Florida High School Football Coach Fired After Being Outscored 166-0 In First 3 Games
Dan Nieboer was supposed to turn Lely into a winner. Instead, his team went 0-3 without scoring a point and found himself without a job.
Black News 
It’s been barely a month into Florida’s regular high school football season, and one team has seen enough to fire their first-year head coach.
Dan Nieboer, who was supposed to be a steal when the Lely (FL) football program lured him away from Jason Witten’s Liberty Christian (TX) high school in March, has already been let go after the school started the season 0-3, USA Today reports.
The Southwest Florida team had been outscored 166-0 against Gulf Coast, Immokalee and Naples. Maybe Lely’s former football team knew something, as there was a reported mass exodus of players transferring out following Nieboer’s hiring.
The former coach is still a school district employee, USA Today reports.
Assistant football coach Carlos Cornelio and Kit Fowler, the school’s varsity baseball coach and a physical education teacher, have been named co-interim head coaches for the remainder of the 2026 season.
“After careful consideration, a decision has been made to pursue a change in direction for the head football coach position,” a letter to football families from Lely principal Jennifer Bledsoe read. “As a result, Coach Dan Nieboer is no longer serving as head coach of the Trojans football program.”
It continues, “Our building administration, including our school’s Activities Coordinator, worked closely with Coach Nieboer to establish a plan focused on player development and the overall operation of the program. Ultimately, we determined that a leadership change was necessary to best support the future success of our students and program as a whole.
“As we move forward with a national search for our next head football coach, we will prioritize player development, student-athlete growth, and a positive team culture as core values of the program.”
For now, Cornelio and Fowler will take over a program that has already endured a brutal start to the season. With the Trojans sitting at 0-3 and still searching for their first points, the interim coaches will have the difficult task of turning things around while the school searches for a permanent replacement.
That means Lely will now be looking for its second head coach in less than a year, making what was supposed to be a fresh start one of the strangest coaching situations in Florida high school football this season.
See how social media is weighing in on the firing below.
