One of the biggest complaints that I've heard most often this college football season -- aside from the usual BCS bashing -- is that nothing big or exciting has really happened and it's been kind of a bland 11 weeks.

The top of the polls have been pretty consistent throughout the year, other than USC's dramatic fall from grace, and the Heisman Trophy race has been more of a crawl that no one seems to want to finish.

For those of you that have felt this way, don't worry, excitement is coming. To the sidelines at least.

The NFL kicked off the annual coaching circus this week when the Buffalo Bills fired head coach Dick Jauron. Several big names at big schools in the college game are likely headed for similar fates, as we could be headed for a vastly changed coaching landscape in 2010.

The biggest name likely headed for the chopping block is Notre Dame's Charlie Weis, whose Irish are just 6-4 and probably headed for another loss at Stanford in the season finale. Things are so bad in South Bend right now that Weis cancelled his weekly press conference on Sunday after a loss to Pittsburgh and the school, which hasn't endorsed him in any way lately, has blocked its private plane from being tracked on the internet.

Instead of easy access to flight routes and destinations that have helped make coaching searches become almost a sport in itself, Notre Dame decided to block its Cessna from the web, allowing administrators to meet with any potential coaching candidate while literally flying under the radar.

Things might be even worse in Kansas, where Mark Mangino's team is sputtering at 5-5 and the school is now probing the coach after allegations from players of verbal and physical abuse. A pair of former Jayhawks players have revealed some of Mangino's alleged verbal abuse, saying that he told one player whose brother had been shot that he would send him back to St. Louis to "get shot with (his) homies," and made light of another player's father being an alcoholic.

Maryland, Virginia, Texas A&M and Colorado, among others, will likely also be looking for a new coach this winter. While that's great for small-school coaches in search of a BCS-level job or BCS-conference coaches who want a raise from their current school to stay, it could have a pretty big impact on the 2010 season. Stanford will almost certainly have to out-bid another school to keep Jim Harbaugh, and Florida's Urban Meyer and Cincinnati's Brian Kelly, to name a few, will probably be in the same position. Plus, there's no telling where Nick Saban will be.

So don't fret. If the season hasn't been exciting enough for you on the field, there will be plenty of action taking place off it. The lull that usually takes place between the conference title games and the bowl games might just be the craziest month of the year.

Assistant Sports Editor Willis Jacobson's column appears exclusively each Friday in The Citizen. He can be reached at 305-292-7777, Ext. 223, or at wjacobson@keysnews.com.