Inside the unique challenges of being a first-year coach in 2024
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Adam Rittenberg, ESPN Senior Writer
TWO MONTHS INTO the whirlwind of being Houston‘s new coach, Willie Fritz paused briefly to reflect.
Fritz had spent most of his career bouncing to different levels of college football, leading five teams before Houston. But after eight seasons at Tulane, Fritz told his wife, Susan, that the tasks and challenges of his newest job were somewhat jarring.
“I kind of forgot about that first year, starting over,” Fritz told ESPN. “You’ve just got to adapt.”
Especially in this first year. A new batch of coaches navigates obstacles before each college football season, but 2024 is arguably unlike any other in the sport’s history. Three summers of realignment culminate with all four major conferences welcoming new teams for the upcoming season. The College Football Playoff is expanding from four to 12 teams. The transfer portal and name, image and likeness are not new, but their effects continue to reshuffle rosters every offseason, especially at programs that went through coaching changes. More changes lie ahead following the House v. NCAA settlement.
The coaching cycle itself also stood out, both in scope and in star power. Eighty days passed between Michigan State hiring Jonathan Smith to lead its program Nov. 25 and UCLA promoting DeShaun Foster to be its next coach Feb. 12. In between, Alabama‘s Nick Saban, arguably the greatest college coach ever with seven national titles, retired and set off a string of changes that impacted national runner-up Washington and others. Only one CFP participant returned its coach from 2023, and 31 FBS teams ended up making coaching hires.
The cycle featured notable promotions, including Sherrone Moore at reigning national champion Michigan, power moves like Kalen DeBoer going from Washington to Alabama and the return of former FBS coaches such as Bill O’Brien (Boston College), Bronco Mendenhall (New Mexico) and Derek Mason (Middle Tennessee).
Not only does the group of new coaches stand out, but their road ahead does as well. What is it like to be a first-year coach in 2024? ESPN surveyed more than 10 to find out how they’re approaching a distinctly challenging season and four key subplots.
Constructing rosters
THE BIGGEST AND most urgent challenge for any college football coach in 2024, especially those taking over programs, is figuring out who will be on their rosters for Year 1. Many coaches were hired during the winter transfer window, although Saban’s retirement and other exits triggered more player movement in January and February. (Whenever a coaching change occurs, players have 30 days to enter the portal.) New Washington coach Jedd Fisch counted less than 50 players remaining from the Huskies team that played for the national title in January.
“The program is kind of under construction right now,” Fisch told ESPN. “You have to completely restructure your roster.”
Michigan State’s Smith, hired at the very start of the cycle, immediately brought in several key transfers from his former school, Oregon State, including quarterback Aidan Chiles, but also dealt with activity in the spring window, which featured key departures, including defensive tackles Derrick Harmon (Oregon) and Simeon Barrow Jr. (Miami) and defensive back Jaden Mangham (Michigan).
“It started with building trust,” Smith told ESPN. “We didn’t recruit them, we didn’t go through the yearlong process of getting to know them. The continuing narrative is, it’s about the team first — not in this transactional environment, [it’s] all about myself.”
Fritz got the Houston job in early December, but inherited a team light on high school recruits. Houston signed only 12 high school players in December, while adding 22 transfers in the winter window and several others in the spring. The Cougars also lost significant players to the portal, including wide receivers Matthew Golden (Texas) and Sam Brown (Miami) and defensive lineman Jamaree Caldwell (Oregon).
“We had to jump in the portal, hot and heavy,” Fritz said. “Thank goodness it was available. I don’t know what I would have done if it hadn’t been.”
Not every new coach took a portal-heavy approach to his first roster. O’Brien, hired in early February at Boston College, prioritized individual meetings with players during his first few weeks on the job. He wanted to know why members of the team came to BC out of high school or as transfers, and what it would take to keep them.
The Eagles had only a few players transfer out in the spring.
“I don’t see the portal, relative to BC … it won’t be the biggest makeup of our roster,” O’Brien told ESPN. “We’ll be a part of the NIL, but that isn’t the biggest thing that we have to sell. If their first question to us is, ‘How much are you going to pay me?’ It’s probably not what we’re looking for at BC.”
Mendenhall stepped down as Virginia‘s coach after the 2021 season, when NIL was still in its relative infancy. He has returned to a sport where NIL impacts rosters perhaps more than any other factor.
As Mendenhall settles in at New Mexico, a program that faces baked-in roster challenges, most of his time is devoted to “financing our program and financing players.”
