The college football coaching carousel didn’t wait for the regular season to end before springing into motion. By mid-November, jobs in the Big Ten, SEC, ACC and Mountain West had opened up. The day after the regular season ended, three FBS jobs had been filled while eight remained open.
More openings followed as dominoes – like Mike Elko leaving Duke for Texas A&M – continued to fall.
The 2023 season began with one job already open after Northwestern fired Pat Fitzgerald over the summer amid a hazing scandal. Then, a few weeks into the season, Michigan State fired Mel Tucker for inappropriate conduct.
By mid-December, it seemed like the carousel had stopped spinning. And then, just days after the National Championship, it restarted in a big way.
And then the cycle kept going as Jim Harbaugh and Jeff Hafley moved on to the NFL.
As more coaches get fired, retire or leave for other jobs – while others will remain on the hot seat heading into next season – we’ll be tracking them here as college football’s silly season progresses.
Updated: Feb. 15
Georgia State
- Opened: Feb. 15
- Status: Open
Three days into spring practice in Atlanta, reports from 247sports, the Action Network, On3 and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution surfaced saying that Sean Elliott was leaving his post as the Panthers head coach to go back to South Carolina to become the tight ends coach. Elliott was an assistant for the Gamecocks from 2010 to 2016, then became the head coach at Georgia State where he accumulated a 41-44 overall record and a 4-1 mark in bowl games. Elliott is a native of South Carolina and played his college ball at Appalachian State, where he also got his start as a coach.
FILLED: Northwestern
- Opened: July 11
- Filled: Nov. 15 (David Braun)
After 17 seasons on the job, Pat Fitzgerald was fired in July after The Daily Northwestern published allegations of hazing within the program. When Fitzgerald was dismissed, the school named defensive coordinator David Braun – who was just hired in January – as the interim head coach
Following a 5-5 start, Northwestern removed Braun’s interim tag and made him the official head coach in mid-November. The Wildcats then won their next game, beating Purdue, to secure bowl eligibility. That’s impressive, considering Northwestern went a combined 4-20 in Fitzgerald’s final two seasons.
Braun is a Wisconsin native who previously coached at FCS powerhouse North Dakota State. At 38, he is the 10th youngest head coach in FBS.
FILLED: Michigan State
- Opened: Sept. 27
- Filled: Nov. 25 (Jonathan Smith)
Like Northwestern, this is another difficult situation in the Big Ten – albeit for very different reasons. While it was an off-field scandal that ended Mel Tucker’s tenure, the Spartans haven’t been good on the field either. Michigan State is about to finish with a losing record for a second straight season, marking the first time that’s happened since the 2005 and 2006 seasons.
After Duke’s Mike Elko, gave this job a thumbs down, Michigan State looked to the west and poached Jonathan Smith from Oregon State.
It’s a somewhat surprising hire fit-wise, considering Smith – a California native and former Beavers quarterback – has spent his entire career on the west coast. But what Smith has done in six seasons in Corvallis is impressive. After inheriting a program that went 7-29 over the three previous seasons, Smith got the Beavers to a bowl game in year four, 10 wins and a bowl victory the next season, and an 8-4 mark this season.
Michigan State hopes that Smith can turn its team around too.
FILLED: Mississippi State
- Opened: Nov. 13
- Filled: Nov. 26 (Jeff Lebby)
Succeeding the late Mike Leach was never going to be an easy job. While Zach Arnett led the Bulldogs to a bowl win last year, he was 4-6 this season – and 1-6 in SEC play – before Mississippi State decided to move on from him.
The last time this job opened, the Bulldogs pulled Leach away from Washington State in the Pac-12. This time, Mississippi State poached the offensive coordinator from soon-to-be-SEC-member Oklahoma by hiring Jeff Lebby.
This will be Lebby’s first job as a head coach. Before coaching at Oklahoma for two seasons, he was the offensive coordinator at Ole Miss. And way before that, he worked at Baylor for nine seasons under his father-in-law, Art Briles, who was fired after an investigation revealed a culture of mishandling sexual assaults. It’s worth mentioning this because Lebby was named by a Baylor student as one of the football coaches who took no action after she accused a football player of assault. Lebby also sold “CAB” (Coach Art Briles) shirts after he was fired by Baylor. Lebby publicly apologized earlier this season after Briles was spotted on the field after OU’s win over SMU.
