Ranking all the new head coaches in FBS for the 2025 season

UNLV made a great hire. Mullen had a solid stint at Mississippi State, going 69-46 over nine seasons, before moving on to Florida. While in Gainesville, the Gators had two 10+ win seasons over four years with the 2019 team going 11-2 and won the Orange Bowl. Mullen replaces Barry Odom, who had a similar coaching career arc, when he moved on to Purdue. Mullen, who has been doing analyst work for ESPN since 2022, has had his name out there for some power conference jobs, so landing him is a huge deal for the Rebels. 

Utah State nailed this one. Mendenhall knows the Utah area well -- he was born there, went to junior college there, and led BYU to a 99-43 mark over 11 seasons as the Cougars' head coach. He would leave the friendly confines of the Beehive State for Virginia, where he compiled a 36-38 record over six seasons before stepping down in 2021. He got back into coaching last year, nearly guiding eternally dormant New Mexico into a bowl game. This is a big time for the Aggies program, as they will move to the revamped Pac-12 conference in 2026. Major hire.

Take me home, country roads. Rich Rodriguez is making his fourth stop at West Virginia -- once as a player, then again as a linebackers coach, then his first stint as the Mountaineers, and now. Rodriguez was highly successful at West Virginia from 2001 to 2007, going 60-26 and piling up three 10-win seasons. He left for Michigan, which was a disaster both on and off the field. After six average seasons at Arizona, he bounced around as an assistant at several schools before landing at Jacksonville State in 2022. He delivered three nine-win seasons for the Gamecocks and helped make their transition from the FCS to the FBS highly successful. Now he's back at West Virginia, where he had his greatest success and trying to get the Mountaineers back to contending for conference championships -- this time in the Big 12

Right after winning the MAC championship, Tim Albin was lured away from his head coaching job at Ohio to take the same position at Charlotte. After starting out with a 3-9 record in 2021, Albin's Bobcats would have three straight 10-win seasons. In the late 1990s, he was the head coach at Northwestern Oklahoma State where he went 13-0 and won the NAIA national championship in 1999. He would join Frank Solich's staff at Nebraska the following year, then re-joined Solich at Ohio in 2005. When Solich suddenly retired before the 2021 season, Albin rose to the job and has been fantastic in Athens. Charlotte has only been a football program since 2013 and has had just one winning season in their history. Bringing in a proven winner like Albin is a major move for the 49ers.  

Usually, when a school fires a coach mid-season, they end up wanting a clean break from the entire coaching staff and bring in a new regime. Well, Blake Harrell did such a good job as the interim head coach that East Carolina gave him the permanent gig. Harrell took over for the fired Mike Houston on October 20th after a 3-4 start and promptly won the Pirates' next four games and five of the final six. East Carolina ended up 8-5 and won the Military Bowl. The Pirates averaged 40.6 points per game since Harrell took over (they were averaging 25.3 points per game under Houston). 

Jake Dickert knows what it's like to run a program through difficult times. He took over Washington State mid-season in 2021 after a scandal removed Nick Rolovich from his duties. He led the Cougars to three bowl games in four years while navigating the program through the Pac-12's breakup. Now he heads across the country to take over one of the more tougher jobs in Wake Forest. You can be successful at Wake, but it takes someone who can maximize his resources ... like Dickert has shown. 

Dickert's replacement at Washington State will be Jimmy Rogers, a fantastic hire for the Cougars. Rogers has only been a head coach for two years, but he's gone 27-3 and won a national championship at South Dakota State. Prior to his head coaching experience, Rogers was a coordinator for South Dakota State (where he won a Coordinator of the Year award) and was the defensive coordinator during their 2022 title run. He took over the program the following season, delivering a repeat championship. As Washington State gears up to compete in the reformed Pac-12, someone with Rogers' experience will be vital. 

