Report: Charlotte fires head coach Biff Poggi in middle of 2nd season

Biff Poggi’s time in Charlotte has come to an end.

Charlotte fired football coach Poggi on Monday afternoon after less than two seasons with the program, according to ESPN’s Pete Thamel.

Tim Brewster will take over as the team’s interim coach for the rest of the season. Brewster worked as the tight ends coach and the associate head coach under Poggi.

Poggi is now the fifth coach in the AAC to be fired this year. FAU fired coach Tom Herman earlier on Monday, too, joining East Carolina, Temple and Rice.

The decision to split with Poggi came just days after Charlotte fell in a blowout 59-24 loss to South Florida. That marked the fourth straight loss for the 49ers, who were officially eliminated from bowl contention. Poggi went just 6-16 in his two seasons at Charlotte, and he never won more than three games in a single season. It marked his first head coaching job in college football. He was previously an associate head coach at Michigan under former head coach Jim Harbaugh.

Poggi, famous for wearing his cutoff shirts on the sidelines at games, launched a hedge fund startup in 1986 that was worth hundreds of millions of dollars when he stepped away three decades later. While managing that hedge fund, Poggi also worked as the head coach of his former high school’s football team. He won 13 state titles there before he joined Harbaugh’s staff in 2016.

Poggi was just the third full-time head coach in Charlotte football history after the program was revived in 2013. The school has been to just a single bowl game, and the 49ers have had just one winning season. They went 7-6 in 2019 under coach Will Healy, though they fell in the Bahamas Bowl that year. Poggi took over as the team moved into the AAC after spending its first eight seasons of existence in Conference USA.

The 49ers have two games left this season. They’ll take on FAU next on Saturday before hosting UAB to end the season.