FILLED: Texas A&M
- Opened: Nov. 12
- Filled: Nov. 27 (Mike Elko)
After beginning his sixth season at the helm of the Aggies with a 6-4 record, Texas A&M decided to write a very fat check to Jimbo Fisher to make him go away. Fisher’s buyout will cost an absurd $76 million.
Texas A&M, in terms of football, is a program that hasn’t won anything of note in more than a decade, but whose fans expect championship-level football.
For whatever reason, Stephen A. Smith thought that Deion Sanders was the man for the job.
After flirting with Kentucky coach Mark Stoops, Texas A&M hired Mike Elko away from Duke. Before becoming the head coach of the Blue Devils – where he went 16-9 in two seasons – Elko was the defensive coordinator for the Aggies from 2018 through 2021. Texas A&M won eight or nine games in each of those four seasons, including a 9-1 campaign in 2020, and a 2021 season where they had the third-ranked defense in college football in terms of points allowed per-game. Elko proved his head coaching bonafides at Duke, where, in 2022, he led the Blue Devils to just their second nine-win season since 1941.
FILLED: Oregon State
- Opened: Nov. 25
- Filled: Nov. 28 (Trent Bray)
A day after the Beavers lost in the annual Civil War to rival Oregon, Michigan State announced it was hiring Beavers head coach Jonathan Smith away from Corvallis.
From a purely on-field football standpoint, Oregon State is in good shape. The Beavers are enjoying their third straight winning season and they are bringing in a 2024 recruiting class that ranks higher than all but three current Pac-12 teams and every Mountain West program.
Off the field, there’s a lot of uncertainty about this job as Oregon State and Washington State head into the wilderness as the Pac-2.
Oregon State stayed in-house to find’s Smith’s successor, hiring Trent Bray, who had been the Beavers’ defensive coordinator for the past two seasons, and linebackers coach since 2018. Bray, 41, is a native of Arizona and played at Oregon State. He was briefly the interim head coach at Nebraska when the Cornhuskers fired Mike Riley in 2017.
FILLED: Syracuse
- Opened: Nov. 19
- Filled: Nov. 28 (Fran Brown)
Despite a 4-0 start, the 2023 season became the last for Dino Babers at Syracuse following an 8-year tenure.
Babers was hired back in 2016 after leading Bowling Green to two straight bowl appearances. In 2018, his third season at Syracuse, Babers led the Orange to their first 10-win season in 17 years. Unfortunately for Babers, it would be a peak the program wouldn’t reach again during his tenure.
Outside of 2018, Syracuse reached a bowl in just one other season under Babers. When it became clear the Orange would fail to reach bowl eligibility again this season, Syracuse decided it was time for a change as the ACC heads into a new era.
To replace Babers, Syracuse hired Fran Brown, who has spent the last two seasons as the defensive backs coach at Georgia and is regarded as one of the top recruiters in the country. The 41-year-old native of New Jersey has never been a head coach before, but was the assistant head coach at Temple and Baylor under Matt Rhule
FILLED: San Diego State
- Opened: Nov. 13
- Filled: Nov. 29 (Sean Lewis)
After the SDSU suffered its third straight loss, and seventh of the season, the program announced that head coach Brady Hoke would be retiring at the end of the year.
San Diego State has had success in recent years, posting five double-digit-win seasons since 2015 – including one over Hoke in 2021. But the athletic department there has higher standards and bigger aspirations. They’ve kept no secrets about their desire to join a Power Five league, flirting heavily with the Pac-12 last summer, and SDSU’s men’s basketball team made the Final Four last spring.
To replace Hoke, San Diego State hired Sean Lewis away from Colorado, where he had been the offensive coordinator under Deion Sanders. The Buffs had a high-flying and entertaining offense under Lewis, posting an average of 34.4 points per game across their first seven games. After losses to UCLA and Oregon State, Sanders demoted Lewis in favor of Pat Shurmur.