North Carolina certainly gained publicity with this hire ... both good and bad. Belichick's hiring has spawned many debates about why he's doing this, whether he will be any good at it, and whether North Carolina is brilliant or making a massive mistake with this move. It has already been a rocky start with his personal life being talk show fodder. Belichick is terming the Tar Heels as the "33rd NFL team" in recruiting pitches as he's trying to establish a college program with access to professional ideas and habits, and coaches that will get kids ready for the NFL. But will this work on the field? Will he be able to run his program with 18 to 23-year-olds the same way he did in the NFL? We will get to see him try. 

Odom was the head coach of his alma mater, Missouri, and went 25-25 in four seasons. He got another opportunity, leading UNLV to a 9-5 record in 2023 and a 10-3 mark this past season, which saw the Rebels play in the Mountain West championship game. Purdue has fallen on hard times after Jeff Brohm left for Louisville two years ago, bottoming out with an ugly 1-11 record last season. Odom is a defensive-minded coach, but UNLV did average 36.2 ppg this season, second only to Boise State in the Mountain West. 

Huff left Marshall for Southern Miss one day after winning the Sun Belt championship, due to a contract dispute with the Thundering Herd. In an interesting twist, Huff leaves the Sun Belt's champion to become the head coach of the worst team in the conference. What was once one of the better Group of 5 programs really fell hard under Will Hall's leadership (they were 1-11 this past season). Huff has a lot of heavy lifting for what is now one of the poorest programs in the FBS. He will lean on the running game, as he was a former running backs coach who worked with Saquon Barkley and Najee Harris in college.  For Southern Miss to land Huff is quite an outstanding hire. 

Entz was the head coach at North Dakota State in 2018 after Chris Kleiman left to become the head coach at Kansas State. Entz went 60-11 in Fargo where he reached the playoffs all five years, getting to the championship game three times and winning two national championships. He left North Dakota State a year ago to become an assistant defensive coach at USC, and in one year changed the culture of the Trojans defense. As Fresno State begins its final season in the Mountain West before heading to the new Pac-12 in 2026, big things are coming for Entz and the Bulldogs. 

K.C. Keeler has more playoff wins than any coach in FCS history, winning a national championship with Delaware in 2003 and Sam Houston in 2020 -- the only FCS coach to win titles at two different schools. He just helped Sam Houston to a successful transition into the FBS and is ready to rebuild the Owls, who haven't had a winning season since 2019. His Delaware ties should help in recruiting and understanding the Philly sports scene. 

This is a bit of a risk, but it could be the first stop to a robust career for Kittley. For starters, at 33 years old Kittley is the youngest head coach in the FBS at his hiring. His offenses at Houston Christian, Western Kentucky and Texas Tech have been efficient and explosive. Kittley was mentored by Kliff Kingsbury as an assistant at Texas Tech in the mid-2010s and was a quarterbacks coach for Patrick Mahomes.

When Tim Albin left to become the head coach at Charlotte, the Bobcats looked within for their new head coach. Brian Smith has been at Ohio as the running backs coach, offensive coordinator and assistant head coach for the last three seasons. He led the team to their Cure Bowl victory over Jacksonville State, 30-27. The Bobcats have completed their third straight 10-win season and led the MAC in offense. Keeping things in-house should allow Ohio to continue one of the best runs in the program's history, even if there are rumors that the school could leave the MAC for the Sun Belt.

Simmons has a very successful coach in the FCS with Prairie View A&M and Florida A&M, ending with a winning record in all eight of his seasons as head coach. His final season at FAMU he went 12-1 and won the Celebration Bowl. He served as Duke's running backs coach last season before accepting the FIU gig, a program that hasn't had a winning record since 2018. His experience in coaching and recruiting in Florida was a big factor in Simmons getting this job. 

