An Ode To The Weirdest Coaching Search In College Football History
54 days is a lot of time, folks.
That’s just two days shy of eight weeks. It’s 1,296 hours. It’s 77,760 minutes. It’s 4,665,600 seconds.
On October 12, after an embarrassing loss to Northwestern that saw Drew Allar break his ankle and Penn State lose its third consecutive game after starting the season ranked No. 2 in the nation, Pat Kraft pulled the trigger and ended the James Franklin era in one fell swoop on a Sunday afternoon.
Thus began the weirdest head coaching search in college football’s long, illustrious history.
A coaching search is something extremely rare for Penn State to begin with. After all, the team has only fired two coaches in the past sixty years and has only had three permanent head coaches in that span. If not for the ugly end of the Joe Paterno era, those numbers might be even smaller.
We may never know the exact order of operations for Pat Kraft from the moment Franklin was fired, but it seems likely that feelers were reached out throughout the whole college football world to see if the coach of a winning program would shake free. After all, if LSU could do it with Lane Kiffin, why couldn’t we?
Some of the names linked included the likes of Indiana’s Curt Cignetti, Texas A&M’s Mike Elko, Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman, and others that predictably never advanced very far. Elko and Cignetti were among the first to receive rich extensions amidst the coaching carousel, a trend that continued as the search dragged on.
One of the most popular names floated after Franklin’s firing was former Penn State walk-on and State College resident Matt Rhule. The Nebraska head coach seemed like a logical fit, especially when considering his prior relationship with Kraft at Temple. Yet, with conflicting reports of the team’s actual interest in him, Rhule extended quite early on to shut down rumors, but the initial link made Penn State’s blowout win over Nebraska on senior night feel even more important.
The possible names continued to dwindle. Georgia Tech extended Brent Key, Vanderbilt extended Clark Lea, Missouri extended Eli Drinkwitz, and Louisville extended Jeff Brohm. All of these names were, at one time, linked to Penn State in one way or another, but we’ll never know how serious the overtures were. All told, nearly $400 million worth of extensions were signed in the 54 days the job remained open.
But what was Franklin doing with his new free time? Well, just six days after his firing, he was in Atlanta on the set of College Gameday to begin a public image rehabilitation. Just three weeks prior, Penn State had hosted the premier college football show ahead of their highly anticipated White Out against Oregon before everything fell apart.
In that interview, Franklin expressed his desire to continue coaching and received well-wishes from the hosts, with legendary coach Nick Saban being among those to take a shot at Penn State for an “unfair” firing. For the record, none of the other high-profile firings (Brian Kelly, Billy Napier, Hugh Freeze) got a similar interview.
With other Power Four jobs opening up, it didn’t take long for Franklin to find his footing, becoming the head coach at Virginia Tech on November 17, Day 37 of the search. The proximity to his old institution, coupled with the vast uncertainty of Penn State’s search, led to an unprecedented several weeks of mass exodus by former Penn State commits.
When Franklin was fired, Penn State had 26 commits in the Class of 2026 and three in the Class of 2027. Although some were flirting with other schools and it was far from his best class, the Class of 2026 was going to be yet another top-20 class, while the few commits he had for the following year were shaping up to be potential five-stars. The second that Franklin was let go, however, almost every single one of them followed.
Over the next 50 or so days, Penn State lost 28 of the 29 commits that they had in mid-October, with 11 of them following Franklin to Virginia Tech and 14 others committing to schools like West Virginia, North Carolina, and Indiana. What made this so bizarre? This wasn’t happening to any other major school without a head coach. All of those schools maintained most, if not all, of their recruiting classes despite firing their coach.
Penn State was not the first Power Four school to fire its coach, as UCLA, Oklahoma State, and Virginia Tech did two weeks prior, but they were the first program with considerable resources to begin its search. They would soon be joined, however, by four different SEC schools: LSU, Auburn, Arkansas, and Florida, all making in-season coaching changes. By the time the season ended, the coaching carousel welcomed Michigan State, Kentucky, and Kansas State to the mix.
There were 11 Power Four schools to make a coaching change and hire an external candidate this season. Penn State was third on the market and the first true brand to begin its search, yet it was the last to fill its vacancy. LSU poached Ole Miss’ Lane Kiffin, Auburn hired Alex Golesh from South Florida, and Florida hired Jon Sumrall of Tulane. The three Power Four teams that began their search after the season ended? They all zeroed in on candidates within hours.
But finally, Penn State seemed to be zeroing in on a candidate of their own, just over seven weeks into the search.
After weeks of radio silence, the first serious rumors of Penn State zeroing in on a candidate emerged. On3’s Pete Nakos reported on December 1 that BYU head coach Kalani Sitake had emerged as the administration’s top target. Finally, it appeared, the search was coming to an end:
NEW: BYU's Kalani Sitake has emerged as Penn State's top target to become the Nittany Lions' next head coach, @Brett_McMurphy, @PeteNakos & @clowfb report
— On3 (@On3sports) December 1, 2025
Intel: https://t.co/hs8mzy20Cs pic.twitter.com/1RDMWl8Chf
There was just one small problem. Sitake was a Mormon who graduated from BYU and had never coached west of the Rocky Mountains at any level. He had a deep emotional and familial connection to Provo, which made it extremely hard to yank him away. Penn State was prepared to offer him the kitchen sink, including an eight-figure annual salary, NIL, and assistant coaching benefits; all the works. If it had gotten to this stage, they clearly had a chance.
And this is where a college coaching search took on a completely different life. The CEO of the popular cookie establishment, Crumbl, is a BYU alumnus as well. After Penn State’s interest in Sitake had leaked into the public sphere, he tweeted his intentions to do whatever it took to keep him in Provo.