Lewis was the head coach at Kent State before joining Deion’s staff at Colorado. He went 22-21 over his last four seasons there, including a 2019 campaign where he coached the Golden Flashes to their first-ever bowl win.
FILLED: Indiana
- Opened: Nov. 26
- Filled: Nov. 30 (Curt Cignetti)
After a third straight losing season, the Hoosiers have had enough of Tom Allen and will pay him more than $15 million to leave Bloomington, Indiana. The Hoosiers enjoyed an eight-win season under Allen in 2019 – a high-water mark Indiana hadn’t hit since 1993 – and a 6-2 year the shortened 2020 pandemic season, but the buzz wore off as the Hoosiers went 9-27 over the past three seasons.
This is the third Big Ten job to open this season, but the first for football-only reasons. Michigan State and Northwestern have already made hires – with one school retaining an interim and another poaching a coach from a Power Five school.
Indiana filled this position rather quickly, announcing the hire of Curt Cignetti just four days after firing Allen. Cignetti, 62, has been incredibly successful in five seasons at James Madison, going 52-9 overall with an appearance in the FCS National Championship and a 19-4 mark in FBS play over the past two years.
Cignetti is a Pittsburgh native, a former West Virginia quarterback, and a former Nick Saban assistant who had previous head coaching stints at Division II IUP and FCS Elon. Across all levels of college football, he is 119-35 as a head coach. Indiana hopes he can keep winning.
FILLED: Houston
- Opened: Nov. 26
- Filled: Dec. 3 (Willie Fritz)
After five seasons, Dana Holgorson is out as the head coach of the Houston Cougars. Aside from a 12-2 season in 2021, and an 8-5 year in 2022, the Cougars’ other three seasons under Holgorson all ended with losing records. Houston went 4-8 this season – its first in the Big 12 – after losing its final three games to Cincinnati, Oklahoma State and UCF.
Houston has money and aims to be successful in its new league. To replace Holgorson – who received a buyout of nearly $15 million – Houston turned to its former league, the American Athletic Conference. Willie Fritz, who has led Tulane to a 23-4 mark and a Cotton Bowl win over the past two seasons, is the new coach of the Cougars.
FILLED: Boise State
- Opened: Nov. 12
- Filled: Dec. 3 (Spencer Danielson)
For a span of two decades, Boise State was the premier Group of Five program in the western part of the country, enjoying 16 double-digit-win seasons between 2002 and 2022. Despite a 10-win season last year, Andy Avalos hasn’t won a Mountain West title during his three seasons on the job and was barreling toward a .500 – or worse – season this year before the Broncos decided to fire him.
Then Spencer Danielson stepped in as the interim, and the Broncos went 3-0 and won a Mountain West title. That, in the mind of Boise State’s brass, was enough to remove the interim tag from Danielson and give him the full-time gig. The 35-year-old California native has been at Boise State since 2017, working his way up from graduate assistant to defensive coordinator during that time.
FILLED: UTEP
- Opened: Nov. 26
- Filled: Dec. 4 (Scotty Walden)
The combination of location, resources, facilities and fan interest makes this job tough. Aside from coaching at one of the Service Academies, this might be one of the most difficult jobs in all of the FBS. Since 1988, when Bob Stull coached the Miners to a 10-win season, they’ve had just five seasons end with winning records. Dana Dimel coached UTEP to one of those – a 7-6 campaign in 2021 – but was a combined 13-43 in his other five seasons in El Paso.
UTEP reached into the FCS ranks for its next head coach, handing the reins over to Scotty Walden. After briefly serving as the interim head coach at Southern Miss in 2020, where he went 1-3, Walden was hired at Austin Peay where he won two conference titles and earned an FCS playoff berth this past season. The 34-year-old is a Texas native and previously coached at Division III East Texas Baptist. UTEP is hoping that he can inject some fresh excitement in the program and that his ties to local high school coaches will go a long way.