A bit of an unorthodox hiring. Phil Longo has spent time at Sam Houston before, where he was the offensive coordinator from 2014-2016. His air raid offense was one of the most lethal in the FCS at the time. He then stepped up into the power conferences where he was an offensive coordinator at Ole Miss, North Carolina and Wisconsin. His highest profile work was with the Tar Heels where he worked with Sam Howell and Drake Maye. While at Ole Miss he worked with elite receivers A.J. Brown and D.K. Metcalf. He left for Wisconsin in 2023 but didn't find the same success and was fired in November. Still, his offense will undoubtedly attract talent to a rising Group of Five program. 

Kelly knows the university, having spent five years as an assistant coach for the Gamecocks in the 1990s. Since then, he's spent time as an assistant at some big programs - Georgia Tech, Florida State, Tennessee, Alabama, Colorado, and Auburn ... where he spent last season. He's been an assistant for Paul Johnson, Jimbo Fisher, Nick Saban and Deion Sanders -- four completely different types of coaches who've found varying levels of success doing things their way. Jacksonville State has been very successful in its first two FBS seasons under Rich Rodriguez.  

When Scot Loeffler left to be the Philadelphia Eagles QB coach, Bowling Green turned to hire former NFL All-Pro running back Eddie George to run the program. George is coming off a four-year stint at Tennessee State where he went 24-22 and is coming off a FCS playoff appearance, and he was named the Big South-OVC Coach of the Year. George is certainly a popular name in the state of Ohio, having won a Heisman Trophy in 1995 while at Ohio State. 

Mack might be the exact right hire for Kennesaw State. The Owls have just taken the step up to the FBS level, completing their first season in Conference USA with a 2-10 record. Mack, who most recently was the running backs coach for the Jacksonville Jaguars, had success in his only head coaching job for North Carolina Central, going 31-15 in four years with the Eagles ... winning three MEAC conference titles. He has spent most of his 20-year coaching career in the Southeast and knows the college landscape well. He will be replacing Brian Bohannon, who stepped down/dismissed during last season as the only head football coach the Owls have ever known. 

Who is Scott Frost? Is he the prodigy head coach who went 13-0 as the head coach of UCF in 2017 ... or is the guy who has had a losing record in the other six seasons he's coached? UCF is hoping for the former, when he guided the Knights to the program's greatest season and put the school in the limelight. And that's the problem. The UCF team Frost left played in the AAC -- they are now in the Big 12. Frost's awful run at Nebraska may be a more likely view of what his second stint in Orlando will look like.  

Ball State stayed in state when hiring a new coach, bringing in Butler head coach Mike Uremovich. Uremovich was born in Gary, Indiana, attended Purdue, and has spent the last three seasons turning around a Butler program that won six games combined in the three seasons before he got there. Current Ball State defensive coordinator Jeff Knowles has been friends with Uremovich since elementary school, played together in high school, and has worked together at several stops in college. Knowles left Butler (where he was Uremovich's defensive coordinator) last year to go to Ball State. Now they'll be together again. 

Eck spent the beginning of his career as a graduate assistant at Wisconsin and Colorado before toiling as an assistant coach at Idaho, Winona State, Ball State, Minnesota State, South Dakota State and several other places. He finally got his shot to lead his own program when he took the Idaho job in 2022 and turned around a program that had suffered five straight losing seasons, ultimately leading them to three FCS playoff appearances. His most recent Vandals team went 10-4 before losing to top seed Montana State in the quarterfinals. Eck replaces Bronco Mendenhall, who did a fabulous job in his only season in Albuquerque. 

Another young coach who is taking a job where he's familiar. At one time, Joe Harasymiak was the youngest coach in Division I football when he took over at Maine in 2016 at the age of 29. In three years at Maine, he built the program up to a 10-4 mark and a trip to the FCS semifinals. He immediately left that job to be an assistant at Minnesota, then two years ago became the defensive coordinator at Rutgers. Harasymiak went to college in Springfield, MA and spent a lot of his coaching career in New England and the northeast, so while UMass will be joining the MAC, he knows the lay of the land. Rest assured, the Minutemen will have a stout defense. 