It’s at this point that we don’t entirely know what transpired. People with a varying number of sources said that BYU brass tugged on Sitake’s heartstrings and his faith to convince him to stay. There were rumors that he met with one of the Church of Latter-day Saints’ 12 Apostles. Deseret News reported that BYU assembled an Avengers-level team to keep him around, which included the widow of BYU’s all-time winningest coach, LaVell Edwards, and Pro Football Hall of Famers Andy Reid and Steve Young.
This full-court press by BYU saw them open their pocketbooks in a similar fashion to what they did to lure No. 1 high school basketball recruit AJ Dybantsa to Provo, agreeing to a long-term extension to keep Sitake away from Penn State. When that deal was reached on December 2, it was Day 51 of the search.
The entire football world was now trolling Penn State. A Crumbl delivery was sent to Kraft’s office in State College, memes were all over social media of Penn State’s failed search, and even Franklin interestingly had a box of Crumbl in the media room at Virginia Tech’s National Signing Day press conference. It didn’t feel real what was going on.
Speaking of National Signing Day, by the time it rolled around on December 3, there was one commit left out of 26 for Penn State, Jackson Ford, who signed with the Nittany Lions despite no permanent head coach.
He was joined by a former Franklin commit, four-star quarterback Peyton Falzone, but the two represented a recruiting class that is currently graded among the likes of Army, South Dakota State, and Prairie View A&M outside the top 150. That situation alone would’ve turned Penn State into a national laughing stock, but when it was compounded with everything else, it became an unbridled disaster.
By the time Sitake had turned down Penn State, all hell had broken loose. Long-rumored fallback candidates had found jobs, with James Madison’s Bob Chesney accepting the job at UCLA and Ohio State offensive coordinator Brian Hartline replacing Golesh at USF. With seemingly few options left on the table, an entire new saga opened up: the Terry Smith debacle.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a more beloved Penn State figure than Terry Smith right now. After taking over an impossible situation as the interim head coach of the football team, Smith got total buy-in from a locker room that could’ve spent the back half of a lost season focusing more on their transfer portal destination and rallied them to make the Pinstripe Bowl after a six-game losing streak dropped them to 3-6.
That locker room, much like the Penn State community at large, adored him. In the wake of Sitake turning down Penn State, multiple players took to social media to vouch for Smith to become the permanent head coach, with no player being more vocal than injured star linebacker Tony Rojas.
In since-deleted tweets, Rojas expressed his discontent with the length and mystery surrounding the head coaching search and consistently vouched for Smith. On December 4, the most eye-opening tweet came about when Rojas said that “90 percent of the roster” could leave in the transfer portal if Smith was not promoted to permanent head coach.
This, combined with the rumored push behind the scenes by wealthy boosters to promote Smith due to his lifelong love of the university, created an interesting dynamic. Could prospective candidates be turned away by uncommitted boosters, combined with no recruiting class and a roster that’s hellbent on one man only for the job? With that, an unequivocally disastrous possibility opened up when Smith became a candidate for the Memphis and UConn head-coaching gigs. This was becoming a nightmare.
Ultimately, the pace of the search changed as the eighth week dragged on. While the football games and lack of urgency made the first seven weeks go by smoothly, every passing minute felt like an eternity for Penn State fans as the pressure turned up. Everyone seemed to go a little crazy.
In a personal favorite moment of the search, fans began to track flights with little to no validity. Sure, any flight from a non-major airport definitely raises eyebrows when arriving at the minuscule State College Airport, but a lot of these were nothing burgers. One such flight came from Teterboro, just outside of Newark, New Jersey, on December 3.
People began to speculate that former New York Giants head coach and current Penn State dad, Brian Daboll, was on that flight. Instead, it was hoops coach Mike Rhoades on his way back from a recruiting visit with five-star Dylan Mingo, brother of current star freshman guard Kayden.
Or was it? Apparently, there was a second flight from Long Island (where the Mingo’s are from) that could’ve also had Rhoades on it. Whatever the case, let’s hope Coach Rhoades closes that deal in the near future as well.
Everyone’s heads were spinning trying to grasp the chaos of the situation, but there was one last twist waiting in the wings. Late on the night of December 4, Dead Air Sports released a leaked audio tape of Kraft talking to the locker room at an undetermined point in time. This tape, which Kraft confirmed to be real on Monday, was an unfiltered, open conversation between Kraft and the players, in which frustrations were openly shared.
In the tape, Kraft rambled about his disdain for Oregon and Michigan, the disadvantages of NIL and recruiting in Penn State’s location, the disconnect between how the coaching staff and administration wanted to use NIL, and a variety of other topics that showcased, if anything, Kraft’s will to win. Whoever leaked the tape was likely trying to provide the final nail in the coffin for Kraft’s tenure as athletic director during the open revolt by the fanbase in the prolonged coaching search. Instead, it appeared to be the first step in Kraft regaining the trust of Nittany Nation.
Just when it seemed like the search had gone completely off the rails, Kraft reeled in the white whale. On December 4, it was reported that Kraft and Penn State president Neeli Bendapudi had traveled to Ames, Iowa, to meet with Iowa State head coach Matt Campbell. Just over 24 hours later, Campbell had signed an eight-year contract to become head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions at the end of Day 54.
How did it take so long to get to Campbell, a widely respected coach in college football? According to Matt Fortuna, Penn State had interest in him towards the beginning, but was unable to reach him directly, for some bizarre reason.
You know what? That’s the perfect ending to this saga. After Kraft and Campbell were able to secure Smith as the team’s associate head coach with a modest pay increase, it seems that Penn State stumbled into a pretty satisfactory ending.
54 days came and went, and at times, it felt like a lifetime. Let’s hope that all the twists and turns that led us here were worth the wait.
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