FILLED: Nevada
- Opened: Dec. 1
- Filled: Dec. 4
Nevada pulled the plug on the Ken Wilson experiment after he posted back-to-back 2-10 seasons. Nevada had enjoyed four straight winning seasons under Jay Norvell before he was lured away to fellow Mountain West program Colorado State. The big question here: Is Nevada ready to make proper investments in football to attract a coach that can win the way Norvell did?
The Wolfpack hired Jeff Choate as their next head coach just three days after this job opened. For the past three seasons, the 53-year-old has been the co-defensive coordinator and inside linebackers coach at Texas, and he will continue to coach the Longhorns through the College Football Playoff. Before joining Texas, Choate was the head coach at Montana State where he was 28-22 with two FCS playoff appearances.
FILLED: Louisiana-Monroe
- Opened: Nov. 26
- Filled: Dec. 5 (Bryant Vincent)
It’s been more than a decade since ULM has enjoyed a winning season, not since Todd Berry coached the Warhawks to an 8-5 record. And while the program won a Division I-AA title in 1987, in has never won a bowl game in the modern era.
ULM dismissed Terry Bowden after a third straight losing season. Over the past five years, the Warhawks are 15-43. The ULM administration should get creative here to find a way to put a winning product on the field in Monroe.
To replace Bowden, ULM hired Bryant Vincent. This past season, Vincent was the offensive coordinator at New Mexico State and helped turn the offense into a unit that averaged seven yards per-play and 28.7 points per game. The Lobos have won 10 games and will have the chance at an 11th in a bowl game. Vincent was a head coach as recently as 2022, serving as the interim for one season at UAB where he led the Blazers to a 7-6 mark and a bowl win. He has coached at high schools and colleges across the southeast since 1996.
FILLED: Middle Tennessee State
- Opened: Nov. 27
- Filled: Dec. 6 (Derek Mason)
After 18 seasons, the last of which ended with a 4-8 mark, MTSU finally moved on from Rick Stockstill. The Blue Raiders enjoyed some highs under Stockstill, like a 10-win season in 2009, and an eight-win season last year that included a win over Miami, but they were mostly incredibly mediocre. Stockstill’s overall record in Murfreesboro, Tennessee was 113-111. According to ESPN, he’s owed a buyout of $5 million.
Succeeding Stockstill is a coach that folks in that part of Tennessee will be familiar with. Before Derek Mason was the defensive coordinator at Auburn and Oklahoma State, he was the head coach at Vanderbilt (probably the toughest job in the SEC) for seven seasons, guiding the Commodores to two bowl games. Mason is regarded as a solid recruiter and someone who knows how to build a good defense, two things that should be valuable as he rebuilds MTSU.
FILLED: New Mexico
- Opened: Nov. 25
- Filled: Dec. 6 (Bronco Mendenhall)
After winning just 11 games in four seasons, Danny Gonzales is out as the head coach of the Lobos. It’s been tough for New Mexico over the past two decades as it has posted just three winning seasons and two bowl wins since 2005. Rocky Long and Bob Davie each posted 9-win seasons as head coaches of the Lobos, but no one else has been able to replicate that success.
Instead of turning to someone like Gary Patterson, a former Lobos’ defensive coordinator in 1996 and 1997, New Mexico set its sights on another coaching veteran. Bronco Mendenhall is back in coaching after taking two seasons off. He was last the head coach at Virginia, where he guided the Cavaliers to a 36-38 overall record and three bowl games before resigning after the 2021 season. Before his time in Charlottesville, Mendenhall coached BYU for 11 seasons, going 99-43 and taking the Cougars to a bowl game in each of those years.
FILLED: Wyoming
- Opened: Dec. 6
- Filled: Dec. 6 (Jay Sawvel)
After 10 seasons at Wyoming, 65-year-old Craig Bohl announced that he will retire after coaching the Cowboys in the Arizona Bowl against Toledo. Bohl is an even 60-60 as head coach at Wyoming and will have the chance to leave with a winning record. Before coaching the Cowboys, Bohl was the head coach at North Dakota State for 11 seasons and won three FCS championships. The former Nebraska cornerback was also the linebackers coach for the Cornhuskers for their national championship teams in 1995 and 1997.
