Which Schools Got It Wrong During the 2025 Coaching Carousel?

There are still several open head coaching jobs in the FBS. Penn State is the most prominent position still open even though James Franklin was one of the first head coaches fired this season, but top Group of Five schools like Memphis and Tulane are looking for new leaders after their coaches were hired away by SEC schools. The trickle down effect will stay take some time to sort out, yet there are some schools that clearly dropped the ball.

Penn State Nittany Lions

The decision to fire James Franklin may have been a bit hasty. Penn State parted ways with Franklin on October 12, after the Nittany Lions suffered their third straight loss. Franklin was 104-45 over his 12 seasons in Happy Valley, and he led Penn State to five seasons with 11 or more wins. The Nittany Lions made it to the CFP Semifinals last season, and they were ranked No. 2 in the preseason, but there was a feeling that Franklin lost the team after consecutive losses as a 25-point favorite against UCLA and a 21-point favorite against Northwestern.

Penn State was on the hook for a $49 million buyout as soon as Franklin was fired, though some of that will be mitigated now that he is coaching at Virginia Tech. Many observers believed that the Nittany Lions were set to make a big splash, yet they have now whiffed on all their reported targets. Matt Rhule, Curt Cignetti, Kalani Sitake, Mike Elko, and Eli Drinkwitz all signed big extensions with their current schools, leaving Penn State grasping at an ever fewer number of straws.

UAB Blazers

What was once seen as a prominent Group of Five job is now the apple of no one’s eye. UAB received a world of positive press coverage shortly after the program was shuttered. The Blazers announced a few months later that they would return to FBS with Bill Clark at the helm, and he rewarded the fanbase by leading UAB to five straight winning seasons with bowl appearances.

Clark retired two months before the start of the 2022 season. Interim coach Bryant Vincent did a solid job, locking up a sixth straight winning year for the Blazers after a win in the Bahamas Bowl, but AD Mark Ingram (not the former Alabama running back) made a monumentally bad decision when he hired Trent Dilfer to run the program.

The decision to hire Dilfer was widely panned. He had never been a collegiate coach at any level, and his only coaching experience was four years at a private high school in Nashville. The critics turned out to be spot on as Dilfer went just 6-21 against FBS foes and was canned halfway through his third season.

However, instead of learning from this mistake, UAB has reportedly hired Alex Mortensen. The son of the late Chris Mortensen was never more than an analyst in his nine seasons at the collegiate level before being hired to be Dilfer’s offensive coordinator. Mortensen took over as the interim head coach after Dilfer was fired, and his offenses have been steadily worse each season with UAB ranking 64th in SP+ in 2023, 76th in SP+ in 2024, and 79th in SP+ in 2025.

It’s one thing to want continuity with a winning team, but this is a mind-boggling decision. Making Vincent the full-time head coach would have probably been the best move at the time, but UAB is instead taking the interim tag off a coach with no other real experience.

Kentucky Wildcats

Mark Stoops was the longest-tenured football coach in the SEC before Kentucky fired him earlier this week. Stoops brought the Wildcats back to respectability over his 13 seasons with the program, and he took Kentucky to eight straight bowl games. However, the winningest coach in program history was fired after posting a 9-15 record over the last two seasons.

This looks like a case where Stoops became the victim of his own expectations. The last coach to leave Kentucky with a winning record before Stoops was Blanton Collier. He had a 41-36-3 record after taking over for the legendary Bear Bryant, but his last season coaching the Wildcats was back in 1961. Nine consecutive coaches failed to leave Lexington with a record over .500 before Stoops came to town, yet now Kentucky will be paying him $37.7 million to walk away.

Former Oregon offensive coordinator Will Stein might be a decent hire for Kentucky. Stein grew up in the Bluegrass State, so he is familiar with the area. However, the administration and boosters may have unrealistic expectations for the program. Football has always played second fiddle to basketball at Kentucky, and Stein is unlikely to have the resources needed to compete with the top schools in the SEC.

Arkansas Razorbacks

No school’s fanbase has been grumbling more than Arkansas’ fans. It was reported that the Razorbacks were going to hire Alex Golesh from USF early on Thanksgiving week, and that hire would have sated the fans. However, Golesh instead agreed to become the next Auburn head coach, and Arkansas quickly moved on to Ryan Silverfield. 

Silverfield was the head coach at Memphis for six seasons. He took over for Mike Norvell after his predecessor left for Florida State, but he wasn’t as successful as Norvell despite having some of the most resources of any Group of Five school. Silverfield went just 4-4 in AAC play this season, losing to 4-8 UAB in mid-October and finishing the campaign with consecutive losses to Tulane, East Carolina, and Navy. 

The reputation of recent Memphis head coaches has definitely played into the consternation of Arkansas fans with this hire. Justin Fuente was unable to fill Frank Beamer’s shoes at Virginia Tech, and Norvell is close to being run out of town in Tallahassee. Silverfield didn’t receive nearly the same attention from other schools as either Fuente or Norvell, and Memphis fans weren’t upset to see him leave.

This feels like a situation where Arkansas put too many eggs in one basket. The Razorbacks may have convinced themselves they would land Golesh and quickly scrambled when he signed with a rival school. That has led to a dissatisfied fanbase that won’t give its new head coach too long of a leash.