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Eight Head Coach Candidates to Replace James Franklin at Penn State
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Life comes at your fast when you’re a college football coach.
One day, you’re ranked in the top three, hosting College Gameday and then leading the Oregon Ducks in overtime. 15 days later, you’re on a three-game losing streak and hitting the unemployment line.
In James Franklin’s case, he’s going to make more than $50 million not to work, which would be great. Imagine being paid not to work, for starters, then imagine being paid millions not to work. Seems like a great gig!
But Penn State will continue without Franklin, and without Drew Allar, who was lost for the season with an ankle injury. In their place will be cornerbacks coach Terry Smith, serving as interim head coach, and redshirt freshman Ethan Grunkemeyer, who will get six tough games to show what’s got.
Coaching searches are not frequent in Happy Valley, just two since 1966. Franklin had been there since 2014, and now as the Nittany Lions look for their next head coach, here’s a shortlist of possible candidates.
Matt Rhule
He has to be at the top of the list by default because of his status as a Penn State alumnus and success at various college stops. Rhule is 5-1 at Nebraska this season and the Cornhuskers play in Happy Valley towards the end of the year, which might serve as an audition if they continue to win.
What’s intriguing about Rhule is that he’s won with different programs in different scenarios. Temple was dreck when he took over, and he got the Owls to 10 wins by his third season. Those Baylor teams were post-Art Briles and trying to dig themselves out of the sexual assault scandal, and Rhule did the same thing there, going from 11 losses to 11 wins by season three. He’s on that same trajectory in Lincoln.
Curt Cignetti
Cignetti has led Indiana’s impressive turnaround and would be in a good spot if he simply stayed, but he does have Pennsylvania roots. He’s a Pittsburgh native who played quarterback at WVU in the late 70s and early 80s and coached at Pitt, Temple, and IUP. His father and brother, Frank Cignetti Sr. and Jr., both had/have coaching ties to Western PA and there’s a ton of familiarity there.
This one, believe it or not, is really a question of whether or not Indiana or PSU is the better job in 2025. They’ve put a lot of money and support into that Hoosier football program in recent years and Cignetti has them humming.
Matt Campbell
At this point he’s sort of a mandatory addition to any shortlist. Campbell is in his 10th season at Iowa State and transformed a mediocre program into a perennial winner. The Cyclones are 5-2 this year and coming off an 11-3 season in which they beat Miami in a bowl game.
Alex Golesh
When you talk about hot candidates from smaller schools, you look to Alex Golesh and South Florida. The Bulls are 5-1 this season after a couple of 7-6 seasons in the American, with bowl wins over Syracuse and San Jose State. Golesh has experience from all over the country, with stops at Illinois, Iowa State, Tennessee, and some early gigs with Ohio State and Oklahoma State. He’s going to be at the top of offseason shortlists barring a USF collapse.
Jon Sumrall
Sumrall has only been a head coach for a little more than three seasons now, but he went 23-4 in two seasons with Troy and is now 14-6 with Tulane midway through year two. He’s a defensive guy who was once an assistant at both schools before finding his way to Ole Miss and Kentucky. Consensus is that he’ll probably get an SEC job at some point, maybe replacing Mark Stoops whenever that era ends, but the guy can coach and PSU should at least do their homework on him.
Brent Key
Key is an Alabama guy who has spent his entire playing and coaching career in the south. He worked a decade with UCF before two seasons coaching the offensive line on Nick Saban’s Alabama staff, then he joined his alma mater Georgia Tech as part of Geoff Collins’ staff. After Collins was canned, he got the interim job and then the full gig, and right now he has the Yellow Jackets sitting at 6-0 and ranked in the top 12.
Urban Meyer
If both sides would like to sell their souls to the devil.
Manny Diaz
He’ll get a phone call, if nothing else. The legendary former Temple coach is at Duke now, but he was Franklin’s defensive coordinator in 2022 and 2023. He didn’t have a great run as Miami coach, but won 9 games with the Blue Devils in year one and has them at 4-2 this year.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com