Wyoming didn’t look long for Bohl’s replacement. Jay Sawvel will take over after the bowl game. He’s been the Cowboys’ defensive coordinator for four seasons. He previously coached at Wake Forest, Minnesota and Northern Illinois. This will be his first time as a head coach.
FILLED: Duke
- Opened: Nov. 27
- Filled: Dec. 7 (Manny Diaz)
Less than 48 hours after beating Pitt in Duke’s regular season finale, Mike Elko boarded a plane for College Station, Texas to become the new head coach at Texas A&M.
Winning football games at Duke is not easy, but Elko proved it could be done. He combed the transfer portal for key pieces and coached up the players that former coach David Cutcliffe left behind. The Blue Devils went 9-4 with a bowl win in Elko’s first season – which marked just the second nine-win season for Duke in this century – and went 7-5 this season despite playing most of it without starting quarterback Riley Leonard. Duke also beat a ranked Clemson team this season, and hosted College GameDay for the first time ever.
Elko brought good vibes back to Duke football. In hopes of keeping that momentum rolling Duke AD Nina King hired Manny Diaz – who is no stranger to the ACC. For the past two seasons, Diaz has been the defensive coordinator at Penn State (where the Nittany Lions have had a top 10 defense in each of those years), but before that he was the head coach at Miami. Some will argue that Diaz underperformed as the Hurricanes’ head coach with the talent that he had on the roster, but the fact is that he went 21-15 and guided the Canes to three bowl games. While he might’ve not been good enough for Miami’s outsized expectations, Diaz might be just right for Duke.
FILLED: James Madison
- Opened: Nov. 30
- Filled: Dec. 7
A former FCS juggernaut, James Madison hasn’t missed a beat since transitioning to FBS play, going 19-4 over the past two seasons. The leader of the Dukes during that stretch was Curt Cignetti, who was poached by Indiana. Next season, JMU will finally be eligible to compete for Sun Belt titles and bowl bids.
In an effort to keep the good vibes flowing in Harrisonburg, Virginia, the Dukes hired Bob Chesney, who will be coaching in the FBS ranks for the first time with this move. Chesney, 46, was most recently the head coach at Holy Cross where he went 44-21 and guided the Crusaders to four FCS playoff appearances, including a trip to the quarterfinals last season. Chesney has worked his way up from the lowest levels of college football and previously found success at the Division II and III levels too. JMU hope that trend continues.
FILLED: Tulane
- Opened: Dec. 3
- Filled: Dec. 8 (Jon Sumrall)
Willie Fritz flirted with Georgia Tech last season after leading Tulane to its first double-digit-win season since 1998. He was able to largely replicate that success in New Orleans this year, guiding the Green Wave to an 11-2 mark and another appearance in the AAC title game, and a program with deeper pockets came calling. Fritz is off to Houston, and Tulane is now tasked with making a hire that can keep the momentum Fritz built going.
Filling Fritz’s shoes will be Jon Sumrall, who the Green Wave were able to lure away from Troy, where he had gone 23-4 over the past two seasons, winning the Sun Belt title each year. The 41-year-old former Kentucky linebacker coached at Tulane as its co-defensive coordinator from 2012 to 2014 under Curtis Johnson. Sumrall has also coached linebackers at Ole Miss and Kentucky.
FILLED: Troy
- Opened: Dec. 8
- Filled: Dec. 18 (Gerad Parker)
The dominoes from Houston firing Dana Holgorsen continue to fall. The Cougars poached Willie Fritz from Tulane to take Holgorsen’s place, and then the Green Wave lured Jon Sumrall away from Troy to replace Fritz. Sumrall coached the Trojans to 23 wins and two Sun Belt titles over the past two seasons.
To replace him, Troy lured Notre Dame offensive coordinator Gerad Parker away from South Bend. Parker played at Kentucky, was Purdue’s interim head coach for six weeks in 2016, and has worked at Duke, Penn State, West Virginia and Marshall as an assistant before arriving in South Bend.
