Penn State was one of four premier job openings in college football this season, and over the weekend, the other three got filled. LSU pried Lane Kiffin away from Ole Miss, Florida, after missing out on Kiffin, settled for Tulane’s Jon Sumrall, and Auburn, which wanted Sumrall, pivoted to USF’s Alex Golesh. Then, Ole Miss immediately hired defensive coordinator Pete Golding as its head coach.
Not everybody is happy with their hire, but at least they made one. Penn State not only hasn’t pulled the trigger, but there isn’t much noise coming out of Happy Valley about who athletic director Pat Kraft is even targeting. The obvious candidates like Curt Cignetti, Matt Rhule, and Mike Elko all leveraged the Penn State opening for major paydays with their current program. And if those coaches aren’t leaving, Kalen DeBoer, Lincoln Riley, and Marcus Freeman sure aren’t either.
Then, on Monday, one of the top presumed candidates, James Madison’s Bob Chesney, was hired by UCLA. Nearly every current Power 4 head coach who was rumored for the job has reupped, and between Sumrall, Golesh, Chesney, Memphis’s Ryan Silverfield, and North Texas’s Eric Morris, the best head coaches in the Group of Six have already been scooped up.
So, though we ranked the candidates coming out of Week 14, now is a good time to re-rank Penn State’s top head coaching candidates and order them, not in terms of likelihood, because there is very little leaking out of Happy Valley, but by who would be the best hire for the Nittany Lions.
The former Ohio State wide receiver has proven himself to be a prolific recruiter as the longtime wide receiver coach in Columbus, and this season, he’s impressed as Ryan Day’s offensive coordinator. Not only is he an elite recruiter, but he could raise the talent level in Happy Valley because he’s one of the best developmental coaches in the sport.
Programs have been hesitant to hire coordinators for their first head coaching gig, which is baffling because Ryan Day, Kirby Smart, Dan Lanning, Marcus Freeman, and Lincoln Riley were all wildly successful in their first try leading a program. There are plenty of other examples, too. Yet, many in this cycle have opted for Group of Six head coaches while Kentucky gets to hone in on Hartline and Oregon’s Will Stein, two of the best coordinators in the country.
Frankly, with the massive discrepancies between the spending and the roster construction machinations between the Power 4 (particularly the Big Ten and SEC), and the Group of Six, a gap that continues to grow, I’d rather have somebody with experience at a big-time program, even if it’s as a coordinator, than experience as a head coach in what is essentially a different world.
If not Hartline, then Penn State should turn its attention to Oregon’s Will Stein. Like Kenny Dillingham, who left Dan Lanning’s staff to lead Arizona State from the doldrums to the CFP in two years, Stein is a young, energetic play-caller who is a proven recruiter, and crucially, can develop quarterbacks.
Stein led Bo Nix to a dominant senior season, then excellently tailored an offense around Dillon Gabriel last season. This year, though, has been most impressive. Dante Moore looked broken when he started as a true freshman at UCLA. Now, after a year sitting behind Gabriel, the former five-star is the potential No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft, despite playing much of the year without his top wide receivers.
Kalani Sitake is in his 10th year as the head coach of BYU, and just led the program to double-digit wins for the fourth time in his tenure. It won’t be easy to get him to abandon his alma mater, particularly with the Big 12 Title Game against Texas Tech, and potentially the College Football Playoff looming.
Sitake isn’t a renowned as a genius on either side of the ball. Rather, he’s a CEO type, like James Franklin was, who, unlike Franklin, always seems to have his team excel on the margins and perform above its talent level.
This year, after losing his starting quarterback in the Summer, Sitake took a true freshman who transferred in from Stanford in the spring, and led him to an 11-1 regular season. That’s impressive, and he’s the perfect fit in Provo. But would the West Coast native who has spent nearly his entire coaching career in Utah have the same success in Happy Valley? It’s hard to say.
Jeff Brohm is one of the best play-callers in the country and has continually gotten the most out of whatever quarterback is on his roster. That goes a long way, and gives him a chance in every big game, which his four double-digit wins over top 5 opponents between Purdue and Louisville reflect. Yet, Brohm’s team collapsed down the stretch after its win over then No. 2 Miami, and it’s unclear if he can recruit at a high enough level to win a national championship.
Key, like Sitake and Brohm, is at his alma mater, which always complicates a coaching search. Yet, Key has made himself an enticing candidate because he’s had great success on the Flats, leading the Yellow Jackets to nine wins this season.
However, his offensive coordinator, Buster Faulkner, is widely considered the be the secret to Georgia Tech’s success with quarterback Haynes King. I’d need to see what Key does without Faulkner before I buy in because there’s no guarantee Faulkner stays long-term.
Brian Daboll, a branch off the Bill Belichick tree, earned a shot as the head coach of the New York Giants for his role in developing Josh Allen into an MVP candidate. Then, Daboll led Daniel Jones to the playoffs in Year 1, which doomed him for the rest of his tenure because the Giants overpaid to keep Jones.
Still, it’s hard to have much sympathy for a head coach who started this season 2-8 while twice blowing 10-plus point fourth quarter leads (emphasis on the plus from an 18-point blown fourth quarter lead against the Broncos). Daboll has family ties to Penn State and has been rumored to be a candidate, but it’d be a questionable move to hire a coach who has spent most of his career in the NFL.
Penn State’s players and coaches love Terry Smith, and have been openly campaigning for him to get the job on his three-game winning streak to close out the year and lead the Nittany Lions from 3-6 to bowl eligibility. Reportedly, many of them have vowed to stay in Happy Valley if he gets the job. But wasn’t the whole point of firing Franklin to bring about wholesale change?
Also, let’s look honestly at Smith’s tenure as the interim head coach with a team that, yes, was without its quarterback, but was ostensibly built to win the national championship:
He blew a fourth-quarter lead at Iowa. He continued James Franklin’s losing streak to Ohio State and didn’t call a timeout the entire game. Then, credit for being in the game with the No. 2 team in the country, but he blew another fourth-quarter lead to Indiana with some questionable late-game clock management.
After that, he beat Michigan State, which just fired its head coach, Nebraska, which was down to its backup quarterback, and finished the year with a 40-16 home loss to Iowa, and then needed a late-game scoop-and-game touchdown from his defense to stave off 5-6 Rutgers that finished the year with two Big Ten wins.