Every new FBS head coach, ranked

Let’s start off with the biggest coaching change in college football — Nick Saban retiring from Alabama and luring Washington’s Kalen DeBoer to replace him. No one is asking DeBoer to be Nick Saban, but they sure wouldn’t mind if he could just be himself. He has been successful everywhere he has gone and just took Washington to the College Football Playoff championship game, where they lost to Michigan. He will get more talent at Alabama as well as a bigger microscope. He’s built for this, and the Crimson Tide couldn’t have made a much better hire. 

Elko was a former coordinator at Texas A&M who has returned to become their head coach … so he knows the culture and the size of the task. That is evident as he excelled at one of the toughest places to build a football program — Duke. The Blue Devils went 16-9 over two seasons under Elko with a robust offense and a punishing defense. Elko could be the key that unlocks A&M’s true potential that wasn’t realized under Jimbo Fisher. 

Elko’s replacement knows the ACC as well. Manny Diaz was the coach at Miami from 2019 to 2021 before Mario Cristobal unceremoniously replaced him. After a two-year stint as defensive coordinator at Penn State, Diaz is back in the ACC and wants to pick up where Mike Elko left off — innovative offense with a physical defense. A great hire for Duke who can hit the ground running. 

I’m still amazed Boston College was able to pull off this hire late in the process. The Eagles didn’t want to make a coaching change, but when Jeff Hafley left for the defensive coordinator job with the NFL’s Green Bay Packers, BC did a fantastic job landing a replacement. O’Brien has run a high level program at Penn State during one of the most dire times in college sports history, and he has quite a history in New England. He was born in Boston and, at one time, was an assistant coach for the New England Patriots. Boston College is in pretty good shape compared to his other head coaching gigs he entered.

Mendenhall falls into the category of “hit big with a Group of 5 school but couldn’t get it done at a Power 5 conference”. Context is key, but Mendenhall is back in the Group of 5 with New Mexico where he was an assistant from 1998 to 2002. He had success for a decade at BYU but was mediocre at Virginia before stepping away. The time off looks to have refreshed Mendenhall. He’ll need it with the struggling Lobos program. 

I was not on board with Arizona hiring Fisch a few years ago but he has proved me wrong. He got off to a rocky start (1-11 in his first season) to building a 10-3 team last season. He’s moving on to Washington to replace Kalen DeBoer as the Huskies head off to the Big Ten. Unlike Arizona, this isn’t a rebuild, so it will be interesting to see how he puts his mark on a program that just played for a national championship and sent three first-round picks to the NFL. 

Willie Fritz is a great hire for a Houston program that has been caught in a bit of a rut lately. Fritz is coming off a very successful stint at Tulane and he knows Texas — he’s coached at Sam Houston State and Blinn College. He put Tulane in a New Year’s Six game in 2022 and nearly did it again last season and should do wonders with the Cougars .

This is a coaching hire that is one of the more interesting to watch. Cignetti has been highly successful at James Madison and its integration into the FCS. He’s a former Nick Saban assistant who obviously ran his own power program in the FBS so he’s confident he can be the guy to put Indiana football on the map. That’s a hard task, but if there’s a guy who can do it, Cignetti is a great pick.

San Jose State did a great job tabbing Ken Niumatalolo to replace Brett Brennan, who took the Arizona job. Niumatalolo knows what it is like to head up a program with unique needs — he worked at the Naval Academy for 25 years with the last 15 years of that as their head coach where he became the Navy’s winningest coach and ended a decades-long losing streak to Notre Dame by beating the Irish three times during his tenure. Niumatalolo will not be employing the triple option offense that he used with the Midshipmen and will instead keep the spread offense that Brennan had success with. 

This may be my more controversial selection. Foster replaces Chip Kelly, who left to be Ryan Day‘s offensive coordinator at Ohio State. He’s been UCLA’s running backs coach and he has helped get backs drafted the last four years. He’s tapped into the Southern California prep scene and has the NFL ties that those prospects would find attractive. Will he be able the run his own program, however? And one that’s entering the Big Ten this season? We shall see. 

Lebby is a first time head coach but he could bring back the Mike Leach style of play that tragically ended with his sudden death nearly two years ago. He has been the offensive coordinator at UCF, Ole Miss, and Oklahoma and wants to bring back a high-octane offense back to Mississippi State. He helped lift the Sooners to 4th nationally in yards per game. He already added Baylor (a place Lebby coached at a decade ago) transfer Blake Shapen to be his quarterback to run his offense.

Boise State at least knows what it has. Danielson took over as interim head coach when Andy Avalos was fired in November and promptly went 3-0, including beating UNLV in the Mountain West championship game. After that win, Danielson was given the job permanently.  He has been with the Broncos since 2017 in some capacity, working his way up to defensive coordinator (he even served as interim head coach after Bryan Harsin left for Auburn and before Avalos was hired in 2021). This is a great hire as Danielson understands the job, the area and what the Boise State program is capable of. And he’s shown them what he’s capable of.  

