Sam Houston fired Phil Longo as head coach on Wednesday, ending his run effective immediately and turning the Bearkats over to two interim leaders for the rest of the season. Eric Raisbeck and Freddie Aughtry-Lindsay will serve as co-head coaches while the program moves ahead without Longo.
The change comes after a stretch that left Sam Houston 3-17 under Longo, including a 1-11 mark in Conference USA. The Bearkats are 1-7 in 2026 after going 2-10 in 2025, and the latest results include losses to Western Kentucky, New Mexico State and Missouri State. That is the part of this move that mattered most on Wednesday: the numbers were no longer giving the program room to wait.
Longo returned to Huntsville in December 2024 to replace K.C. Keeler, who left for Temple, and the hire brought him back to the place where he had once helped build a winning run. He had served as Sam Houston’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach from 2014 to 2016, when the Bearkats went 34-10, won two Southland Conference titles, reached multiple FCS playoff appearances and climbed to a No. 1 ranking. He later worked at Ole Miss, North Carolina and Wisconsin before taking the Sam Houston job again.
Bobby Williams did not frame the move as a rejection of Longo’s résumé. He said Longo had contributed to Bearkat football as both an offensive coordinator and head coach and that the program appreciated his work with student-athletes. But Williams also said the athletic department’s responsibility is to evaluate the program’s performance and direction, and that after careful review, a change in leadership was necessary to put Bearkat Football in position to compete consistently in Conference USA and meet expectations.
That is the friction inside the decision. Longo arrived with a track record that included developing Drake Maye and Sam Howell while using Air Raid concepts, and he had retained ties to the staff that are now being asked to steady the season. Raisbeck joined the staff in 2025 after stops that included Wisconsin and Penn State, while Aughtry-Lindsay came from NC State and had worked with Longo before at Slippery Rock and Ole Miss. The same coach who was brought back to restore continuity is now out because continuity did not translate into results.
For now, Sam Houston is handing the team to Raisbeck and Aughtry-Lindsay and says it will share more information as plans are finalized. That leaves the next question centered less on the firing itself than on what shape the program takes after it, with the rest of the season now a test of whether the Bearkats can salvage any momentum at all.
