College football coaching carousel: What recent hiring trends could tell us about new coaches in 2024 season

When athletic directors from power conferences are in the process of hiring a new football coach, they are essentially faced with two decisions: either take a leap and identify a promising assistant or coach at a lower level, or pay big money to attract a tenured coach with a cushy job in one of the country’s top leagues. Available resources play a big role in the final decision, but we’ve seen some schools pull off big coups in recent years.

The 2021-22 cycle saw three coaches with job security at major power conference schools, two of whom led their programs to College football Playoff appearances (Lincoln Riley and Brian Kelly), leave for new jobs. The 2023-24 carousel broke that mark with four coaches moving from a Power Four school to a Power Four school.

Quick recap of the move: Alabama signed Kalen DeBoer from Washington to replace Nick Saban; Washington filled its vacancy with Jedd Fisch of Arizona; Texas A&M lured Mike Elko away from Duke after Jimbo Fisher’s expensive firing; and Michigan State managed to pry Jonathan Smith away from his alma mater Oregon State.

There have been even more – what we would call for the purposes of this article – “positive swings” (i.e. hiring/promotion of Group of Five assistant coaches or head coaches):

Success is difficult to predict regardless of the coach’s previous location. Of the two categories we’ve classified coaches into since the 2021-22 cycle — “positive swings” and “power conference to power conference” — the winning percentages are nearly identical.

Obviously, the sample size with former Group of Five assistants and coaches is larger and the hit rate is arguably more impressive, especially when taking into account entry-level contract numbers and relative expectations. But when you zoom in even further on the data from the last two training cycles and subsequent seasons on the field, there are some interesting trends we can extract and apply to the 2024 signings to set the tone for their first year.

Head shakes

Recruiters Win: It turns out that talent acquisition is very important when it comes to winning in college football. It’s certainly one of the main factors programs should consider when hiring a new coach, especially if they’re targeting assistants.

Just look at Oregon coach Dan Lanning’s immediate success. During his tenure at Georgia, in which he served as outside linebackers coach and later as defensive coordinator, he was responsible for bringing in some of the most notable talents that turned Georgia into the defensive Death Star it is today. Nolan Smith, 2023 first-round pick NFL Draft, and Nakobe Dean, who won the 2021 Butkus Award as the sport’s top linebacker, come to mind. Lanning is now 22-5 in two seasons at Oregon, and the Ducks are recruiting at a ridiculous level both in high school and in the transfer portal.

Texas Tech’s Joey McGuire is another great example. While he may not have attracted as many top-tier prospects, McGuire established himself as one of Baylor’s best evaluators and closers on the recruiting trail as an assistant from 2017-21. His deep ties to the state of Texas as a former coach at Cedar Hill High School certainly help.

McGuire’s 15-11 record through two seasons is the best start for a Texas Tech coach since Steve Sloan, who had 16 wins in 1975-76. In 2022, he became the first Texas Tech coach to beat Oklahoma and Texas in the same season and posted the program’s first conference winning record since 2009. On the recruiting front? The Red Raiders have signed five of the top 20 highest-rated prospects in program history (according to the 247Sports Composite) through two full recruiting cycles under McGuire.

That bodes well for Syracuse and Fran Brown. While he has never been a coordinator at the power conference level, his recruiting bona fides are arguably more impressive than any other hire during the 2023-24 cycle. He was named 247Sports National Recruiter of the Year in 2024 after earning two five-stars and five top-100 prospects for Georgia’s top-rated recruiting class. His impact is already being felt in Syracuse, as the Orange boast an impressive 17-player transfer class headlined by former Ohio State starting quarterback Kyle McCord.

Also keep an eye on new UCLA coach DeShaun Foster, who had a knack for spotting running back talent with the Bruins, and Michigan coach Sherrone Moore, the primary recruiter of stars like Daxton Hill and JJ McCarthy during his time as an assistant with the Wolverines. .

The hired Group of Five began work: Over the past two coaching cycles, former Group of Five coaches have gone 43-24 in their first season at the power conference level. All five who fall into that category — Florida’s Billy Napier, Alabama’s DeBoer, TCU’s Sonny Dykes, Auburn’s Hugh Freeze and Wisconsin’s Luke Fickell — reached at least one bowl game in their inaugural season.

