 overall and 2-6 in the Southeastern Conference, including a 21-20 loss on Thanksgiving night to Mississippi State.
Extra points
Injured quarterback Feleipe Franks is leaving Florida to explore other options, announced on social media.
The 6-foot-6 Franks gruesomely dislocated and fractured his right ankle in a victory at Kentucky in September. He is expected to be sidelined for at least six months. The recovery time and the emergence of backup Kyle Trask made Franks’ chances of regaining the starting job in 2020 a long shot.
... Texas coach Tom Herman shook up his staff, firing defensive coordinator Todd Orlando and demoting offensive coordinator Tim Beck after the Longhorns struggled to a disappointing 7-5 record in a season they were expected to contend for the Big 12 championship.
... Pat Sullivan, the 1971 Heisman Trophy winner at Auburn who went on coach TCU and Samford, has died. He was 69.