The 2026 Big 12 football season is winding down, and while several teams are fighting for a conference championship, three recognizable head coaches could be facing difficult questions about their futures.
Colorado’s Deion Sanders, TCU’s Sonny Dykes and Kansas’ Lance Leipold have all experienced significant success at their respective programs. But those accomplishments are increasingly being overshadowed by disappointing results.
With just three weeks remaining in the regular season, how much patience will their athletic directors and boosters have heading into 2027?
Let’s take a look at three Big 12 coaches facing mounting pressure.
Deion Sanders, Colorado
The Buffaloes have won one game in league play so far. The team seems increasingly dysfunctional. So does Deion Sanders, as he seems to spend his weekly press conferences pursuing fewer football questions and more non-football questions. He’s called out writers for writing a book about him and his program without his cooperation (which they’re not required to do) and making comments about his team being far better than its record.
But throw all that out. The Buffs are 6-15 and have two league wins since they went 9-4 in 2024. Throw out the 2024 season and CU is 10-23 in his other seasons. If the Buffs lose out, they’ll be 10-26 in 2023, 2025 and 2026.
Athletic director Fernando Lovo — who didn’t hire Sanders and took the job last year — will have a decision to make. Is the attention that Sanders brings worth giving him another year to turn things around? Or has that horse left the barn?
Sonny Dykes, TCU
Sonny Dykes is in a similar spot. He took over at TCU in 2022, and the Horned Frogs went on a Max Duggan-fueled magic carpet ride to the CFP national championship game and lost to Georgia. TCU went 13-2 that season and remain, after a decade, to win a CFP game in the four- or 12-team format.
His record is better than Sanders since then. Entering this weekend the Horned Frogs are 27-20 since the start of the 2023 season. But the natives are starting to get restless in Fort Worth, especially after the absurd way that TCU lost its game in Arizona on Friday.
It would be unusual for a program to part ways with a coach who is 40-22 in nearly five years. But athletic director Mike Buddie is in a similar place as Lovo — he didn’t hire Dykes. If the boosters start reaching the point where they’re not willing to help foot the NIL bill (outside of the House settlement rev share of course) then he may be forced into a decision.
Lance Leipold, Kansas
So what do you do if you are Kansas athletic director Travis Goff? On one hand, Lance Leipold is the program’s most successful coach since Mark Mangino. At Kansas, that success is hard to find. He piloted the Jayhawks to back-to-back bowl games and in 2023 guided them to a 9-4 record. Kansas ended the season No. 23 in the country.
Since then? Leipold put together back-to-back 5-7 seasons with Jalon Daniels primarily at quarterback and without him this season Kansas needs two wins to match it. Goff has led a drive to refurbish David Booth Stadium the last two years and those kinds of projects and lead donors and boosters to question if they have the right coach — if the team is losing.
Leipold, like Sanders and Dykes, likely have high buyouts. Goff will have to weigh that against any potential move he might make after the season.