Admittedly, DeBoer and Dykes are doing some heavy lifting here. Dykes led a miracle run to the 2022 College Football Playoff National Championship, while DeBoer turned 4-8 Washington into an 11-win team that finished the year ranked in the top 10 nationally for the first time since 2016.

What happened after that first year is a mixed bag. Including Napier, DeBoer was the only one of the three former Group of Five coaches to improve his win total in 2022-23. The Huskies went 14-1 amid a run to their first CFP National Championship appearance last season, while Napier and Dykes — who had to deal with several notable Cinderella team losses — combined for a record 10 -14.

So good things could be in store for Curt Cignetti in Indiana and Willie Fritz in Houston. Fritz is entering an open Big 12 after leading Tulane to consecutive 11-win seasons, while Cignetti has never won fewer than 11 games in a full 12-game season at James Madison.

Energy Conference for Energy Conference

Program creators exceed expectations: What do I mean by program builders? Louisville coach Jeff Brohm is a prime example. In 2017, Brohm inherited a Purdue team fresh off four consecutive losing seasons and immediately won seven games and produced the Boilermakers’ first bowl victory in six years.

From there, Purdue went through some ups and downs as Brohm constantly molded the roster in his image. Then in 2021, Brohm produced Purdue’s first nine-win season since 1998 by defeating a Tennessee team in the Music City Bowl. He followed that up in 2022, guiding the Boilermakers to their first Big Ten Championship Game appearance since 2000.

Louisville identified Brohm’s success during the 2022-23 coaching carousel and went after him to replace Scott Satterfield. In his first season with the Cardinals, he went 10-4, finished second to Florida State in the ACC and gave Louisville its first final AP Top 25 ranking since 2016. This for a Louisville team that was chosen to finish eighth. in the conference in the ACC Preseason Media Poll.

Washington’s Jedd Fisch and Michigan State’s Jonathan Smith fit that Brohm mold. Fisch won one game in his first season at Arizona (2021), improved to 5-7 in 2022 and just led the Wildcats to a 10-4 record, turning that into an opportunity with the Huskies and the Big Ten.

Also a Big Ten rookie in the 2024 season, Smith embarked on an even slower but equally fruitful build at Oregon State. He had losing seasons in each of his first three years (2018-20) before breaking through in 2021 with a 7-6 showing. He raised the bar even higher in 2022 with a 10-3 campaign, capped by a victory against Florida in the Las Vegas bowl, and led the Beavers to 8-4 in 2023 before taking the job at Michigan State.

Strike while the iron is hot: College football has always been, and has increasingly become in recent years, a “what have you done for me lately” sport. It turns out that with these big-money signings, timing can be everything.

USC hired Lincoln Riley after a 2021 season in which he failed to win the Big 12 title and missed the New Year’s Six Bowl for the first time since becoming head coach in 2017. In his first season with the Trojans, Riley produced a Heisman Trophy winner in quarterback Caleb Williams, but the results on the field didn’t necessarily reflect that; USC lost three games – the most losses in a single season (up to that point) in Riley’s career – and fell in the Cotton Bowl against Tulane.

Things got significantly worse in 2023. With Williams back to run the offense, USC fell to 8-5 and lost four conference games in its final season as a Pac-12 program.

Mario Cristobal is a similar story. Oregon reached its peak under Cristobal in 2019, when it went 12-2, won the Pac-12 and beat Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl. The Ducks followed that up with another conference title during the COVID-shortened 2020 campaign. Oregon won 10 games in 2021 and reached its third straight Pac-12 championship game, but the Ducks lost two of their last three games — both to Utah — and Cristobal fled to Miami before he could coach in an Alamo Bowl loss to Oklahoma.

Miami is now 12-13 after two years of Cristobal. Their win total improved by two games in 2022-23, but the Hurricanes have posted a 3-5 ACC record in consecutive seasons.

As described above, Louisville’s signing of Brohm is an example of good timing. He came to the Cardinals on the heels of a surprising run to the Big Ten Championship Game. Most of the power conference programs that had great success this off-season also got the timing right.

Alabama hired DeBoer just days after he led Washington to the College Football Playoff National Championship. Fisch left for Washington after a 10-win season and Michigan State took a shot at Smith after its 18 wins over the last two years. There’s no telling what your new ventures will look like, but momentum is certainly on your side.