College Football Senior Writer for ESPN. Insider for College Gameday.
Florida Atlantic fired coach Tom Herman on Monday, sources told ESPN, just two years into his tenure there.
FAU was 6-16 during Herman's two seasons, and had gone 0-6 in AAC play this year. FAU is on a five-game losing streak.
Herman took the job as FAU was transitioning from Conference USA to the AAC, in the wake of the firing of coach Willie Taggart after three seasons. Sources said that Chad Lunsford will be the FAU interim coach. He's the former head coach at Georgia Southern.
Sources said that that the decision was results-based, as the record didn't match Herman's track record from his previous stops at Texas and Houston.
He's the fourth AAC coach to get fired this year, as East Carolina, Temple and Rice have all fired their coaches. A majority of the six transitioning Conference USA teams have struggled with the adjustment to the AAC, as five of the seven schools at the bottom of the AAC are transitioning schools.
The FAU firing looms as the biggest surprise, as Herman had yet to complete his second season. He has three years remaining on his five-year deal.
Herman came to FAU after a stint as the head coach at Texas, where he went 32-18 with four bowl wins in four seasons. Prior to that, he went 22-4 in two seasons at Houston, dominating the AAC and beating Florida State in the Peach Bowl following the 2015 season.
Following that run at Texas, Herman worked for the Chicago Bears for a year and then another year in the media. Herman should end up involved in the offensive coordinator mix somewhere in the sport, as this looms as a busy year for coordinator openings and he came up as a coordinator at Rice, Iowa State and called plays for Ohio State's 2014 national title team.
FAU has won three conference championships in school history, including Conference USA in 2017 and 2019 under Lane Kiffin. Since that time, FAU has just one winning season and has endured four consecutive losing seasons.