Only one major college football program remains without a head coach for 2026

The disco ball is spinning, hits from the previous decade are blaring over the speaker system and beads hang around everyone's neck as the countdown reaches two, one, and then zero. Nearing New Year's Eve on this college football head coaching carousel, there's currently only one power conference program still in search of a head coach.

Any port in the storm, right? That may be true for Penn State, who's now waited until blizzard season to hire a head football coach after they fired James Franklin just five games into the 2025 season. This coaching search has the Government Shutdown beat by 10 days and counting. Athletic director Pat Kraft is a dressmaker with a prickly bride; it's been a million No's without a single Yes!

The 2025 season featured the biggest swath of changes among head coaches in decades, and you could argue Penn State helped kick off the party. Following losses to Oregon and then, oddly enough, a UCLA team that had just fired its coach, Penn State agreed to a nearly $50 million buyout at the time and bit the bullet on firing Franklin.

Well, Arkansas followed, and so did LSU, and Florida, and Auburn, and Kentucky. Ole Miss even had their job opened, all in the SEC alone. Elsewhere, Oklahoma State made a switch, Michigan State changed leadership, Virginia Tech, Stanford each grabbed new guys. Let's just recap them all at the power conference level:

School	New Hire
Arkansas	Ryan Silverfield
Auburn	Alex Golesh
Florida	Jon Sumrall
Kentucky	Will Stein
LSU	Lane Kiffin
Michigan St.	Pat Fitzgerald
Oklahoma St.	Eric Morris
Ole Miss	Pete Golding
Penn State	???
Stanford	Tavita Pritchard
UCLA	Bob Chesney
Virginia Tech	James Franklin

The ACC, Big 12, Big Ten and SEC are considered the power conferences. An astounding TWELVE of their jobs, total, came open. Six alone opened in the SEC one year after zero head coaching changes took place across the conference. In comes in bunches, right? Sure seems so.

FORMER Penn State Nittany Lions head coach James Franklin | Matthew O'Haren-Imagn Images

Anyways, of the 12 that opened, 11 are already filled. In the greater FBS picture, a few other jobs remain open. You have schools in the American Conference like Memphis and Tulane still licking their wounds or focusing on the College Football Playoff after just losing their coaches to SEC schools, while a handful of other programs are in the same boat.

What's odd is, none of the programs with open jobs are near the level of Penn State. The Nittany Lions fired James Franklin for failing to meet championship expectations. Well, after Kalani Sitake, Matt Rhule, Curt Cignetti, and others, all signed contract extensions after Penn State smoke came their way, what's left for this historic powerhouse?

We all know Joe Paterno isn't walking back into that facility, and neither is James Franklin.

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