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UNC announced on Tuesday, November 26 that Hall-of-Fame head coach Mack Brown will not be retained by North Carolina as the head coach. Brown, who had three years left on his contract, will coach the final game of the regular season at home against NC State on November 30, and potentially in a bowl game since the team is already bowl-eligible at 6-5.
Brown is 44-32 in his second stint with the school (2019-2024) after going 69-35-1 in his first stint from 1988-1997. In between, he led Texas to the 2005 national championship over USC in one of the most exciting college games ever played at that level. He spent 16 seasons in Austin from 1998-2013, compiling a 158-48 record. Over-all he has marks of 288-154-1 over-all, and 14-12 in bowl games.
SEE: Coaching Changes
Rice announced Davidson head coach Scott Abell as its new head coach on Tuesday, November 26. Abell was 47-28 with the FCS Wildcats over 7 seasons, including a 6-5 mark in 2024, and three consecutive FCS playoff appearances from 2020-2022. Before his tenure at Davidson, he was the head coach at D3 Washington & Lee from 2012-2017 where his teams went 39-24 and played in three D3 playoffs. None of his teams at either school survived the first round of those playoffs.
Back on October 27, Rice made Mike Bloomgren the third head coach to be fired. Taking his place on an interim basis for the remainder of the season is Pete Alamar, who served as Bloomgren's associate head coach & special teams coordinator. The move was announced after the Owls fell to 2-6 with a 17-10 setback at UConn. Three weeks prior, Rice was an upset 29-27 winner at home over UTSA.
Rice was expected to have some modest success this year. The Owls were preseason picked to finish 7th in the 14-team league by the media whose beat in the American Athletic Conference. The Congrove Computer Rankings at CollegeFootballPoll.com put them in 6th with a forecast of an 8-4 season with a 4-4 league mark. The consensus was less lofty with an average finish of 9th predicted by 16 respected preseason magazines and websites, according to stassen.com.
A former Florida State GA upon his graduation from that school, Bloomgren had mostly worked as an offensive coordinator and spent time with the New York Jets in the NFL from 2007-2010. When Rice hired him, he had spent seven seasons with Stanford.
He leaves with a record of 24-52 over-all, including a 17-32 mark in conference games, over 6 seasons and 8 games. The high water mark during his tenure came last season when Rice finished 6-6 in the regular season, and 4-4 in conference play, but lost 45-21 to Texas State in the First Responders Bowl on the SMU Campus. Alamar was brought to Rice by Bloomgren from Stanford after the 2022 season when David Shaw resigned as head coach of the Cardinal . He had been with Stanford for 11 seasons as special teams and tight ends coach.