It took a while for Smith to get Oregon State going—starting off 9-22 in his first three seasons before turning it around and winning 10 games in 2022 and reaching three straight bowl games. A career West Coast guy will now be taking over a tough situation at Michigan State, which has gotten tougher with the Big Ten adding four former Pac-12 schools. Bringing his former quarterback at Oregon State, Aidan Chiles, is a great start at being competitive once again in a growing league. 

Sumrall went 23-4 over two years at Troy and now takes over a Tulane program that beat USC in a New Year’s Six game two years ago. Sumrall also won at Troy with defense, which is what Willie Fritz was building at Tulane. This is a slam-dunk hire for an emerging Group of 5 program. For Sumrall, this is climbing the ladder. If he can replicate his Sun Belt success in the AAC then we will see him roaming the sidelines of a power program by the end of the decade.

This ranking is smack dab in the middle as there are varying thoughts on this hire. Sherrie Moore was a major part of Michigan’s national title last season as he was the interim head coach during Jim Harbaugh’s suspension at the end of the regular season … which included wins over Ohio State and Penn State. How Moore builds this program in his own image while maintaining the success that has been established at Michigan will be a tall task for a first-time head coach at one of the biggest programs in sports. It took Harbaugh quite a while to get the Wolverines to be at this place. Can Moore continue it?

The coaching change at Arizona is a bit trickier than other places this year. Three years ago the Wildcats went a bit outside the box when they hired Jedd Fisch, but they could afford to do so with the program in such a sorry state. Fisch left for Washington fresh off a 10-win season and with lofty expectations as Arizona enters the Big 12 next season. Brett Brennan may not be the “wow” hire fans wanted, but he’s accomplished a lot despite what his record looks like. Brennan did a fantastic job at San Jose State, one of the toughest gigs in all of college football. He led the Spartans to bowl games in three of the last four years (they’d only been to three bowls the previous 28 years). He knows the area — he was a grad assistant at Arizona in 2000 and has worked up and down the west coast.

Bob Chesney has been a head coach since 2010, first at D-III Salve Regina, then at D-II Assumption and then at FCS Holy Cross. He has been highly successful at all three stops, going 111-46 and reaching the playoffs in seven of the last nine seasons. Like Holy Cross, James Madison was a postseason regular in the FCS before making the jump tp the FBS just a couple seasons ago so Chesney is familiar to what kind of work the Dukes have been doing. Unlike his other stops, James Madison isn’t in need of a rebuild. They know that, and they also know what they are looking for in a leader of their football program. 

Applewhite has two years of head coaching experience at Houston and has spent the last three seasons as Kane Wommack’s offensive coordinator at South Alabama. With Wommack leaving for a coordinator job, Applewhite should be able to retain most of the staff that has produced some of the best football in Jaguars history. While his time in Houston ended with a thud, Applewhite has done a nice job building one of the Sun Belt’s top offenses and maturing as a coach. 

Sean Lewis is an “it guy” hire for San Diego State. He spent the last year as Deion Sanders‘ offensive coordinator at Colorado and before that was a head coach at Kent State for five seasons. Lewis’ 24-31 record at Kent State may not wow anybody but a 2-10 season in his first year drove down his winning percentage. For example, Kent State was 14-45 in the five years before he got there and 1-11 after Lewis left, so he did well there. It will be interesting how he does in San Diego, an area in the country he isn’t as familiar with. 

Vincent was actually was a baseball player at West Alabama before joining the football program. After he graduated, he coached at the high school level in Alabama for over a decade before stepping up as an assistant at South Alabama. In 2014, he took a job as offensive coordinator at UAB, but the program shut down after that season. He went back to South Alabama for three seasons before heading back to UAB once the program was reinstated. After four seasons with the Blazers, Vincent was thrust into an interim head coaching position at UAB when Bill Clark suddenly retired as head coach just weeks before camp was to begin. While going 7-6 in that role, Vincent wasn’t retained as the Blazers hired Trent Dilfer to be their new head coach and Vincent moved to New Mexico where he rebuilt the Lobos offense. He knows offense, he knows the Sun Belt and he knows the deep south area. He now takes over a program that hasn’t had a winning season since 2012 and who has gone 10-36 over the last four seasons. 

Pete Lembo has coached many places over his 30-year career, including as head coach at Lehigh, Elon and Ball State. He is a special teams guy, where those units have been among the best in the country no matter where he’s coached. He has spent the last two seasons as South Carolina’s special teams coach, working under Shane Beamer, whose dad, Frank, was a special teams guru. Lembo is highly regarded by everyone he’s worked with and knows the area and the MAC. 