“Your roster is never truly stable, at least at the Group of 5 level,” Mendenhall said. “We turned over 60 players this year. My guess is the Group of 5 schools will be turning over 45 to 55 per year, so managing the roster now, rather than succession planning for maybe two, three and four years, it really is a series of one-year rosters.”
Wyoming didn’t have as much transfer turnover, in part because the school promoted defensive coordinator Jay Sawvel to replace the retiring Craig Bohl. Like Mendenhall, Sawvel considers roster building to be a year-to-year exercise, yet he and other first-year coaches say they’re putting added emphasis on team building.
“I thought a couple of years ago: Is it worth having inclusive relationships with players in this day and age?” Sawvel said. “If anything, I’m even more involved with our players and more inclusive from a relationship standpoint because that is our best operational tool. People still want to know that you care about them.
“You’ve got to … do even more. And it can’t be fake.”
Recruiting strategies
THE PORTAL IS an important and necessary tool for first-year coaches in 2024, but mapping out plans for high school recruiting can be more significant for long-term viability.
In Smith, Michigan State hopes it has a Pacific Northwest version of Mark Dantonio, whose regional recruiting focus and eye for developmental prospects propelled the program for much of his tenure. MSU went heavy in the portal under Mel Tucker and had immediate success in 2021, before taking a more national approach with its 2022 and 2023 recruiting classes, which included 10 ESPN 300 prospects from seven states. Smith is a California native who played at Oregon State and spent his entire coaching career in the Pacific Northwest, but wants to gear recruiting toward Michigan and its surrounding area.
Of Michigan State’s 15 commits for the 2025 class, 10 are from the Midwest.
“We looked into the rosters previously at Michigan State, where they’re from, and the good years, they had a good chunk of players from Michigan and Ohio,” Smith said. “They’d look into Chicago — there’s good football there — and dabbled into Pennsylvania, Kansas. Cincinnati and Indianapolis are within driving distance. I’m not saying exclusive, like 100 percent, but the good foundation of the roster is within this Midwest driving distance.”
The biggest concern around DeBoer’s hire at Alabama was his lack of connection to the Southeast and its pressurized recruiting scene. But Alabama’s 2025 class is No. 2 in ESPN’s rankings and packed with regional players, including wide receiver Caleb Cunningham (Mississippi), linebacker Darrell Johnson (Georgia) and athlete Derick Smith (Alabama). The class includes 17 ESPN 300 prospects.
DeBoer credited his staff, led by general manager Courtney Morgan and several assistants with closer ties to the Southeast, including Saban holdovers Robert Gillespie and Freddie Roach, for the strong start. Even the staff shuffle after DeBoer’s hiring, which included offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb taking the same role with the Seattle Seahawks, allowed Alabama to “tap into other guys that are from the Southeast,” DeBoer told ESPN.
“We’ve got a lot of depth,” he added. “We’ve got a lot of just brilliant football minds in our program.”
New Arizona coach Brent Brennan grew up in California, played at UCLA and built much of his reputation in coaching as a top recruiter in his home state. Arizona will continue to stress California — its top returning core attended Servite High School in Anaheim — but joins a league (the Big 12) without any members there. The Wildcats will be playing more often in Texas, where they landed the likes of safety Dalton Johnson but could increase their presence.
Brennan, who came to Arizona from San José State Aztecs, noted that the distance between the two schools to the Southern California recruiting market is about the same. He also thinks Arizona can recruit Hawai’i better than most Big 12 programs.
“I like the areas of the country this [league] gets us into,” Brennan told ESPN. “You think about our location, we’re connected from California to Florida, basically all through the southern half of our country. Football’s really important there, and there’s a lot of good players.”
While some new coaches have had to shift or expand their recruiting focuses, others, like Foster, are doubling down in places they know. Despite a favorable location and recent facilities upgrades, UCLA has been a lukewarm recruiting operation, in part because former coach Chip Kelly didn’t emphasize it as much as other elements. UCLA finished outside ESPN’s top-30 classes in each of the past three years.
Although Foster was part of the previous staff, his recruiting impact as head coach is undeniable. UCLA has 14 players committed for the 2025 class, headlined by ESPN 300 prospects Madden Iamaleava and Jadyn Hudson, both from California. Foster described the energy shift around the program as “night and day.”
“A lot of high school recruiting support, coaches, local coaches, everybody’s coming out, they’re telling me they’re backing us,” he said. “They want to be a part of the program and help UCLA get back to where it belongs.”
