Ranking the new college football coaching hires for 2024

You cannot replace Nick Saban at Alabama. You can't. But hiring a guy who has had success everywhere he has been and who instantly rebuilt a Power 5 program into a team that just played for the national championship is quite a great get. Kalen DeBoer went 67-3 during five seasons at Sioux Falls, winning three NAIA national championships. He suddenly took over a Fresno State program and took them to a 9 win season in his first full year. Then in two years at Washington, he went 25-3, won the final Pac-12 title and lost to Michigan in the national championship game. He certainly has the coaching chops and the confidence to take over the Crimson Tide. There will be a learning curve as he's entering a rabidly competitive SEC that is adding Texas and Oklahoma. He has no ties to that area of the country, but he has shown an ability to adapt to his situation. He will also bring a different way of doing things than what Saban did at Alabama. 

This is exactly what you want if you are looking for a coach. A former coordinator at your school who left for a head coaching job elsewhere, does a great job and then comes back to you when you have an opening. That's what has happened at Texas A&M with Mike Elko. The Aggies' defensive coordinator from 2018-2021, Elko left A&M to become the head coach at Duke in 2022 and led the Blue Devils to a 16-9 record in two seasons and was the ACC's Coach of the Year in '22.  

Manny Diaz is back in the ACC after two years as the defensive coordinator at Penn State. He went to Florida State, coached six seasons at NC State and six years at Miami where he spent his final three years there as the Hurricanes head coach. While Diaz didn't turn Miami back into a national powerhouse, neither has his replacement (Mario Cristobal). Diaz is accomplished and will be tasked with continuing Duke on the path Mike Elko set them on. Like Elko, Diaz is a defensive-minded coach, and while the Blue Devils are a tougher program to maintain than Miami, he understands the challenges and the area extremely well. 

Boston College wasn't planning on making a coaching change, but when Jeff Hafley left to become the defensive coordinator for the Green Bay Packers they found themselves needing to hire a new head coach. Getting a guy like Bill O'Brien this late in the process was a huge get for the Eagles. O'Brien has ties to the area -- he was born in Boston, grew up in Andover and was an assistant coach for the New England Patriots -- and he's helmed over some messy situations before. He inherited the Penn State job after Joe Paterno was removed during the odious Jerry Sandusky scandal and took over the NFL's Houston Texans after a 2-14 season. This Boston College job isn't quite the daunting task as those jobs were (the Eagles are coming off a 7-6 season), but BC has struggled to regain its relevancy over the last 15 years or so. This hiring and the increase of financial resources for the coaching staff shows the school is making a renewed commitment to the program. 

Bronco Mendenhall is back at New Mexico where he was an assistant from 1998 to 2002. He would eventually become head coach at BYU for 11 seasons where the Cougars had five 10-win seasons and ten straight winning seasons before moving on to Virginia. While with the Cavaliers for six seasons, Mendenhall had moderate success before stepping down after the 2021 season. He's back at New Mexico after resetting his batteries and is a fantastic hire for the Lobos. He knows the school, the state and that mountain area and will maximize New Mexico's potential. 

When Arizona hired Fisch a few years ago, I was a bit critical of his hiring. He was a bit of an unorthodox hire and when I said it could "break either way", I wasn't wrong. He went an atrocious 1-11 in his first season in Tuscon but two years later led the Wildcats to a 10-3 mark and a team on the rise as they head into the Big 12 next year. Suddenly he finds himself as the head coach of the national runner-up Washington Huskies -- a far cry from the situation he entered at Arizona. He will also be entering the Big Ten next season in what will be a huge adjustment for the program and is likely to lose a lot of the offensive stars that vaulted the Huskies to the final Pac-12 championship. And three years later I'm much more optimistic of his chances for success. 

Willie Fritz is an outstanding hire for a Houston program caught in a bit of a rut lately. Fritz knows Texas -- he's coached at Sam Houston State and Blinn College -- and is coming off a very successful stint at Tulane. He'll be able to recruit Texas and Louisiana well, especially as he's selling a Big 12 program to recruits. He put Tulane in a New Year's Six game last year and nearly did it again this season.

Curt Cingnetti is an intriguing hire. What he's done at James Madison is simply amazing. While the Dukes were members of the FCS, Cignetti took them to the semifinals or further in all three of his seasons. He then led a successful transition into the FBS by going 19-4 in their first two seasons in the bigger division. He isn't just some FCS coach that is trying to carve out an FBS career. He was a Nick Saban assistant on his orginial staff at Alabama and was key in recruiting and development of championship teams. Indiana is a tough job and a bit different from what he's been doing, though he was once head coach of Indiana University of Pennsylvania. The Big Ten is a huge jump from where James Madison has been and Indiana has really struggled to stay relevant, but Cignetti will be afforded time to get the Hoosiers going in the right direction. 

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. 

When Chip Kelly left UCLA for the offensive coordinator job at Ohio State, the school quickly scooped up running backs coach DeShaun Foster. Foster is a legend at UCLA (he once held the single game rushing record) and as an assistant coach has a running back drafted in each of the last four NFL drafts. He also has confidence in himself and his ability to recruit in Southern California as well as in the running back community. His experience as an NFL back gives him a little edge during the NIL era, and his history with UCLA allows him to sell a family atmosphere for the program. How he will function as the head coach will be determined, but he has certainly brought some excitement to the Bruins.  