Nevada fans are so happy the Ken Wilson era is over. It wasn’t a popular hire to begin with, and the detractors were proven to be correct. Enter Jeff Choate, who has come into Reno promising a “launch” of the Wolf Pack program under his watch. Nevada can be a successful Mountain West program that needs an aggressive coach who pays attention to details and isn’t scared of building a program up. That’s Choate. He did so at FCS Montana State, rebuilding that program into a two-time playoff team that reached the 2019 FCS Playoff semifinal. He left Montana State to become the defensive coordinator at Texas, where he has the Longhorns in their first-ever College Football Playoff. Wolf Pack fans hope the “first-year curse” doesn’t apply to Choate this season — the last five head coaching hires had dismal showings in their first season.

Wyoming hired a new head coach to replace a retiring one. Craig Bohl led the Cowboys to six bowl games over the last eight years, and new head coach Sawvel has been Bohl’s defensive coordinator for the last four years. He turned the Cowboys into one of the stiffest defenses in the Mountain West and is seen as an extension of Bohl, so the expectations of a physical and disciplined football team should be met. Seven assistants were retained, so the Pokes hope Wyoming football stays in good hands. 

Walden grew up in Texas, played college ball in Texas and has coached in Texas. He spent four seasons at Southern Miss before taking over at Austin Peay, where he was 26-14 and led the Governors to two conference championships and their second-ever FCS playoff appearance. UTEP has not been a very good program, reaching one bowl game in the last nine seasons and posting a 20-61 record since 2017. Walden has overhauled the roster, so there will be a learning curve to begin the season. 

Dino Babers finally was axed after spending the last several years on the hot seat, so Syracuse went out and replaced him with an assistant coach at one of the premiere programs at the moment. Fran Brown has done an outstanding job as the defensive backs coach at Georgia the last two seasons. Before that, he worked as a secondary coach at Baylor and, most notably, Temple and Rutgers. Those northeastern ties will serve him well at Syracuse as Brown is know as a savvy recruiter. But is he ready to taken over an entire program? Syracuse, for its part, needs to support their new hire or this won’t work either. 

The Beavers are going to replace Jonathan Smith … a former Oregon State player turned assistant coach … with Trent Bray … a former Oregon State player turned assistant coach. Smith was an offensive player for the Beavers and an offensive mind as a coach, while Bray is a former star linebacker who served as the school’s defensive coordinator last season. Bray is a safe choice who loves the school. He may become a great coach, but this looks like a move from a program that doesn’t know what the short or long-term will be.

Parker has some experience as a head coach — he was Purdue’s interim head coach for six games in 2016 (he lost all six). His last stop was as offensive coordinator at Notre Dame where he worked with Sam Hartman, and there’s a section of the fanbase that isn’t sad to see him leave.  In between he’s been all over the country and is thankful to get another shot at being a head coach. Troy has been a steadily strong Group of 5 program so hopefully this move continues their rise. 

Derek Mason is back in the Nashville area. The former Vanderbilt head coach who went 27-55 in seven years with the Commodores, will be taking over as head coach of the Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders. This hiring is a bit of a controversial one, as Mason lacked a talented offense while at Vanderbilt (though he did beat Tennessee three times and reached two bowls) and will be taking over a program that shockingly fired their long-time head coach Rick Stockstill, who took the Blue Raiders to seven bowls in the last 11 seasons. Of course, Mason won’t have the constrictions at MTSU that he had at Vandy. At Vanderbilt he had the SEC’s highest admission standards while trying to build a program in the nation’s most talented league. That won’t be the case at Middle Tennessee.  

When a head coach is named in July, that isn’t good news for the program. That’s the case at Utah State where Blake Anderson was removed as head coach due to allegations of complaints regarding sexual misconduct in the program in early July. Dreiling has only been with Utah State since January and suddenly finds himself thrust in an interim role with an Aggies team coming off consecutive 6-7 seasons. He is just 33 years old, making him the youngest coach in the FBS and running a program that is in a bit of chaos. That’s a lot for a brand new coach with just over a month to prepare for the 2024 season. 

New Mexico State is a really tough job, but Jerry Kill was masterful turning the Aggies program around. He retired just before Christmas, and the Aggies quickly named receivers coach Tony Sanchez as his successor. Sanchez was known in the Las Vegas area for his prowess as a high school coach, leading Bishop Gorman to six state titles in his six seasons. He would then be tabbed to take over at UNLV where things didn’t go as smoothly. A 20-40 record over five seasons that saw no bowl appearances and no winning seasons led to his firing in 2019. He’s spent the last two seasons at New Mexico State — his alma mater — as the receivers coach. New Mexico State is a tougher job than UNLV so it will be interesting to see if Sanchez is able to continue the success Kill built in Las Cruces.