Wittenberg has become the first Division III program of the cycle to announce a head coaching change.
Jim Collins, a veteran head coach who was in his fourth season leading the Tigers, has been dismissed by the school.
A former receiver for the program in the mid-80s, Collins took over at his alma mater in 2022 and compiled a respectable 5-5 record in that first season.
His best season at the helm would come in year two, with a 7-3 finish and 6-2 mark in North Coast Athletic Conference play before finishing 6-4 last fall.
After opening the season with a loss to Baldwin Wallace, Wittenberg went on to win back-to-back games against Washington and Lee and Ohio Wesleyan, but have dropped four straight games since that point.
Two of those losses were to top 15 ranked teams in DePauw (#14) and perennial power John Carroll (#15) where they managed to score just one touchdown. The other two losses, to Wooster and Denison, came by a combined five points.
A veteran small college head coach, Collins served as the head coach at Dubuque (D-III - IA) and Capital (D-III - OH) as his first two head coaching stops. He went 4-26 over three seasons at Dubuque before landing the Capital job, a place he turned around by his fifth season, making the jump from 3-7 to 7-3 by year six. From 2005 through 2027 he led the program to a 19-8 mark and led the Crusaders to three-straight Division III playoff appearances.
That success led to the opportunity to take over Saginaw Valley State (D-II - MI) in 2008, where he helped to build one of the top programs in the ultra-competitive GLIAC during his decade-plus at the helm. He would lead the Cardinals to ties for first place in the GLIAC standings in both 2011 and 2012 before winning the league in 2013, making two appearances in the Division II playoffs during that stretch.
To the surprise of many, after an 8-3 season in 2018, after rebounding from four-straight losing seasons, Collins left SVSU for an opportunity in major college football where he took over as the director of player personnel at Army for the 2019 season.
After a year in that role, he returned to Ohio as the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Dayton (FCS) for a few seasons before landing the head coaching opportunity at Wittenberg.
The Tigers season has three games remaining - at Oberlin, at Wabash and then their home finale against Kenyon.
Joe Nemith, the team's secondary coach and defensive pass game coordinator since joining the staff in 2023 has been named interim head coach while the school notes that a national search for Collins' successor will "commence soon."
Stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.