The college football coaching carousel is finally complete — at least we think it is — with Michigan hiring former Utah coach Kyle Whittingham this week, filling the final FBS head coach vacancy.
In all, 29 FBS programs announced new head coaches since mid-November, and we’ve broken down all of them with grades here.
But before closing the book on the 2025 coaching carousel chaos, we have a few final over-arching thoughts on what unfolded this cycle … and none of it has to do with Lane Kiffin!
Most Kismet Connection
Michigan and Kyle Whittingham both becoming available at about the same time.
We’re not saying one had anything to do with the other — in fact, it had been rumored for a while that 2025 could be Kyle Whittingham’s last season at Utah and his mind was likely already made up before the official announcement — but Michigan fired Sherrone Moore on Dec. 10 and Whittingham announced he was stepping down from Utah on Dec. 12.
It’s a wonder it took the two sides until this week to formally come together, after Michigan’s reported pursuit of/interest in Alabama’s Kalen DeBoer and Arizona State’s Kenny Dillingham.
Either would have been great hires as well, but Whittingham is an A+ hire and could have just as easily been the first and only call Wolverines athletic director Warde Manuel needed to make.
We won’t belabor the point again after going in-depth here on why Whittingham is the perfect fit for Michigan in this moment.
But seriously, what are the odds that …
– One of the most storied programs in college football would fire its coach for a misconduct scandal after all the other major coaching moves had been made, which normally would leave a school at a major disadvantage trying to make a strong hire.
– That what Michigan seems to need more than anything is a respected veteran coach to stabilize a program that has been beset by scandal, NCAA penalties and embarrassment in recent years (while, yes, winning a national title along the way).
– That Whittingham, who was the second-longest-tenured head coach at one school in college football behind Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz, suddenly becomes a free agent after 21 years at Utah in one of the most unique moves in recent memory — a beloved and still successful head coach stepping down by choice after two decades in one place but also not retiring.
– That he happens to embody the precise description outlined above of what Michigan needed.
– While conveniently also having a coaching style built on the Big Ten ethos of prioritizing physicality, strong defense and a pounding rushing attack — despite spending his career in the Mountain West, Pac-12 and Big 12 — that is a perfect fit for the Wolverines.
– And, for Whittingham’s sake, that after long being the most underrated coach in all of college football despite winning 177 games at Utah with a 13-0 season and seven other double-digit win campaigns along the way, he now gets a shot at one of the biggest jobs in the sport.
There’s no guarantee anything works out as expected, but this sure seems like a perfect pairing for both sides and, yes, very kismet or serendipitous how it all unfolded.
Most Underrated Great Hire
Oklahoma State hiring Eric Morris.
It was one of the first dominoes to fall in the hiring frenzy as Oklahoma State moved quick to reel in North Texas’ Eric Morris on Nov. 25. And either because the Cowboys program had become so irrelevant the last couple years or because most college football fans only took notice of North Texas briefly as it pushed for a College Football Playoff spot, this move didn’t get the attention it deserved.
More prominent programs (Auburn, Arkansas to name a couple) went on to make lesser hires (in this critic’s opinion, at least) poaching from the same conference (AAC) with much greater fanfare.
But Oklahoma State snagging Morris was one of our favorite hires this cycle. We went even more in-depth on why here, but just to hit the key points …
Before getting fired this season, longtime Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy bemoaned that his program was at a significant disadvantage in the NIL era of college football. If that’s true, which there’s no reason to dispute, then the Cowboys had to not just hire a good football coach but one who could inspire the fan base and (more importantly, sadly) the boosters who give the money needed to win in college football now.
But Oklahoma State, especially coming off 3-9 and 1-11 seasons, wasn’t exactly going to be a top destination for coveted coaches.
So it had to be someone who saw Oklahoma State as a major step in their career yet also already had enough credibility and reputation to immediately resonate with both the fans and funders.
Think of how short that list is …
Morris is on it, though.
From Texas Tech (where he was Patrick Mahomes’ offensive coordinator and recruited future Heisman Trophy winner Baker Mayfield as a walk-on) to his first head coaching job at FCS-level Incarnate Word (where he signed an overlooked QB named Cam Ward who would go on to be the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL Draft this year) to Washington State (where he went with Ward to be the OC for a season and also happened to recruit QB John Mateer to the program before he left) to the head coaching job at North Texas (where he turned walk-on Drew Mestemaker into the FBS’ leading passer this year), he’s built a reputation as one of the sports’ top quarterback gurus.
Think of a young Lincoln Riley without the Heisman Trophy winners (yet).
Morris showed he’s more than a QB whisperer, though. He took over a North Texas program coming off four straight non-winning seasons and one that hadn’t been nationally ranked in the AP poll since 1959, and in his third season led the Mean Green to 11 wins (he was gone before the bowl victory Saturday), a No. 20 AP ranking at one point and one win short of reaching the CFP.
Does that sound like someone who could galvanize and reenergize the Oklahoma State fan base and its boosters?
Most Underwhelming Hire
Arkansas hiring Ryan Silverfield from Memphis.
This is obviously a matter of opinion that can be debated or disagreed with, but the case could be made that four AAC coaches were hired for bigger jobs — Morris to Oklahoma State, Jon Sumrall from Tulane to Florida, Alex Golesh from South Florida to Auburn and Silverfield to Arkansas — and Silverfield would be ranked fourth behind the others.
So for an SEC program to hire the fourth-best head coach from the AAC just feels, as the title says, underwhelming.
Maybe we’ll be proved wrong, and the Razorbacks saw more than we can from the outside looking in on it.
