The 2025 coaching carousel in college football ended up being one of the wildest hiring cycles in recent memory for the sport.
Multiple, big-time blue-blood jobs came open and were filled by several high-profile coaches looking to prove their worth on the brightest stage.
But for every established, well-known name like Lane Kiffin and James Franklin, there were plenty of others who were either hot-shot coordinators or Group of Five head coaches who were hired more on their promise than their list of accomplishments.
I’ve decided to give you three first-time Power Four coaches for 2026 who will be household names by the end of the season.
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If you’re a hardcore college football fan, these names may sound familiar to you, but to the casual fan, these three head coaches couldn’t be picked out of a lineup.
I expect that to change six months from now.
I really had my choice between former Oregon coordinators, as both offensive coordinator Will Stein and defensive coordinator Tosh Lupoi became first time head coaches this offseason, but I decided to side with the former just based on the infrastructure in place as well as the added spotlight of coaching in the SEC.
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No one will mistake Kentucky for Georgia or Alabama, but the Wildcats were a really solid program under former head coach Mark Stoops with regard to both development and production on the field.
Kentucky is in a much better position than when Stoops got there, and although things got stale toward the end of his tenure, I believe he left the cupboard decently stocked for his immediate successor.
Stein’s offensive background will help shake things up at a school that has been a hard-nosed, defense-first program for the past decade, and the fact that he was in Oregon coach Dan Lanning’s system for three years means he knows what coaching a big-time college program looks like up close.
I don’t expect the lights to be too bright for Stein in 2026 and I truly believe Kentucky will surprise a ton of people this coming season.
After more than a decade coaching in the lower divisions of college football, Bob Chesney took over for Curt Cignetti at James Madison and had the Dukes in the College Football Playoff after just two seasons on the job.
There is something to be said about coaches who take over for successful predecessors and keep the thing humming, because that doesn’t always tend to be the case.
Chesney has been a winner everywhere he has coached, but now he is faced with resurrecting a once-proud program that has fallen on hard times.
The UCLA Bruins have been mired in mediocrity for years, but Chesney feels like the perfect fit to bring them back into the land of the living.
He’s a hell of a coach, as evidenced by his track record and CFP appearance at his last stop, but the big question that plagues a lot of these first-time power conference coaches is how they recruit against the big boys.
I wrote about this recently, but the Bruins and Chesney are recruiting historically well relative to their typical benchmark, and although I stand by what I said about their class not being quite as elite as it appeared back in May, the fact they are still sitting in the top-15 proves Chesney still has plenty of juice on the recruiting trail.
When you couple that knack for talent acquisition and his obvious coaching chops, I have no doubt Chesney will have UCLA back on the map in short order.
If I had to bet a month’s pay on one first-time Power Four head coach being successful in his first year, I would put my money on Eric Morris at Oklahoma State.
The Cowboys’ newest head man takes over for one of the longest-tenured coaches in the country in Mike Gundy, and, much like Stoops at Kentucky, I believe Gundy left the program in good standing for the new guy to take over.
Morris has ties to the Big 12 dating back to his playing days at Texas Tech, which means he’s an Air Raid disciple of former Red Raiders coach and college football legend Mike Leach.
His offense will stress every defense in the conference from the jump, and he brought a little help from his previous stop to make sure his system is run the right way.
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North Texas quarterback Drew Mestemaker led the country in passing yards last season and was second in touchdown passes thrown, and now he gets to reunite with the architect of those elite passing performances after transferring to Oklahoma State.
Mestemaker isn’t the only signal caller Morris has molded into a Heisman candidate, as the 40-year-old Cowboys head coach is seen as somewhat of a quarterback whisperer dating back to his days at Incarnate Word and Washington State, coaching both Cam Ward and John Mateer, respectively.
His offensive prowess coupled with his handpicked quarterback, Morris is ready to excel in Stillwater on day one, and everyone around the country will know his name by season’s end.
Morris’ agent better have his phone on him at all times, because his client is about to have him fielding calls from every blue-blood program in America in the not-so-distant future.
