It was a relatively quiet coaching carousel this year in college football after Mike Elko left Duke to become the new head coach at Texas A&M. Boise State kept their interim coach, Willie Fritz success at Tulane pushed him to be the head coach at Houston Jonathan Smith left his alma mater at Oregon State to be the new head coach at Michigan State among other moves. This all was nothing compared to the fireworks of the previous two coaching cycles. In the offseason of 2022, Brian Kelly left Notre Dame for LSU, Lincoln Riley left Norman, Oklahoma for USC, and Luke Fickell left Cincinnati to become the new head coach at Wisconsin in a flurry of big coaching moves.
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While there were not as many moves in the 2023 offseason, Deion Sanderstook over Colorado, a long dormant football program coming off a 1-11 season. So once this coaching carousel came around, college football fans had grown accustomed to big coaching moves in the offseason. It seemed like a quiet year on the coaching carousel until Nick Saban announced that he would be retiring as the head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide after 16 years and seven national championships won as a head coach, the most ever.
That move by Saban sent a ripple effect throughout college football as Kalen Deboer, who had just led the Washington Huskies to a 14-1 season and an appearance in the
Championship game took the job at Alabama to be Saban’s successor. Washington looked towards Jedd Fisch, the head coach at Arizona who had just led the Wildcats to a ten win season and a win over the Oklahoma Sooners in the Alamo Bowl, just two years after Arizona went 1-11. Arizona hired Brent Brennan as their new head coach from San Jose State, a move seen as a good hire.
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It was a crazy turn of events in a matter of days as two of the coaches bringing newfound success to programs out west left for other jobs. It was painful for Arizona, who was continuing a remarkable turnaround under Fisch and was going into 2024 with high expectations in their first year in the Big 12. But it looks like star quarterback Noah Fifita and wide receiver Tetairoa McMillan will stay in Arizona, two crucial pieces that Brennan managed to keep for next year. The big moves may not be over as Jim Harbaugh, the reigning national champion head coach at Michigan, has had interviews with the Atlanta Falcons and the Los Angeles Chargers. Nick Saban’s retirement has caused the moves that followed.
