College football’s coaching carousel moved last year like my senior-citizen knees. Only five power-conference jobs opened, and none was an A-lister.
Indeed, those on the market last offseason — North Carolina, Wake Forest, West Virginia, Central Florida and Purdue — have produced a scant four top-10 finishes in the last two decades, three by WVU and one by UCF.
But this year, the carousel threatens to have coaches, administrators, agents, fans and media begging for Bonine, a wild ride that inevitably will affect Virginia Tech’s search, ongoing since the Hokies’ Sept. 14 dismissal of Brent Pry.
Tech’s vacancy is among seven in the Power Four leagues, joined by Florida, Penn State, Arkansas, Oklahoma State, Stanford and UCLA, programs with a combined 25 top-10 finishes in the last 20 years. Moreover, Florida State, Wisconsin and Auburn appear poised for regime change, and in this cut-throat market, where donors investing in lavish player salaries demand immediate returns, no one will be surprised if LSU also bites the buyout bullet.
Wait, that’s not all.
After 13 seasons, a relative eternity in the coaching business, are Dave Doeren and NC State ready to split? P.J. Fleck has steered Western Michigan and Minnesota to top-15 seasons, but after nine years with the underfunded Gophers — Minnesota reported $138.6 million in 2023-24 athletics expenses, well south of its Big Ten cohorts — could he be looking to reboot?
Unlike last year, when no head coach moved from one Power Four school to another, this cycle’s dominoes figure to be cacophonous.
Ole Miss’ Lane Kiffin and Missouri’s Eli Drinkwitz are logical targets for Florida. Ditto Iowa State’s Matt Campbell, Duke’s Manny Diaz, Syracuse’s Fran Brown and/or Nebraska’s Matt Rhule for Penn State — Rhule is a former Nittany Lions linebacker, grew up in State College and worked with Penn State athletic director Pat Kraft at Temple.
SMU coach Rhett Lashlee is a former Arkansas quarterback and graduate assistant, not to mention a former Auburn offensive coordinator, and like Auburn, Florida State and LSU would aspire to lure a sitting Power Four coach.
David Teel: It wasn’t that the Hokies lost under Brent Pry. It was how they lost.
So where does the bedlam leave Virginia Tech?
Well, any school already in search mode could strike early. Freshly deposed Penn State coach James Franklin and former big whistles Pat Fitzgerald (Northwestern), Dave Clawson (Fordham, Richmond, Bowling Green and Wake Forest) and Jimbo Fisher (Florida State and Texas A&M) are accomplished and unaffiliated, and all except Clawson have indicated a strong desire to coach again.
Should the Hokies vet some, or even all, of those folks? Darn right. But any member of Tech’s eight-person search committee with a preconceived notion of who the next coach should be is doing the process a disservice.
That applies to Fisher (national championship at FSU), Franklin (half-dozen 10-win seasons at Penn State), Fitzgerald (five top-25 finishes at Northwestern), Clawson (ACC division title at Wake Forest and conference championships at his other three stops) and, yes, Hokies legacy Shane Beamer (two top-25 years at South Carolina but a disappointing 3-4 this season with more setbacks looming).
Indeed, if football success is as vital to Virginia Tech as President Tim Sands, the Board of Visitors and athletic director Whit Babcock say, and if the university wants to best assure return on the additional $229.2 million it has earmarked for athletics over the next four years, finalists for the job demand rigorous scrutiny.
So while remote interviews suffice for the preliminary stage, finalists should meet the committee in-person, where eye contact and body language are telling, where the candidates can present their plan for leading not any college football program, but the Hokies’ program in the transfer-portal/athlete-compensation world.
If a candidate hasn’t taken the time to craft a Tech-centric vision, then perhaps he doesn’t want the job badly enough. Perhaps he and his agent are using the Hokies for leverage with his current employer.
Penn State head coach James Franklin reacts against Oregon during the fourth quarter of their NCAA college football game, Saturday, Sept. 27, 2025, in State College, Pa. (AP Photo/Barry Reeger)
Were I on Tech’s committee, I would advise taking the pulse of, among others, Franklin, Campbell, Fitzgerald, Clawson, Beamer, Fleck, Diaz, UNLV’s Dan Mullen, North Texas’ Eric Morris, South Florida’s Alex Golesh, Kansas State’s Chris Klieman and James Madison’s Bob Chesney.
In a conventional search that didn’t hit overdrive until late November, that would be an unwieldy volume. But time is on the Hokies’ side.
Some other nuggets on a few of the prospective candidates:
Franklin steered Penn State to more major bowls (five) than Virginia Tech has reached in its history (four).
Like Beamer and South Carolina, Klieman and Kansas State were ranked in preseason, only to start 3-4 and tumble out of the polls. But Klieman is 51-32 at K-State and was 69-6 at North Dakota State, winning four Championship Subdivision national titles in five years.
Morris played receiver at Texas Tech for the late Mike Leach and is an Air Raid offense disciple. He recruited Cam Ward to Incarnate Word and accompanied him to Washington State. His quarterback at North Texas last season was current Virginia star Chandler Morris (unrelated).
Campbell guided Iowa State last season to the Big 12 championship game and a school-record 11 victories. With two top-15 finishes and seven winning records in nine-plus years, he’s the most successful coach in program history, this after a 35-15 run in four seasons at Toledo.
Golesh was Tennessee’s offensive coordinator in 2021 and ’22, when former Hokies quarterback Hendon Hooker threw a combined 58 touchdown passes and only five interceptions for the Vols. This week, Golesh’s No. 18 USF Bulls are the lone team from outside the Power Four ranked by the Associated Press.
Babcock has suggested that the committee evaluate how candidates’ teams perform in one-score games, as favorites/underdogs and after halftime, the latter to help assess the ability to adjust strategy. Well, Chesney’s 6-1 JMU squad has outscored its last five opponents in the second half 101-10, including a 35-0 post-intermission dismantling Saturday of Old Dominion.
Fitzgerald’s .521 winning percentage at Northwestern is better than any Wildcats coach in the last 75 years, a span that includes Dennis Green, Gary Barnett and Hall of Famer Ara Parseghian.
Quality prospects abound. The committee’s task is to check all agendas at the door and make a sage choice for what is, given major college football’s financial stakes, the most important hire in Virginia Tech athletics history.
David Teel, david.teel@virginiamedia.com
