The 2025-26 coaching cycle wasn't expected to be calm, like its predecessor. But few forecasted such a robust line of storms rolling through the sport in the first half of the season. All four power conferences have had a firing. Penn State's ouster of James Franklin, midway through his 12th season and barely 10 months removed from the team playing for a spot in the national title game, sent a message around the sport: Almost no coach is safe.
The calendar said that Frank Leahy was sixty years old on that last night of January 1969. One look at Leahy would have labeled the calendar a fabulist. He still stood erect, five foot eleven, and his waistline barely had wavered from those postwar days when he strode the Fighting Irish sideline, an American celebrity at the peak of his command. But the crevasses in Leahy's face, the ruddy cheeks, and the thinning gray hair indicated the ravages taken by time and leukemia.