Grading the Power Four coaching hires and retentions
In one of the more muted coaching carousels in recent memory, there weren’t many changes at the top but some big ones did happen. Rivals national recruiting director Adam Gorney breaks down the Power Four coaching changes and retentions and gives each a grade:
COACHING CHANGES
NORTH CAROLINA: Bill Belichick
North Carolina hired the greatest football coach of all time. Belichick has eight Super Bowl rings, six as a head coach, so no one knows how to develop players better and how to win at the highest level. There are questions, though. He’s never recruited, never dealt with NIL in the college football landscape, never has seen roster turnover at this quick of a pace. But Belichick is brilliant and he will surround himself with people to cover every inch of the organization as he handles Xs and Os and winning games. A better hire, even at 72-years old, could not be had.
Grade: A+
PURDUE: Barry Odom
Odom steps into a difficult situation because Purdue was struggling to hang on in the old Big Ten and now it’s only gotten bigger and stronger with the addition of Oregon, Washington, USC and UCLA. It’s arguably the best conference in the country this year and after the Boilermakers beat Indiana State to start the season, they lost every other game and it was one disaster after another. We don’t have to kick a dead horse but the offense was pitiful and the defense was worse this season as Odom looks to start basically from scratch. In the 16 seasons since Joe Tiller, Purdue has 12 losing seasons and Jeff Brohm looks like a coaching god for what he accomplished in West Lafayette. Odom was great at UNLV in two seasons there but won as many games as he lost as Missouri’s coach.
Grade: B-
UCF: Scott Frost
Can Frost recreate the magic of 2017 now that he’s back at UCF? The Knights were 13-0 during that miracle season and made an argument for the national championship as Frost parlayed that success into his supposed dream job at Nebraska (where he’s from and where he played) but that was an unmitigated disaster. He was 16-31 in Lincoln and never won more than three conference games in a season. Maybe being back in Orlando is where Frost can do his best work and he spoke to that – and his happiness – being back at UCF. He’s inhering a program that got worse record-wise in each of former coach Gus Malzahn’s four years so turning that tide will be of first order.
Grade: B
WEST VIRGINIA: Rich Rodriguez
This is another circle of life story and there’s something heartwarming about Rodriguez headed back to Morgantown. There seemed to be real excitement from him about not only stepping up in class after he did great work at Jacksonville State but coming back to this job. Let’s not forget that the Mountaineers were 33-5 in his final three seasons at West Virginia. The college football landscape has totally changed and has forever been altered since then but Rodriguez can coach and there should be real excitement about getting this program back on track.
Grade: A
RETENTIONS
ARKANSAS: Sam Pittman
What’s going to be the spark at Arkansas? Pittman is 29-31 overall in five seasons and has won only 14 conference games during that time. Arkansas is getting hit heavily by portal departures but Pittman said Thursday that they have 29 portal visitors coming. Maybe that’s part of the turnaround. But Arkansas needs some good luck, or digging even deeper in the NIL pockets to get this back to where it was at the end of the Bobby Petrino tenure more than a decade ago.
Grade: C
BAYLOR: Dave Aranda
It looked like only a matter of time for Aranda to be fired after Iowa State beat Baylor, 43-21, on Oct. 5 as the Bears fell to 2-4 but since that time, Baylor won six-straight games to close out the season and this is a 9-win football team if the miracle at Colorado didn’t happen. Aranda went 12-2 in 2021, won the Sugar Bowl and the Big 12 and he was one of the hottest names in coaching. Since then, things have plummeted but this was a season in the right direction. That momentum has to continue.
Grade: B-
FLORIDA: Billy Napier
Florida was reportedly putting buyout money together to get rid of Napier and it seemed like he was coaching for his life at Mississippi State earlier this season. It was nothing to write home about this year but down the stretch the Gators showed significant signs of life – like a light bulb went off in the program’s collective head – in wins over LSU and Ole Miss especially and then pounding Florida State in the rivalry game. Napier is out of the woods for now but it could be a short leash if bigger wins don’t come.
Grade: B+
OKLAHOMA STATE: Mike Gundy
Oklahoma State just endured its worst season since 1991 when it was winless and by far the worst season under Gundy, who needed to rework his contract to stay. Still, not counting this season, Gundy is the winningest coach among active Big 12 coaches and has a great history in Stillwater. But he has taken on a more CEO role in recent years and arguably given his coordinators too much freedom as he’s taken an oversight role. It sounds like he’s back on the grind and could hit the portal really hard to rebound after a 3-9 disaster this season.
Grade: A-