Moving conferences
FISCH TAKES OVER one of the more remarkable situations in college football history at Washington: a 14-win team that played for the national title but returns only two starters (linebacker Alphonzo Tuputala and cornerback Elijah Jackson). The Huskies are also joining the Big Ten, which Fisch and his assistants aren’t ignoring despite all the important work to do within the program.
“If Washington wasn’t in the Big Ten, I wouldn’t have taken the job,” Fisch told ESPN. “Whenever I took this job was the day my mind shifted. As I learned more and more about the aspects of being in the Big Ten, each week my focus was more on: How are we going to compete?”
Fisch has been in the Big Ten twice as an assistant, first as Minnesota’s offensive coordinator in 2009 and then as Michigan’s quarterbacks coach in 2015 and 2016. Since then, the league has continued to grow its revenues and will now have a coast-to-coast presence. Washington, like other schools departing the Pac-12, faces some immediate financial challenges and last month projected a $2 million operating deficit for its next budget.
“You start seeing the different amount of revenue that’s coming to you in the Big Ten, and you start seeing the type of teams that are in the Big Ten that are going to be on your schedule,” Fisch said. “My mind has been on that daily, understanding that to compete with teams like Michigan, Ohio State, Nebraska, Penn State, Oregon, USC, Iowa, you’ve got your work cut out for you.”
UCLA didn’t go through as dramatic a roster overhaul as Washington, and Foster knew many of the players from his role as running backs coach since 2017. Foster kept the focus inward during spring ball, while noting that players understand the upcoming league move.
“We’re going to run to the fight,” Foster told ESPN. “We’re not scared to play anybody, anytime, anywhere.”
Fisch will lead Washington into the Big Ten amid tempered external expectations, but the team he left, Arizona, has understandably higher hopes for its first year in the Big 12. Arizona comes off its first 10-win season since 2014 and its highest AP poll finish (No. 11) since 1998.
The Wildcats also kept their core intact under Brennan, as quarterback Noah Fifita, wide receiver Tetairoa McMillan, linebacker Jacob Manu, offensive lineman Jonah Savaiinaea, cornerback Tacario Davis and others elected to stay. Brennan considers himself an optimist and hoped that Arizona’s top players would be back. He thinks the opportunity to return to a winning team — and build on its success — helped in the decisions.
Arizona placed fifth in the Big 12 preseason media poll but was one of five teams to receive first-place votes.
“They made the most rare decision of the entire college football offseason,” Brennan told ESPN. “That’s special. Because everyone’s trying to create a good football team and good culture, brotherhood and, ‘We’re a family.’ Everyone says that stuff until they get offered an extra half million dollars, and then they go somewhere else. These players actually chose each other.”
Replacing legends
IN 2016, DeBOER and Moore were assistants in the MAC — DeBoer as Eastern Michigan‘s offensive coordinator and Moore as Central Michigan‘s tight ends coach. Eight years later, they’re taking over two of the nation’s most historic programs and replacing coaching royalty in Saban and Jim Harbaugh, who last season led his alma mater to its first national title since 1997.
Moore, who came to Michigan in 2018, said there’s “no way” he could have envisioned his career unfolding the way it has.
“I wish I had time to reflect on it,” he told ESPN. “Every second, there’s something, so you’re always looking ahead at the next moment.”
Moore’s connection to Harbaugh was undeniable, as he revealed during an emotional interview after he led Michigan past Penn State while Harbaugh served a Big Ten-imposed suspension. But Moore has other mentors, including former Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops, and also has leaned on a staff of assistants that includes some holdovers from the championship team but also key newcomers, including veteran defensive coordinator Wink Martindale.
“He’s been absolutely outstanding,” offensive coordinator Kirk Campbell said of Moore. “The culture’s already set, and he’s done a good job upholding that culture. His personality is just so bubbly, he’s always in a good mood, but when he wants something done, he gets it done. His fingerprints have been all over the program.”
DeBoer is a head coach for the fourth time, having previously led Division II Sioux Falls, his alma mater, and then Fresno State and Washington. He was promoted at Fresno State after health reasons prompted Jeff Tedford to step aside, and took the Washington job right after the regular season in 2021.
“A program that’s a blue blood, that went to a [CFP], it’s a little different scenario compared to the last two jobs,” DeBoer told ESPN. “But the biggest thing would be the timing of when I came in, hiring a staff, the opportunity to bring players in or keep your roster intact. The other [jobs] did help prepare me for all the things that might come my way. It helped me with hiring staff and defining the roles that I felt were most critical to get in place quickly.
“Even though they were all different, it certainly helped me go through this more efficiently.”
