NC State Fired Its Winningest Coach Ever and Owes Him $9.75 Million to Leave
NC State fired Dave Doeren on Saturday, less than 24 hours after a 31-28 loss at Stanford dropped the Wolfpack to 3-4. The man walking out of Raleigh is the winningest football coach in school history, and the school is paying roughly $9.75 million for the right to replace him.
Athletic director Boo Corrigan announced the move. The buyout number comes from Rodd Baxley of the Fayetteville Observer, who reported that firing Doeren without cause before Jan. 1, 2027 triggers about $9.75 million covering the final three years of a contract that ran through December 2029.
Corrigan Said He Would Never Do This
Here is the part that should bother NC State people more than the money. In October 2025, Corrigan told the Raleigh Sports Club, “I don’t believe in firing coaches mid-year.” He also talked on the radio about a “loss of dignity” in midseason firings, per Baxley’s reporting.
Twelve months later he fired a coach in the middle of October. Either things got bad enough to override a stated principle, or the principle was never that firm. Neither version makes the athletic department look like it had a plan.
The Ceiling Was Always Right There
Doeren went 98-74 at NC State across 14 seasons, per the Associated Press. ESPN and CBS Sports list it as 98-73, though the year-by-year results add up to the AP number. He reached 11 bowl games, went 4-6 in them with the Wolfpack, and passed Earle Edwards for the program wins record in November 2023.
He also never played for an ACC championship, never won a division title and never reached 10 wins. Against ranked opponents he finished 8-29. Doeren was very good at turning NC State into a seven-to-nine-win program, and he was never once better than that.
Fourteen years is a long time to confirm a ceiling. This team lost its opener to Virginia 34-8, lost at home to Wake Forest 38-14, then trailed Stanford 14-0 after one quarter and never led. Doeren’s postgame assessment: “It starts with me.”
Todd Goebbel Gets the Leftovers
Running backs coach and special teams coordinator Todd Goebbel, on staff since 2019, takes over as interim for the final six games. California, Duke and Syracuse come to Carter-Finley; Florida State and North Carolina are road trips.
Candidate lists are already circulating, and almost all of it is media guesswork rather than reporting. The one sourced name is Philip Rivers. ESPN’s Pete Thamel posted that the former Wolfpack quarterback, now head coach at St. Michael Catholic High School in Alabama, is expected to get consideration. Rivers interviewed for the Buffalo Bills job in January, and his son Gunner is a 2027 NC State quarterback commit.
ESPN’s own list of five added Cincinnati’s Scott Satterfield, Georgia defensive coordinator Glenn Schumann, Memphis coach Charles Huff and South Carolina’s Shane Beamer. None of those names were attributed to anyone inside the program.
Firing Him Was the Easy Call
Once NC State decided nine wins was not the destination, this was unavoidable. The hard part starts now. The job it has to sell comes with a $9.75 million bill already on the books, a program that has never seriously threatened the top of its own conference, and an athletic director who just spent his credibility making a decision he publicly swore off a year ago.
Somebody will take it. Whether that somebody can clear a bar Doeren spent 14 years failing to clear is the actual question, and nothing about Saturday suggests NC State has an answer.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