FILLED: New Mexico State
- Opened: Dec. 23
- Filled: Dec. 23 (Tony Sanchez)
Jerry Kill resigned somewhat abruptly after two seasons at New Mexico State. The Aggies went 7-5 and then 10-5 in Kill’s two years on the job, going 1-1 in bowl games and playing for the Conference USA championship this past season. The 62-year-old Kill said in a statement that this past year was “tremendously difficult … physically, mentally and emotionally.”
To replace him, New Mexico State quickly elevated wide receivers coach Tony Sanchez. He’s a former Aggies wideout and was a successful high school coach at the powerhouse Bishop Gorman from 2009 to 2014. He was also the head coach at UNLV from 2015 to 2019, where he went 20-40.
FILLED: Alabama
- Opened: Jan. 10
- Filled: Jan. 12 (Kalen DeBoer)
The coaching carousel stopped spinning after the Troy job was filled on Dec. 18. But on Jan. 10, the landscape in the sport shifted and the carousel restarted. Nick Saban retired from Alabama after leading the Crimson Tide to a ninth SEC title and an eighth College Football Playoff appearance.
Saban is — perhaps inarguably — the greatest college football coach of all time, having won seven national championships.
As expected, Alabama moved quickly and replaced him with a sitting head coach from a major conference, poaching Kalen DeBoer away from Washington. DeBoer won six national coach of the year awards this past season after leading the Huskies to an appearance in the national championship game. The 49-year-old native of South Dakota has big shoes to fill in Tuscaloosa.
FILLED: Washington
- Opened: Jan. 12
- Filled: Jan. 14 (Jedd Fisch)
After winning the Pac-12 and making an appearance in the National Championship, the Washington Huskies had to find a new head coach. Kalen DeBoer left for Alabama to replace the retired Nick Saban.
Two days after DeBoer left Seattle, the Huskies found their new coach, poaching Jedd Fisch away from Arizona. Fisch, 47, has been coaching football at various levels since 1997, but his three-season stint with the Wildcats was his first gig as a full-time head coach. After going 1-11 in his first season, Fisch guided Arizona to a 10-3 finish this year, the best finish for the Wildcats in a decade.
FILLED: Arizona
- Opened: Jan. 14
- Filled: Jan. 16 (Brent Brennan)
After losing Jedd Fisch to Washington, the Wildcats moved to quickly to find their next head coach as they transition to life in the Big 12. Succeeding Fisch will be Brent Brennan, a California native and former UCLA wideout who has spent the last seven seasons as the head coach of San Jose State.
Brennan went 8-29 in his first three seasons leading the Spartans but has since gone 26-19 over the past four seasons with three bowl appearances, an AP Top 25 finish and a Mountain West title.
FILLED: South Alabama
- Opened: Jan. 16
- Filled: Jan. 18 (Major Applewhite)
Nick Saban’s retirement and Kalen DeBoer’s hiring at Alabama trickled down to the Sun Belt. As DeBoer assembled his Crimson Tide staff, he pulled Kane Wommack away from South Alabama to be his defensive coordinator. Wommack, 36, has been viewed as a rising star in the coaching world after going 22-16 in three seasons with the Jaguars, which included a division title and two bowl appearances. The former Southern Miss fullback and Indiana defensive coordinator could become a head coach again soon at a major conference program if he succeeds at Alabama.
To fill Wommack’s shoes, South Alabama just looked down the hallway and promoted offensive coordinator Major Applewhite to the top chair. The 45-year-old was last a head coach at Houston from 2016 to 2018 and won an AAC West Division title. The Cougars fired him after he lost the AAC title game to Memphis, and then got blown out 70-14 by Army in the Armed Forces Bowl.
FILLED: San Jose State
- Opened: Jan. 16
- Filled: Jan. 21 (Ken Niumatalolo)
The trickle-down from Nick Saban’s retirement reached all corners of the country. Washington replaced Kalen DeBoer with Arizona’s Jedd Fisch, and Arizona plucked Fisch’s successor from San Jose State. So, Brent Brennan is gone, and for the first time since 2016, the Spartans needed a new head coach.
