My first off-season project is taking a look at the coaching situation throughout the country. First up, we’ll deal with the Big 12–one of the more interesting leagues in the nation. Are they slowly dying? Maybe sneakily on the rise? Perhaps lacking identity and not enough rivalries to get outsiders to tune in on the weekends? It’s a big jumbled mess with plenty of entertainment to offer but not really super threatening at the highest levels of college football.

Without Texas and Oklahoma the conference is desperately trying to forge a new identity.

New Coaches (But Back Again)

Scott Frost – UCF
Rich Rodriguez – West Virginia

A neat twist for 2025 in the Big 12 is a pair of ‘new’ coaches coming back to their old schools. Rich Rod, soon to be 62 this month, has been through a lot since he left Morgantown in what feels like it was a million years ago. West Virginia played 4 more seasons in the Big East after Rodriguez left for his disastrous tenure at Michigan. Now, the Mountaineers are heading into their 14th season in the Big 12 and are one of the elder statesmen of the league (what a dumb sport we have).

Can Rich Rod re-ignite the spark at his old home? He rebounded nicely at Arizona back in the day then that got stale. Over the past 3 seasons, his Jacksonville State teams did well and mostly beat the teams they were supposed to beat. If you’re West Virginia, why not at this point? They did play decently last year (9-4 with a Duke’s Mayo win, their best season in 7 years!) but fired Neal Brown anyway.

Frost going back to UCF doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. After the bad Nebraska tenure he took a year off and then was an analyst for the Rams. Now he gets the UCF job again? While the 2017 season was magical, Frost hasn’t coached any other season over .500 in his career. Is he any good? UCF looked like it was capitalizing on that undefeated season with the hire of Josh Heupel but the program had been going backwards in the latter stages of the Gus Malzahn era and continue to be a weird fit in their new conference.

Hanging Around

Sonny Dykes – TCU
Joey McGuire – Texas Tech

Sonny Dykes left SMU for TCU, would he rather be with the Mustangs in the ACC right now? That’s an interesting question and not one that would’ve been asked when the Horned Frogs made it to the National Championship Game back in Dykes’ first season in Fort Worth. The 2023 follow up was a dud, although the Frogs stabilized with a decent 9-win season last year. I’m not sure if Dykes should be placed in my last group in this article today but he’s had 4 or fewer losses as a head coach in 5 out of the last 6 seasons.

McGuire might be the least known about head coach at a power program, don’t you think? A former Texas high school coach, he was an assistant at Baylor for 5 years before taking his first head college job with the Red Raiders. He’s been fine with TTU and 23-16 through 3 seasons. At the end of the 2022 season, McGuire signed a new contract worth $26.6 million that takes him through 2028.

Wheel Spinning

Dave Aranda – Baylor
Lance Leipold – Kansas
Mike Gundy – Oklahoma State

Aranda was on the hot seat coming into last year (9-16 over 2022-23) and stabilized things winning their last 6 regular season games of 2024. Baylor announced that he would come back for 2025 but I’d also argue it’s not great long-term if a school has to release that information to the public. Aranda has 5 years remaining on his deal and a decent buyout that would take a big check to move on in the future, though.

Two years ago Leipold was getting all the accolades after finishing with 9 wins and ranked in the AP Poll. Then they had a super weird 2024 with 7 losses but also wins over ranked Iowa State, BYU, and Colorado. After high expectations I’m curious to see how they will rebound this fall. Surely Leipold will be sticking around for a long, long time in Lawrence.

No longer 40.

You could say the Gundy era is coming to a close at Oklahoma State just because it’s natural when you’ve been at a school for such a long time (20 years!) and then being the only team over the last 4 years to go winless in the Big 12 isn’t going to help the old program momentum. They just revised his contract to include $1 million less in base salary and a $15 million buyout for the next few seasons. I think hot seat is a little dramatic right now but the program is probably thinking about it’s long-term future without Gundy more and more.

Poor Early Returns

Brent Brennan – Arizona
Scott Satterfield – Cincinnati
Willie Fritz – Houston

Brennan and Fritz are heading into their 2nd seasons at their new homes while Satterfield has finished a pair of seasons with the Bearcats. These coaches are a combined 16-32 and 1-11 against ranked opponents. Oddly enough, Cincinnati did beat playoff-bound Arizona State last year.

Arizona went from 10 wins to 4 wins with Brennan in his first season–not great. He signed a 5-year deal with a fairly modest salary for a Power program with a buyout that’s already $7.5 million and drops to $4.5 million next year.

Satterfield looked to be a little overrated during his time at Louisville (one game over .500 and 15-18 in the ACC) so maybe his transition and struggles with Cincinnati aren’t that surprising. He has 4 more years on his contract with a full buyout around $15 million today. The Bearcats did improve from 94th to 52nd in FEI last year so maybe some more wins are coming in 2025.

The end of the Dana Holgorsen era was weird and Houston did not handle the transition to the Big 12 very well. Fritz’ first season was a continuation and the school has lost 16 games over the last 2 years. I still like the ceiling of this program (look at that basketball program!) and if things don’t get better soon I could see Houston pull the rip cord on this hire. His deal was for 5 years at $22.5 million, and the buyout for a firing is 60% of his remaining contract or currently around $10.5 million.

The Headline Grabbers

Kenny Dillingham – Arizona State
Deion Sanders – Colorado

Both of these coaches are moving into year 3 at their programs and completed second-year turn around miracles to varying degrees. Dillingham’s being far more impressive as the Sun Devils went from 3-9 to 11-3 with a conference championship and playoff appearance. Sanders improved by 5 wins and did have the same regular season conference record as the Sun Devils.

Future star?

Predicting the future for either coach in this section is perilous. Colorado has to re-load without the Heisman winner and you wonder how engaged Sanders is going to remain in Boulder when his sons are no longer playing for him. I don’t think he has to win 10 and 11 games from now on but Sanders is making $10 million a year and any program would get restless if this ship falls back to .500 football or so.

This is the Big XII remember, so if Dillingham is a legit young superstar coach like he flashed last year the pathway to another great season isn’t that difficult. Nine league games with Northern Arizona/Miss State/Texas State out of conference is entirely manageable.

The Proven Crew

Kalani Sitake – BYU
Matt Campbell – Iowa State
Chris Klieman – Kansas State
Kyle Whittingham – Utah

We’re not talking about a bunch of National Championship coaches here, nor guys who are always consistently great, even within their league. Still, these are programs on solid ground.

Sitake struggled in his first year in the Big 12 but then bounced back in a big way last year. He had a fairly slow start with BYU back in 2016 (he’s entering year 10 already!?) and has picked things up going 45-18 over the last 5 seasons. I think he’ll be in Provo for a very long time.

11 wins and a cinnamon Pop-Tart to celebrate. 

Matt Campbell looked to be in line for bigger jobs over the course of his career and at 45 years old may continue to lay down roots in Ames after signing an 8-year extension through 2032 season. He could double his salary somewhere else, should he wish though. Coming off a career-high 11 wins and a Pop-Tarts Bowl victory the good vibes are back for Iowa State.

Retirement rumors have been swirling around Kyle Whittingham who has been coaching at Utah for 30 years and head coach for his upcoming 22nd campaign. The school even named defensive coordinator Morgan Scalley as Whittingham’s successor but as of yet there are no concrete retirement plans. Taking out the weird shortened Covid year, Whittingham was 31-11 in 2019 and 2021-22 but fell to 8-5 in 2023 and a really disappointing 5-7 last year with all of those defeats coming in their debut Big 12 season. This has been a proud program that now has an uncertain future with a will-he-or-won’t-he head coach awaiting his retirement decision.