The college football offseason is powered by low-voltage storylines: preseason rankings, quarterback controversies, two-peats, three-peats, Jim Harbaugh’s pants, Texas is BACK, transfer portaling, recruiting rankings, and whatever Deion Sanders has to say is the premium content of the hour. The Coaching Hot Seat is as easy a column to write as any. After all, one needs only to look at last year’s records, isolate the heavy loss columns, and assume the fan base is fuming.

In the case of Arkansas State head football coach Butch Jones, the loss column is indeed heavy – 19 losses against just five victories for two seasons in Jonesboro. On the outside looking in, one sees a program that spent nearly a decade reserving hotel rooms for bowl games suddenly cratered at the bottom of the Sun Belt and safely assumes the onus is on Jones.

Well, yeah, it is on Butch Jones. He accepted the responsibility. Now he’s got to fix the damn thing.

A recent episode of the excellent podcast Split Zone Duo raised the specter of the Sun Belt Hot Seat and profiled two candidates: Georgia State’s Shawn Elliott and Coach Butch Jones. The situations between Elliott and Jones could not be more different. Elliott arrived in Atlanta in 2017 (four seasons before Jones) and has been granted the patience and time to build a program that is still looking for an identity in Georgia’s heavy football footprint. His tenure brought immediate dividends, resulting in a 7-5 record his freshman season. He’s brought the Panthers to four bowl games (won three of them) and finally entered Georgia State in the championship conversation by going 8-5 (6-2) in 2021.

However, 2022 was a come-to-Jesus season for Shawn Elliott and the Panthers, finishing 4-8 and losing all the momentum a young program desperately needs to build a fan base. However, Elliott literally head-butted his way into the hearts of his fans and players, and it’s hard to argue that Georgia State isn’t better under Elliott. Is the passionate head coach really on the hot seat?

I’d argue not any more than Butch Jones, now in the critical Year 3 of his reign and beneficiary of another superb recruiting season. To be for reals, there are A-State fans who are not Butch Jones fans – I suspect some spend more time watching The Paul Finebaum Show than they’d publicly admit to. Thanks to puzzlingly petty badmouthing led by Finebaum during his tenure at Tennessee, Jones entered his role at Arkansas State with a reputation that doesn’t reflect his record.

Fact is, Jones turned around Tennessee’s fortunes much in the same way he did at Central Michigan and Cincinnati. He’s developed players into NFL-caliber stars and built rosters to appear in post-season games. True, he’s guilty of not usurping Alabama as the power of the SEC – in addition to dropping some famously corny bon mots.

Butch Jones isn’t on the hot seat. Someone pointed out that Jones is working beneath a new athletic director who didn’t hire him, and that’s always a warning sign – which is true under most circumstances, except both Jones and AD Jeff Purinton arrived to Jonesboro by way of Alabama. They are of the same mindset. Furthermore, most people who have observed the program closely understands that the locker room Butch Jones inherited was not remotely ready to compete in today’s strong Sun Belt. Jones was honest when he told A-State administration that the rebuild would take several seasons. He’s not going to be canned because some fans expect a return of the Hugh Freeze magic – a perfect situation set up by years of careful recruiting from his predecessor Steve Roberts.

Whether the Red Wolves achieve the arbitrary number of six wins this season or not will have no bearing on Butch Jones’ employment status with Arkansas State. Jones was tasked with rebuilding the program. Jones was assigned to creating a roster capable of competing in a Sun Belt that somehow got bigger and faster under our noses. Jones was asked to accomplish this Labor of Hercules through old fashioned recruiting and not through quick portal fixes. That’s his job.

And he’s not on the hot seat for it.

PHOTO CREDIT: Mine