First Big Ten football coach fired odds: Illinois' Lovie Smith on the hottest seat in conference

It's rare any Power 5 conference makes it through an entire year without at least one football head coach being fired. With the Big Ten set to kick off its season Friday night with Illinois at No. 14 Wisconsin, SportsLine oddsmakers have released numbers on which coach will be the first fired/to leave. The "to leave" part is important because a coach could retire, head to the NFL or simply depart a school via mutual agreement. Lovie Smith of Illinois is the favorite.

Smith was a very successful NFL head coach with the Chicago Bears from 2004-12 but not so much with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from 2014-15 as he had an 8-24 record with the Bucs. Many were puzzled when Illinois hired him before the 2016 season because Smith had failed with Tampa Bay and really had no collegiate ties since he was an Ohio State defensive backs coach in 1995.

The Illini are 15-34 under Smith. They appeared to take Smith off the hot seat midway through last season with a four-game winning streak that started with a massive upset of No. 6 Wisconsin, but Illinois finished with three losses in a row, all by at least nine points and at 6-7 overall.

Perhaps more important, Smith's buyout was $4 million had he been fired after the 2019 campaign. It's down to $2 million after 2020. Illinois may only be favored twice in the regular season: Halloween vs. Purdue and Nov. 14 at Rutgers.

Iowa's Kirk Ferentz is the longest tenured coach in the nation, taking over for Hayden Fry in 1999. No one can question Ferentz's success as he's tied for fourth for most wins as a Big Ten head coach all-time, but a handful of former players are demanding $20 million and the firing of Ferentz in a racial discrimination claim.

Dozens of ex-players have spoken out in recent months about their experiences playing under Ferentz and say they have been treated unfairly because of their skin color. Strength and conditioning coach Chris Doyle lost his job over these allegations earlier this summer. Ferentz's son Brian, an assistant coach, also is wrapped up in all this.

Many media members and alums have called for Ferentz to be fired or step down. Should Iowa get off to a slow start, perhaps that speeds up a mutual parting of the ways. Iowa is a short favorite at Purdue on Saturday. 

Former Nebraska quarterback Scott Frost was hailed as a returning hero when he took the Huskers' head coaching job after leading UCF to a perfect season in 2017, but NU is just 9-15 under Frost. Nebraska lost by 41 to Ohio State, 27 to Minnesota and 16 to Wisconsin last year. Including Mike Riley's final season, the Huskers have missed a bowl three years in a row – the school's longest bowl drought since 1955-61. They are huge dogs at No. 5 Ohio State on Saturday. 

Will Michigan fire Jim Harbaugh? Surely not, but he has just one year left on his contract after this one -- the only Power Five coach with less than two years left on his deal -- and might opt to leave for the NFL. That would fall under the "to leave" category.

Via SportsLine oddsmakers: Who will be the first Big Ten coach fired/to leave?

• Lovie Smith +200
• Kirk Ferentz +300
• Scott Frost +500
• Jim Harbaugh +800
• Pat Fitzgerald +1000
• Jeff Brohm +1200
• Tom Allen +1500

Who wins every NFL game this week? And which teams cover more than 50 percent of the time? Get picks here from the SportsLine Projection Model, which simulates every NFL game 10,000 times and ranked in the Top 10 on NFLPickWatch three of the past four years on straight-up NFL picks.