But the reality is Memphis has been a successful football program for the last decade — Silverfield didn’t build it up (he was Memphis’ run-game coordinator prior to getting promoted to head coach) — and won big under his predecessors Justin Fuente and Mike Norvell. Fuente left for Virginia Tech and floundered, and Norvell is on the hottest seat in college football right now at Florida State.
And both were arguably more successful at Memphis than Silverfield. He took over a program that won 12 games in Norvell’s final season and then went 8-3 (Covid-shortened season), 6-6 and 7-6 before delivering 10-3 and 11-2 seasons the last two years. This season, Memphis underachieved on expectations to go 8-5 and lost almost every big game except a huge win over South Florida and beating … Arkansas.
But the Tigers undermined their AAC/CFP hopes with a stunning loss to a bad UAB team and then lost their final three games to Tulane, East Carolina and Navy to end with a thud.
Maybe Arkansas struck out with other targets in the process, but it’s just hard to point to any one thing in Silverfield’s resume that says he’s the man to elevate a slumping SEC program back to glory.
But again, perhaps he will prove otherwise.
We’ll give an honorable mention here to Stanford hiring Tavita Pritchard, who was the Washington Commanders QBs coach, former Stanford offensive coordinator and perhaps most importantly a former teammate of Andrew Luck, the program’s general manager.
Most Unwarranted Panic From A Fan Base
Well, this could apply to Michigan before the Whittingham hire as well, but we’ll give it to Penn State.
It didn’t help that Penn State fired former coach James Franklin so early (Oct. 12) and then also was one of the last marquee programs to finally make a hire in announcing Matt Campbell on Dec. 5.
But all the handwringing and vitriol spewed at Penn State athletic director Patrick Kraft was for naught, as the Nittany Lions made an excellent hire in the end.
What Campbell accomplished at Iowa State the last decade is on the short list of greatest coaching jobs since … Bill Snyder at Kansas State in the 1990s? Maybe Curt Cignetti’s Indiana heroics have spoiled college football fans, but for a long, long time it was very hard to take over a perennial loser and change the entire reputation of that program.
That’s what Campbell did at Iowa State.
The Cyclones won 3, 2 and 3 games in the three seasons before Campbell arrived with just one winning season overall (7-6) in the 10 years prior to his tenure. In his decade in Ames, Iowa State went 72-55 with eight winning seasons in the last nine years. That included a 9-3 finish, Fiesta Bowl win and No. 9 final AP ranking in 2020 and an 11-3 mark and No. 15 finishing in the polls last year.
Before that, he went 35-15 at Toledo. He’s a winner.
He’s also from the region, growing up in Ohio, playing football at Pittsburgh and then Mount Union (in Ohio), and getting his coaching start at Bowling Green and Mount Union.
For all the despair when Penn State’s very public pursuit of BYU coach Kalani Sitake failed, the Nittany Lions may well have ended up with an even better coach and better fit for their program.
Biggest Immediate Impact Hire
Virginia Tech hiring James Franklin.
While Penn State was ready to move on from Franklin after a highly-successful (but ultimately not successful enough) 12-year run and Nittany Lions fans will cite his 4-21 record there vs. top-10 opponents, Virginia Tech fans would be thrilled to even have games with such high stakes.
Virginia Tech simply couldn’t have made a more impactful hire after falling into a prolonged rut following the legendary career of Frank Beamer.
The Hokies had tried hiring the up-and-coming G5 head coach with Memphis’ Justin Fuente, who went 43-31 in six seasons of diminishing returns before back-to-back 5-win campaigns ended his tenure. They then tried hiring the well-respected coordinator, hiring defensive coordinator Brent Pry away from Franklin’s Penn State staff. Pry went 16-24 and got fired three games into his fourth season (yet has now returned to once again be Franklin’s DC).
This time, Virginia Tech landed one of the most proven coaches in college football as Franklin delivered back-to-back 9-win seasons at Vanderbilt when that was still unheard of and then went 104-45 at Penn State, pulling the program out of the post-Paterno mess and reeling off six double-digit win seasons, four years in which the Nittany Lions finished as a top-10-ranked team and a 13-3 run to the CFP semifinals just last year.
Franklin’s hiring was an immediate boon to Virginia Tech recruiting (including flipping a lot of his former Penn State commits) as it surged to No. 27 in the On3/Rivals recruiting rankings with the majority of the Hokies’ 23 commits hopping on board after Franklin took over.
It should also have a pronounced impact on the program’s NIL funding and the general optimism of a fan base that has been longing for a return to the heights the Hokies experienced under Beamer.
Arguably, no school maximized the potential of its coaching hire more than Virginia Tech.
Most Interesting Lateral Move
Jim Mora leaving UConn for Colorado State.
Granted, UConn isn’t exactly a destination job for football coaches, and it’s far from the spotlight Mora had as head coach of the Atlanta Falcons, Seattle Seahawks and UCLA.
But neither is Colorado State.
The Rams have had one 10-win season in the last 23 years and have finished with 5 or fewer wins in seven of the last eight seasons (including a 1-3 Covid season).
The one outlier in that stretch was Jim McElwain leading Colorado State to a 10-3 season in 2014 and parlaying that into the Florida Gators job, but none of the Rams’ last three coaches — Mike Bobo, Steve Addazio or Jay Norvell — had any success.
Mora, meanwhile, just led UConn to back-to-back 9-win seasons.
His new Colorado State contract also pays him about the same as what he made at UConn (around $2.5 million annually), so it wasn’t about the money.
Mora explained in his introductory press conference that the selling point was greater potential he saw possible at Colorado State, which will be part of the new Pac-12 and in the mix for the Group of Five (or Six)’s automatic CFP berth. UConn is an independent without conference affiliation.
“We have the resources to ascend as high as we determine we want to ascend with the commitment we make. That’s how we determine how far we go,” he said, per the Coloradoan.