The 2023-24 college football offseason will go down in history as one of the biggest ever due to the combination of coaching changes and conference realignment.
But while the jury is still out on how the realignment will impact college football in the long-term, one analyst is ready to grade the many head coaching hires now.
In a feature for On3 Sports, college football analyst Jesse Simonton gave A grades to three of the new coaching hires: Kalen DeBoer at Alabama, Jonathan Smith at Michigan State and Willie Fritz at Houston.
“DeBoer may have been an unconventional replacement for Nick Saban, but he’s rapidly emerged as a Top 5 coach in college football. He’s 104-12 as a head coach, with three NAIA national titles, a nine-win season at Fresno State and a runner-up finish with Washington in 2023. He’s an offensive savant who should do wonders with the talent he should be able to amass in Tuscaloosa. He’s not going to sign No. 1 recruiting classes, but DeBoer isn’t some bum on the trail, either,” Simonton wrote on DeBoer.
While he didn’t have any D, let alone F grades for teams, he gave C grades to two hires: Oregon State’s Trent Bray and UCLA’s DeShaun Foster – both of which were internal hires.
“Truly, good luck to Trent Bray. He faces an unprecedented challenge of taking over a program in major limbo as a first-time head coach. Bray is a former Beavers linebacker who cares deeply for Oregon State, but now he’s tasked with being Moses and leading the program into an unknowable future. Again, good luck,” Simonton wrote of Bray.
Simonton also gave a C+ grade to the Mississippi State Bulldogs for hiring Jeff Lebby out of Oklahoma.
Time will tell if the hires are truly as good as bad as Simonton or anyone thinks they are. College football is filled to the brim with coaches who exceeded expectations and fell well below them.
Which of the coaches in this ranking do you think will surpass or fall below expectations?