Drinkall is yet another hire on this list that has had success at a lower level and is stepping up into a head FBS job. Drinkall spent five years as the head coach at Kansas Wesleyan (NAIA) from 2014 to 2018. The Coyotes went 42-17 under his watch, going 13-1 in his final season and reaching the NAIA semifinals. He left to be an assistant at Army where he spent time at various positional coaching jobs and as co-offensive coordinator. Drinkall will bring a tough running style to the Chippewas, just like he did at both Kansas Wesleyan and Army. The once-proud Central Michigan program has fallen into a funk over the last several years and are hoping Drinkall's energy breathes new life in Mount Pleasant. 

Lamb may only be 35 years old, but he's a coaching lifer. His father was a prominent high school coach in Georgia and Tre immediately got into coaching after his QB playing days at Tennessee Tech were over.  He spent four years as the head coach at Gardner-Webb, where he went 20-20, before going 7-5 last year in his lone season at East Tennessee State. Now, those may not seem like gaudy records, but he quickly turned around two programs that were stuck in the mud. He led Gardner-Webb to consecutive Big South titles, their first in nearly 20 years, and led them to their first FCS playoffs appearance (and their first playoff appearance of any kind since 1992), and their first FCS playoff win. 

When Charles Huff left to take Southern Miss' head coaching job, Marshall pounced on NC State defensive coordinator Tony Gibson. Gibson was an assistant at West Virginia Tech for two years and spent 13 years over two stints with the West Virginia Mountaineers. That's huge for this program, as there were always questions about the stability of the Thundering Herd under Huff. Gibson has roots there -- he was born and raised in the state and attended Glenville State. He's 52 years old and this will be his first head coaching job, and there's more to Marshall (who just won the Sun Belt championship) than just being a native son. Stability is a good start. 

Appalachian State is known for great quarterback play and Loggains is the right guy to keep that going. Loggains spent a lot of time as an assistant in the NFL, working as a quarterbacks coach or offensive coordinator for the Titans, Browns, Bears, Dolphins and Jets. Loggins went back to college and he's spent the last two seasons as South Carolina's offensive coordinator, where he turned around the Gamecocks by developing quarterback LaNorris Sellers. Loggains hasn't been a head coach before and now heads a program that has high expectations and has faced a lot of adversity this past season.

Rice is an interesting hire. He made his name in the high school ranks in Virginia before landing with Division III's Washington & Lee. He took the Generals to three playoff appearances in six years before moving on to FCS's Davidson College. He led the Wildcats to three playoff appearances by utilizing the triple option, which he figures to employ at Rice. His offenses finished near the top of the FCS in rushing and he understands the unique challenges of running a program like Rice. Moving to the FBS will be new, as well as leaving the mid-Atlantic for Texas. Will his offense work in the American Athletic Conference? Well, it's worked nicely for Army and Navy this season.

This is a weird case. New Stanford General Manager Andrew Luck called up his old coach from the Indianapolis Colts to offer him a job. A quick job. Frank Reich will come out of retirement to coach the Cardinal for just this season. A one-year deal. Luck and the school were in a crunch after Troy Taylor was fired after two 3-9 seasons and an investigation into bullying members of the athletic department. The firing came in late March, meaning there was little time to have a full coaching search that the program desired. So enter Reich, who had a solid NFL career as a quarterback, an assistant coach and head coach of the Colts and Carolina Panthers. Stanford plans to conduct a full search at the end of the 2025 season. 

Carney, formerly the offensive coordinator at Kent State, was elevated to interim coach after the April firing of Kenni Burns for violations of his contract. Carney has been a QB coach or offensive coordinator at several places, including Richmond, Bowling Green and Charlotte. He left Charlotte for Kent State in 2023 to become the tight ends coach and then the OC last season. Kent State will conduct a proper coaching search at the end of the season.