This will likely go down as one of the most chaotic college football coaching carousels in recent memory, with head-coaching jobs for the LSU Tigers , Penn State Nittany Lions and Florida Gators coming open and more recently vacancies for the Ole Miss Rebels and Kentucky Wildcats .
Read More: College Football Predictions for Conference Championship Weekend
With a majority of the jobs filled up, it's time to dive into grading the college football coaching hires of 2025-26. We'll add more when Penn State and other programs hire new head coaches.
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There's one A-grade hire in the college football coaching carousel this year, and it's not Lane Kiffin. The Virginia Tech Hokies jumped at the chance to land James Franklin, as it's a rare opportunity when you can land arguably one of the 10 best coaches in the sport. Virginia Tech is also a great example of what happens when a program sets realistic expectations for what it can be. Operating in reality is everything.
Across 15 seasons spent at Vanderbilt and Penn State, Franklin won nine-plus games in nine of those campaigns with a .600-plus winning percentage at both stops. Meanwhile, the Hokies ended 2025 with a 3-9 record, and they've had just two seasons with nine-plus wins since 2012. Franklin is already assembling a better recruiting class than Virginia Tech has had in years, and the school has given him the resources to be an immediate player in the transfer portal. This was a home-run hire by the Hokies.
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With the retirement of Chris Klieman, the Kansas State Wildcats got in on the trend of hiring alum to take over as head coach. Former Wildcats quarterback Collin Klein, once An All-American at Kansas State, now returns home. It's a fitting destination, especially after he climbed up the coaching ranks at Kansas State from quarterbacks coach to offensive coordinator (2017-2023).
He got the most out of Marcel Reed this season, helping the young signal-caller turn from a promising starter into a Heisman Trophy candidate. Without Klein, there's no chance Texas A&M wins double-digit games this season and they likely don't beat Notre Dame. Kansas State will be patient with the fan-favorite, giving him all the time he needs to learn the ropes as a head coach. In the meantime, the offense is about to get a lot more fun to watch.
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The Oklahoma State Cowboys made the right call to fire Mike Gundy (4-11 in last two seasons), even if it meant having one of the lesser-desired jobs in an active college football coaching carousel. Hiring a coach from a Group of 5 school is always a risk, but the Cowboys might've hit gold with Eric Morris.
Only 40 years old, the Texas native progressively climbed the coaching ladder at Texas Tech under Kliff Kingsbury (2013-17) as offensive coordinator before landing his first head-coaching job at Incarnate Word. Inheriting a program that went a combined 4-18 in its previous two seasons, Morris got Incarnate Word to the FCS playoffs in his first year. By 2021, he built a 10-win team and then moved into a stint as Washington State's offensive coordinator and quarterback coach for Cam Ward .
Coming off an 11-1 season at Texas State, Morris brings the ties to recruiting in Texas that the Cowboys need. Just as important, as his time with Patrick Mahomes , Cam Ward, and John Mateer demonstrate, he knows how to develop quarterbacks. Morris checks all the boxes for Oklahoma State, and with the additional resources he'll have, the Cowboys could be an eight-win team by 2028.
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The Kentucky Wildcats are getting a bump in grade from B+ to A- because the school bit the financial bullet and got rid of Mark Stoops. He went 9-15 in his last two seasons at Kentucky, but the team's performances versus Louisville and SEC opponents (3-13) show that it was so much worse than that. Moving on from Stoops is itself one of the best moves in college football this year.
There's also reason for optimism with first-year head coach Will Stein. For one thing, hiring him likely keeps him away from Louisville if Jeff Brohm gets poached, which in itself is a huge plus. The 36-year-old has long been one of the most impressive assistants in the nation, and his time spent under Dan Lanning (2023-25) as the Oregon Ducks offensive coordinator speaks for itself. Just look at what he did with Dillon Gabriel and Dante Moore .
Stein is going to, over time, transform one of the worst offenses in college football into a unit the fans will actually enjoy. It also matters that he has roots in the area and a devotion to the school, which will help in recruiting and in getting more financial support for the football program. As long as Kentucky is patient with him, we're excited for the Wildcats' future.
