The Michigan Wolverines and Penn State Nittany Lions were responsible for the most embarrassing elements of this year's college football coaching carousel. They also made the two best hires of the cycle, landing Kyle Whittingham and Matt Campbell respectively as their new head coaches.
With Michigan reportedly locking in Whittingham with a five-year deal, the carousel has now stopped it's spinning, at least when it comes to head coaches. So now is the perfect time to look at the biggest winners and losers of the cycle.
Winner — Michigan Wolverines
The Michigan athletic department is a scandal-ridden mess. Yet they're going to get away with not cleaning house (seriously, how does AD Warde Manuel still have a job?) by making an absolutely home run hire almost by accident.
From a hiring perspective, the Wolverines were screwed by the timing of Sherrone Moore on Dec. 10. The head coach was fired for cause and landed himself in jail amid the fallout of an affair with a staffer. By the time UM got on the carousel, all the best coaching candidates were either taken or counting the zeros on lucrative contract extensions. Their options dwindled dangerously. But, like a gift from above, Kyle Whittingham stepped down at Utah.
Michigan needed two things: 1) An adult in the room. 2) A good coach. Whittingham checks both boxes with the necessary gravitas to walk in and demand order plus a track record of success. Whittingham guided Utah into the Pac-12, building them up into a perennial conference title contender. He's had down years, but he's always gotten right back to double-digit wins without fail. He's done more with less, building teams full of toughness and grit.
The main downside of hiring Whittingham is he's not a long-term hire. Retirement will always loom. But that's actually a good thing for Michigan. A caretaker who spends a few years righting the ship would give Michigan the time to actually vet candidates for the future. Hiring a potentially unqualified coach right now would only hurt them.
Loser — The G5
The Group of Five coaching ranks were decimated by poaching from the Power Four this year. Both College Football Playoff representatives lost their head coach to another school before even playing — Tulane's Jon Sumrall is now at Florida while James Madison's Bob Chesney is with UCLA. Arkansas grabbed Memphis' Ryan Silverfield, Auburn got South Florida's Alex Golesh, Oklahoma State got North Texas' Eric Morris.
There are a whole lot of G5 power players starting over with new coaches in 2026.
Winner — UCLA
After the Deshaun Foster hiring predictably went belly up, UCLA made the savvy hire by picking Bob Chesney. He wasn't the biggest name in the carousel but he's a winner in the mold of the guy he replaced at James Madison — Curt Cignetti. Both were outstanding coaches at the lower levels, rising up from Division II to FCS and then successfully transitioning to FBS. After Cignetti left, Chesney kept the Dukes churning, going 9-4 in Year 1 and 12-2 in Year 2. Don't mistake that success for riding on Cignetti's coat tails either. The Indiana coach raided his former roster on his way out.
Loser — Lane Kiffin
Lane Kiffin is an excellent head coach. He deserves a shot at leading a premiere college football program at this stage. But I'm still calling Kiffin and LSU a losers here because of the way this all went down.
The Tigers fired Kelly after winning 29 games in his first three seasons. They're paying him $54 million to go away. That's a number that had Louisiana governor Jeff Landry railing against the hiring of coaches on $100 million contracts. Then they turned around and handed Kiffin a seven-year, $91 million contract.
LSU set an absurdly high standard with both of these moves. Kiffin has notched +10-win seasons at Ole Miss, earning praise for his rousing success. What happens when a 10-win season is just enough to keep fans from calling for you to be fired? What happens if he slips up and loses a playoff game. Right now, he has as many playoff wins as I do. Ole Miss interim head coach Pete Golding has one more.
If Kiffin does anything less than make the playoff every year and win a national title in the near future, this hire will be seen as a giant dud. And he'll look like a fool for leaving the comfort of Ole Miss.
Kiffin is a good hire, but LSU has turned this into a bit of an impossible situation for him and the Tigers.
Winner — Penn State
Penn State and Michigan were riding the same rollercoaster this December, and somehow ended up in the same place. The Nittany Lions looked like they'd completely botched their hiring process after firing James Franklin on Oct. 12. Despite having a head start on everyone else, they watched as the top names went elsewhere or stayed home. Curt Cignetti and Mike Elko were no-gos. Kilani Sitake looked possible but he stuck with BYU. There simply weren't any names on the board who looked anything like an upgrade on Franklin, who had been enthusiastically welcomed at Virginia Tech.
Then came Matt Campbell. The Iowa State head coach has been a staple of the coaching carousel rumor mill. Hell, for a minute there he was a popular name in the NFL coaching landscape. But he ended each cycle still in Ames. Finally, in the season Penn State desperately needed to salvage a good hire, he finally made the call to leave the Cyclones.
Is Campbell an upgrade on Franklin? I wouldn't say so for sure, but he's a coach who has consistently done more with less. He punched well above his weight class by winning an average of 7.2 games per season at a school that's averaged 4.4 wins per season in their history. What can he do now that he can throw around the weight of Penn State's football legacy? It'll be fun to see.