Mississippi State's offense was unimaginative last year under Zach Arnett, which isn't much of a shock since Arnett, a defensive mind, took over after the sudden passing of Mike Leach. Lebby can certainly turn that around after posting huge offensive numbers at UCF, Ole Miss and Oklahoma. Ironically, he re-enters the SEC for his first head coaching job to take on his old employer and now in-state rival (Ole Miss) while another former employer (Oklahoma) is also moving the the conference. He already added Baylor transfer Blake Shapen to be his quarterback to run his offense. This is a tough conference to start a head coaching career, but Libby is more than confident that he can get the job done. 

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.  

Kudos to Oregon State for sticking with Jonathan Smith, their former quarterback who eventually took over the program in 2018. It took a while for Smith to get the Beavers 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. Don't get me wrong, he can win there but there has been so much off-field noise of late (not to mention rival Michigan at their peak) that there is a lot of work to do to change the Spartans culture. Bringing his former quarterback at Oregon State, Aidan Chiles, is a great start at accomplishing just that. 

Sumrall should be able to continue Tulane's run of recent success. In two seasons as the head coach of Troy, Sumrall went 23-4 and won two Sun Belt championships. He has SEC experience as an assistant at his alma mater Kentucky as well as a one-year stop at Ole Miss. He was also an assistant at Tulane from 2012 to 2014 and takes over a program that has gone 23-4 over the last two years under Willie Fritz. At Troy, Sumrall boasted one of the best defenses in the Sun Belt, which fits neatly into the culture of Tulane who has one of the AAC's top defense. Sumrall is already pitching College Football Playoff appearances (remember that the playoff expands the 12 teams next season) and attempting to bring a national championship back to New Orleans. 

The hope in Ann Arbor is that offensive coordinator Sherrone Moore can continue the success that Jim Harbaugh lifted this program to the last several years. Moore already has a win over Penn State in Happy Valley and a victory over Ohio State under his belt when he filled in during Harbaugh's late season suspension. The familiarity with the program helps Moore, but this Wolverines team will have a lot of turnover after winning the national championship in January. 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. 

The coaching change at Arizona is a bit trickier than other places this year. As I mentioned before, 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 leaves Arizona for Washington (which has fans on edge) with the program coming off a 10-win season and with lofty expectations as they enter 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 slowly built up to this. He 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 is a solid hire for South Alabama, replacing Kane Wommack as he left to take the defensive coordinator job at Alabama. Applewhite has two years of head coaching experience at Houston and has spent the last three seasons as 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. Now, Lewis' 24-31 record at Kent State may not wow anybody, a 2-10 season his first year drove down his winning percentage at a school that hasn't known much success of late. For example, Kent State was 14-45 in the five years before he got there and 1-11 after Lewis left. It will be interesting how he does in San Diego -- Lewis played college football at Wisconsin and spent much of his coaching career in the midwest and Syracuse. 

Vincent has had a long, strange road to Louisiana-Monroe. He 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 specialty is special teams, 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 (who comes from a family that puts in a lot of effort on special teams). Lembo is highly regarded by everyone he's worked with and knows the area and the MAC. 

The two-year Ken Wilson era at Nevada was a disaster. Enter Jeff Choate, who has come into Reno with guns blazing and promising a "launch" of the Wolf Pack program under his watch. Nevada can be a successful Mountain West program ... and has been at times ... but it 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. He's been around and knows the Mountain West Conference and that area of the country due to his time at Montana State and as an assistant at Boise State, Utah State, Washington and Washington State. 

Unlike most of the programs on this list, Wyoming is hiring a new head coach to replace a retiring one. Craig Bohl, who was immensely successful at North Dakota State before becoming the head coach at Wyoming for the last ten seasons, has led the Cowboys to six bowl games over the last eight years -- including the 2023 Arizona Bowl, which will be Bohl's final game. Sawvel has been Bohl's defensive coordinator for the last four years and has turned the Cowboys into one of the stiffest defenses in the Mountain West. Sawvel is seen to be an extension of Bohl, so the expectations of a physical and disciplined football team should be met. 

UTEP is a difficult program to run, but former Austin Peay head coach Scotty Walden is ready to give it a try. Walden grew up in Texas, played college ball in Texas and has coached in Texas. He's 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. 

This is one of the more interesting hires this cycle. Syracuse's program was stuck in the mud under former head coach Dino Babers, which is why the university wanted a change. But instead of elevating a Group of 5 head coach to take over an ACC program, the Orange went with a position coach at one of college football's current dynasties. 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? Especially one in an ACC that is on edge. Syracuse, for its part, needs to support their new hire financially with coaching salaries and NIL opportunities. 

It worked before, so Oregon State is going to try it again. 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. As you may know, Oregon State as a program is in a bit of a state of limbo as the Pac-12 has crumbled and they (along with Washington State) is trying to figure out its future. The unknown (or the prospect of Oregon State becoming a Group of 5 program) will cloud what Bray is trying to do via recruiting high schools and the transfer portal. Bray may turn into a great coach, but this looks like a move from a program that doesn't know what the short or long term will be. Bray is a safe choice who loves the school.

Parker was the offensive coordinator for Notre Dame last season and was tasked with working with Wake Forest transfer Sam Hartman at quarterback. After his playing career at Kentucky, he's made the rounds as an assistant and was even the interim head coach at Purdue for six weeks in 2016. Troy has been a very successful Group of 5 school and Parker should be up to the task at keeping the Trojans competing for Sun Belt championships. 

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.  

Jerry Kill did a masterful job turning the New Mexico State 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 that 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.