With the 2015 football season finally upon us, each of FootballScoop's primary writers - Scott Roussel, Zach Barnett and Doug Samuels - have offered one bold coaching prediction sure to come true this winter.
Scott (@FootballScoop):Nick Saban will not be Alabama's coach for the 2016 season.
I can't support it by reportable facts, and of course there is no pressure from the administration; but from folks in the profession, I keep hearing "Nick isn't happy," "Nick seems miserable," "Nick is very frustrated," and I can foresee the very real possibility that Nick pulls the rip cord and ejects from Tuscaloosa after this season. Where that parachute will land, well, that has to play out, but I don't suspect T-Town will be Nick's final coaching stop.
Zach (@Zach_Barnett): Brian Kelly leaves Notre Dame for the New York Giants job.
Brian Kelly has said in the past he doesn't necessarily have to take an NFL job to his consider his career complete, and I believe him. To a point. I don't believe Kelly would leave Notre Dame to coach the Kansas City Chiefs or the Tennessee Titans.
But after the Giants miss the playoffs for the fourth straight season and sixth time in seven years, the franchise and its 69-year-old head coach Tom Coughlin make a mutual decision to amicably part ways and reunite on the anniversaries of their 2007 and 2011 Super Bowl seasons. Kelly, meanwhile, produces another very good-not-great season at Notre Dame, cementing in his mind the 2012 run to the national championship game is as far this program can be taken. And it's at that point that leaving behind a program with omnipresent academic hoops that need jumping through, an exhausting national recruiting footprint and antiquated expectations for a chance to coach one of the NFL's premier franchises sounds pretty darn tempting.
Doug (@CoachSamz): The Big 12 won't make a single head coaching change.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the Big 12 will return all of their head coaches for the 2016 season. Bold statement? Sure, but's that is the way I see it. David Beaty at Kansas was the lone new head coach heading into this season, and as long as Paul Rhoads gets back to doing he's capable of in Ames by leading the Cyclones back to a bowl game, the conference could logically return all ten head coaches in 2016. Bill Snyder is the league wild card as he'll turn 76 here in early October.