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We certainly didn't expect Brian Hartline to take his first head-coaching gig with the South Florida Bulls, but this could be a home-run hire. Hartline is going to be an outstanding recruiter in South Florida, taking full advantage of the talent-rich state and also offering opportunities to wide receivers in the transfer portal who want to learn from him. This season was his first as a play-caller, so there will be some growing pains in that regard as he won't have anything close to the talent that executed his scheme at Ohio State. We expect some rough patches early on as he learns the ropes of being a head coach, but South Florida betting on his talent acquisition ability is absolutely the right move.
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The bidding war for Lane Kiffin between Ole Miss, Florida, and the LSU Tigers certainly padded his reputation a bit as a head coach. It's worth noting that Kiffin's coaching record upon his arrival at LSU (117-53, .688) is worse than what Brian Kelly put up (166-62, .728) when he became the Tigers football coach. Kelly was also coming off five consecutive seasons with double-digit wins at Notre Dame and six in the last seven years, whereas Kiffin had four consecutive at Ole Miss and four in the last five seasons.
Now, there is certainly still a ton of appeal to this hire. Kiffin ensured that LSU provided him with all of the money he needed to be a top player in both the transfer portal and recruiting. It will also be much easier for him to convince five-star recruits and top transfer prospects to come live in Baton Rouge than it was going to Mississippi.
What drops this from an A-grade to a B+ is that it's a championship-or-bust scenario. Making it into the expanded College Football Playoff won't mean anything. His teams, to this point, haven't demonstrated that they can consistently beat the cream of the crop in the SEC. There are a lot more scenarios where this goes wrong than it goes right, and LSU made a historic financial commitment to this.
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For a moment, it seemed like Alex Golesh might leave South Florida to take over at Arkansas. The Auburn Tigers swooped in, poaching one of this season's breakout head coaches from an SEC foe. It could wind up being a pivotal move that dramatically alters the course of both programs' futures.
Golesh, who turns 42 years old in June, joined Josh Heupel's staff at Central Florida in 2020 as co-offensive coordinator and tight ends coach. That one year was enough for Heupel to bring Golesh with him to Tennessee, where they orchestrated one of the best offenses in the nation. Golesh turned that success into his first head-coaching job at South Florida, taking over a program that went 4-29 in its previous three seasons, and he instantly surpassed that win total with a 7-6 record in his first year, followed by a seven-win season and then a 9-3 mark this year.
The Ohio State alum has ties to Florida and a year of experience coaching in the SEC. He'll make the most of the resources Auburn provides him for recruiting, making that and player development paramount to the Tigers' long-term success. We're also keenly interested in seeing what he can do next season with quarterback Ashton Daniels and wide receiver Cam Coleman.
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The Colorado State Rams poaching Jim Mora from UConn will probably go down as one of the most underrated hires in the college football coaching carousel this year. It could also be the exact move that allows Colorado State to overtake Deion Sanders' Buffaloes for supremacy as the best college football team in the state.
Mora did what seemed impossible to do in this new era of college football: making UConn a consistent winner. Consider that he walked into a situation where the Huskies posted a combined 9-39 record from 2018-2021 under Randy Edsall and Lou Spanos. Immediately, he turned UConn into a six-win team in his first year, and the program is now coming off consecutive nine-win seasons.
Colorado State is also the perfect landing spot for him. He gets to be on the West Coast, which he preferred, all the while serving as a head coach that sets reasonable expectations for its football program. The Rams have won eight games in a season just once since 2015, and they had just two seasons with a winning record over the last eight years. Mora isn't a splashy hire, but he'll field a football team that brings in a crowd because it wins the games that it's expected to.
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Lane Kiffin dragging things out created quite a few complications for any Ole Miss coaching search. So, we'll give the program a bit of a pass this year for making the decision to promote defensive coordinator Pete Golding to become the full-time Rebels head coach.
Before joining Kiffin's coaching staff as Mississippi's defensive coordinator in 2023, Golding worked under Nick Saban as the inside linebackers coach and defensive coordinator for the Alabama Crimson Tide (2018-22). What he proved at both stops is that he can recruit, and not having to pay Kiffin an exorbitant salary means that Mississippi can put even more money into pulling top talent out of high school and the transfer portal.
Again, we're grading on a bit of a curve here. Normal circumstances would probably have this as a C+ hire, just because of the very iffy track record with first-year head coaches in college football. Ole Miss gets some grace, especially because it will give Golding the same resources that Kiffin had for player acquisition and salaries for his coaching staff.