San Jose State turned to Ken Niumatalolo for their coaching vacancy. After he was unceremoniously fired from Navy — where he is the all-time winningest coach — in December of 2022, Niumatalolo spent a year on Chip Kelly’s staff at UCLA. He made it known publicly that he wanted another shot at being a head coach and he’ll get that chance at San Jose State, where he has vowed to not run the triple-option.
Triple-option or not, San Jose State is getting an accomplished head coach. Niumatalolo is widely respected in coaching circles, won the Bear Bryant Award in 2019, was AAC Coach of the Year three times, and won 10 Commander-In-Chief’s trophies.
FILLED: Buffalo
- Opened: Jan. 17
- Filled: Jan. 23 (Pete Lembo)
Kalen DeBoer didn’t poach just one sitting Group of Five head coach for his staff at Alabama. In addition to pulling away Kane Wommack from South Alabama to be his defensive coordinator, he convinced Maurice Linguist to ditch his gig at Buffalo to become the Crimson Tide’s defensive backs coach. The 39-year-old Texas native previously coached defensive backs for the Dallas Cowboys and Texas A&M before becoming the Bulls’ head coach, where he had a winning record in one out of three seasons.
Buffalo seemed to seek experience when hiring Linguist’s successor, bringing Pete Lembo back to the MAC where he was the head coach at Ball State from 2011 to 2015. Since then, Lembo has been an associate head coach and special teams’ coordinator at Maryland, Rice, Memphis and South Carolina. Lembo had some success at Ball State, including a 10-win season in 2013.
FILLED: Michigan
- Opened: Jan. 24
- Filled: Jan. 26 (Sherrone Moore)
Nick Saban wasn’t the only national title-winning head coach to leave his job this year. After leading Michigan to a 15-0 season and that long-coveted championship, Jim Harbaugh is going back to the NFL to coach the Los Angeles Chargers.
As it turned out, Michigan had a suitable replacement for Harbaugh in-house in offensive coordinator Sherrone Moore. As Harbaugh served various suspensions this past season, Michigan went 4-0 in games where Moore was the acting head coach.
Instead of setting off a domino effect like Saban’s retirement, where five FBS programs ended up with new coaches, Michigan kept things in the family and elevated Moore to the top job.
FILLED: Boston College
- Opened: Jan. 31
- Filled: Feb. 9 (Bill O’Brien)
No, the carousel didn’t stop spinning after Nick Saban retired and Jim Harbaugh left Michigan for the Chargers. Boston College’s Jeff Hafley also bolted for an NFL job, taking the defensive coordinator gig with the Green Bay Packers. In a four-season stint leading BC, Hafley went 22-26, including three seasons where he went .500 or better. This past season, he won his only bowl game, beating future ACC member SMU in the Fenway Bowl.
Despite it being late in the carousel cycle, Boston College filled the vacancy in less than 10 days, hiring Bill O’Brien.
The former head coach of the Houston Texans and Penn State recently took a job at Ohio State as the offensive coordinator, but less than three weeks later, he’s back in a head coaching chair. O’Brien hasn’t been a college head coach since his two-season stint leading Penn State after the fallout of scandal, but he was incredibly successful there given the circumstances. He parlayed that into coaching the Texans, where he went to the playoffs four times in six seasons before being fired midway through his seventh. He has since been an offensive coordinator at Alabama and for the New England Patriots.
FILLED: UCLA
- Opened: Feb. 9
- Filled: Feb. 13 (DeShaun Foster)
Chip Kelly was not quiet about his desires to find a new job after six seasons leading the Bruins, the last three of which saw him coach the team to a 25-13 combined record with a bowl win. Still, late in this last season, rumors swirled that Kelly was on the hot seat. While UCLA didn’t fire him, Kelly still reportedly pursued other jobs, in college and the NFL. When Bill O’Brien was hired away from Ohio State to Boston College, Kelly joined the Buckeyes as its new offensive coordinator. It’s worth noting that Ohio State coach Ryan Day played and coached under Kelly when was the offensive coordinator at FCS New Hampshire.
The Bruins’ new coach as they head into the Big Ten, will be a former UCLA running back, DeShaun Foster. He had been the running backs coach under Kelly since 2017 and was an All-American for the Bruins in 2001. This will be his first head coaching job.
