Lincoln Riley joins coaches facing major pressure in 2026
Mike Norvell, Luke Fickell and Lincoln Riley lead the list of coaches facing pressure entering the 2026 college football season.
East Mississippi Community College football coach Buddy Stephens, a five-time NJCAA national champion who featured in the first two seasons of Netflix’s “Last Chance U,” has been fired by the school.
EMCC announced the coaching change late Monday, Aug. 31, appointing associate head coach and offensive coordinator Preston Rice as the Lions’ interim coach. The statement made no mention of Stephens, who on Aug. 27 called leadership at the Mississippi Association of Community Colleges Conference “idiots” after the organization made playoff format changes.
According to the Commercial Dispatch, the MACCC had previously approved an increase of teams’ schedules by one, giving them five home games and five away games. It also announced the playoff format would now pit the No. 1 seed in the MACCC’s North and South divisions for the state title. Previously, it was a four-team playoff that featured the top two seeds from both divisions.
Stephens accused the MACCC of attempting to conflict with the NJCAA national playoff schedule with a plan that originally added a regular-season game and kept the two playoff games, for a total of 12 games per season.
“Ultimately this is what happened,” he told the Commercial Dispatch. “Some of the presidents in the state didn’t want to have to go to the national playoffs because they didn’t want to travel the first week. This is what really happened. If you really want to write something, write the truth — and this is what happened.
“The presidents decided they didn’t want to have to spend a lot of money to travel, so they did our system, our playoffs and our yearly schedule in order for them to be able to back out of the (NJCAA) playoffs if they wanted to and stay in our playoffs. But if they were going to be a No. 1 or No. 2 seed and they were going to get to host and they didn’t have to travel, then they’d get out of our playoffs and opt into the national playoffs so they can host.”
Stephens was also critical of the reduction of playoff teams in the MACCC, saying the Lions wouldn’t have been eligible to play for two of their championships under current rules.
“We wouldn’t have won two national championships because we were the second-place team in the North. It’s not a very well thought-out process,” Stephens said. “It was really ‘junkified,’ the way they decided they were going to do it and there wasn’t a lot of real thought.”
As noted by the Dispatch, the MACCC and NCJAA playoffs won’t collide in their current formats. The MACCC is scheduled for Oct. 29, a week after the regular season ends. The NCJAA playoffs are “tentatively” set to begin with semifinals on Nov. 22.
EMCC issued a statement on its Facebook page, credited to university president Scott Alsobooks, apologizing for the comments Stephens made in the Dispatch report.
“EMCC strongly disavows the remarks published in a recent article. These comments are inconsistent with the college’s core values and standards of professionalism, respect, and civility and do not reflect the views, mission, or expectations of EMCC,” Alsobrooks said in the statement. “While the college supports open and constructive dialogue, personal attacks have no place in that discourse and are contrary to the standards we uphold within our college community. EMCC sincerely apologizes for the concerns raised by these comments and remains committed to fostering a respectful, professional, and collegial environment for all.”