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Being this skeptical of Jon Sumrall becoming the Florida Gators head coach, at least compared to consensus marks in the grading of college football coaching hires, has nothing to do with the school rolling the dice on another Group of Five coach. Instead, it's all tied into the risk that comes with hiring a head coach with zero ties to Florida.
Sumrall's coaching career has taken him to Kentucky, San Diego, Ole Miss, Troy, and Tulane. This will be the first time that he's had to coach and recruit against programs that have just as good of resources or even better than he does. It's also worth noting that for as successful of a head coach as he's been at Tulane and Troy (42-11 overall), he posted a 2-6 record versus ranked teams and his teams got blown out against SEC competition. Plus, for Sumrall, he's walking into a situation where the fans had hopes of getting Kiffin only to wind up landing another Group of Five coach from Louisiana. Patience will be key, because it's going to take him three-plus seasons before the Gators might start seeing tangible progress.
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There is a bit of an irony in the Oregon State Beavers hiring a head coach and just days later, Jonathan Smith becomes available. Oregon State is also taking a risk for the second time by hiring a first-time head coach, with the Trent Bray experience (5-14) proving how badly things can go. We do see some reasons for optimism, though, when it comes to new Beavers head coach JaMarcus Shephard.
Before working on Kalen DeBoer's staff at Alabama as co-offensive coordinator and wide receivers coach, he held that same role with the Washington Huskies. Shephard oversaw the development of Rome Odunze , Jalen McMillan , Ryan Williams, Germie Bernard , David Bell , and Rondale Moore , so there's reason to believe he can develop quality pass-catchers for Oregon State.
Shephard also has three years of experience coaching on the West Coast, and he's bringing several members of the Crimson Tide coaching staff and athletic department with him. There's a real chance that he could be fired three years from now, but this is a worthwhile swing for Oregon State.
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The Michigan State Spartans gave Jonathan Smith just two seasons before moving on and hiring Pat Fitzgerald. This decision is drawing praise from some sports media members and Northwestern alumni, who remember Fitzgerald's three 10-win seasons and his .521 overall winning percentage with the Wildcats.
However, many overlook Fitzgerald's struggles in his final four years at Northwestern. From 2019 to 2022, the Wildcats posted a 14-31 record (.311 winning percentage), with their wins largely coming against lower-tier opponents such as Nebraska, Indiana State, Ohio, and Rutgers. Fitzgerald's supporters often highlight his 36-17 record (.679) from 2015 to 2018, but that stretch came in a much different era of college football, before the Big Ten added power programs like Oregon, USC, Washington, and Indiana's resurgence under Curt Cignetti.
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It's never a great sign when fans are protesting the hiring of their new football coach, especially after they were clamoring for Sam Pittman to be replaced. Knocking the decision from the Arkansas Razorbacks to hire Ryan Silverfield also isn't as much about the last Memphis coach who took over a Power 4 program (Mike Norvell) as it is what Silverfield did at Memphis.
Inconsistency has been an issue with Silverfield. Memphis went 8-3 in his first season (2020), with much of that success credited to the roster he inherited. He followed that up with a combined 13-12 record over the next two seasons (2021-2022). It then seemed like Silverfield had gotten Memphis back on top, delivering a 21-5 record from 2023-2024. However, all of that came crashing back down in 2025 with the Tigers collapsing in the second half of the season to finish 8-4 after starting the year 6-0. We're just not going to be surprised if Silverfield doesn't even make it to three full seasons at Arkansas.
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It feels like the Stanford Cardinal hired a friend instead of a head coach. Tavita Pritchard has a very close relationship with Andrew Luck , and the former Cardinal quarterback also spent more than a decade on the Stanford coaching staff, working his way up from graduate assistant (2010) to offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach (2018-2022).
Here's the problem. Not only has Pritchard been out of the college football world for three years, but his time as offensive coordinator for Stanford largely came when the program struggled to be relevant. He was there in the final two seasons with David Shaw, when the Cardinal went 6-18 and ranked 110th in scoring offense (20.4 PPG) and then 109th in scoring offense (19.5 PPG) in his final season. Unless you have close ties to Pritchard, it's difficult to have any excitement about Stanford's hire.
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