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Former West Virginia athletic director Oliver Luck still remembers, with vivid clarity, the day Pittsburgh and Syracuse officially announced they were bailing on the Big East to move to the ACC. He was headed east from Morgantown to the West Virginia-Maryland football game on Sept. 17, 2011, and made a plan to get to league commissioner John Marinatto as quickly as possible.

The two met alone in a suite inside Maryland’s football stadium. Marinatto sat in a high-backed chair at the bar as the two briefly discussed how exactly the Big East would survive as a football-playing conference. The elephant in the room, of course, was that Pitt and Syracuse had delivered a double gut punch that sent shock waves across the league, signaling to every remaining football-playing member that the time had come to forget about conference loyalties and look out for itself.

Neither said what appears obvious, in hindsight. Even if they wanted to, they never had the chance. Marinatto got a phone call five minutes into their meeting. Luck watched as Marinatto turned ashen and pale, then fell to the ground.

“I remember saying to myself, ‘Oh my god, the conference is falling apart, the commissioner just [fainted] in front of me and I don’t know what to do,'” Luck said in a phone interview, adding that the call concerned Dave Gavitt, the Big East founder, who died just as his beloved league was breaking up.

Luck raced to find medical personnel, who helped Marinatto regain consciousness. But there is a reason, 10 years later, that Luck remembers that moment so clearly. That day serves as a point of demarcation where nothing would ever be the same for the Big East or its league members.

In short order, TCU pulled out of its agreement to join the Big East after just 11 months. Forty days after Luck met with Marinatto, West Virginia announced it was moving on to the Big 12, beating out Louisville in a high-stakes race that drew in high-powered politicians and pitted two Big East members against each other for the final open spot.

Skepticism among remaining teams was high; trust was low. Presidents, athletic directors and coaches made calls behind one another’s backs to find a secure conference home that would not only provide stability but also a financial windfall that guaranteed their own futures, all while sitting in Big East meetings identifying schools to add in an effort to save the conference. As Big East officials worked on creating a Western flank with Boise State and San Diego State, remaining schools Louisville, Cincinnati, UConn, South Florida and Rutgers kept making entreaties to other conferences to find an escape route.

To be sure, the Big East did not set off the wave of realignment that impacted every Power 5 conference between 2010 and 2012. The Big Ten did that when it announced in 2009 that it would begin exploring expansion possibilities before ultimately adding Nebraska in 2010.

But the Big East was the only major conference to lose half its football-playing members over that span, and that ended up delivering a blow from which the conference could not recover. Ultimately, the basketball-playing contingent retained the Big East name and split off; the remaining football-playing members joined with nine new schools and formed the American Athletic Conference.

For those with deep Big East connections who watched the events unfold in real time, hurt feelings, anger and sadness remain 10 years later. Marinatto, who died in June at age 64, blamed himself for what happened to his beloved league on his watch, according to multiple former colleagues. He never granted an interview after he resigned as Big East commissioner in 2012.

“I don’t know if anybody could have stopped what happened from happening,” one former league official said. “Especially when you had schools hell-bent on taking care of themselves.”

Of course, the schools that left view what happened much differently.

“We were all aware of the movement happening around us,” former Syracuse athletic director Daryl Gross said. “We just had a TV deal fall through with the Big East, and the Big East is looking like a burning ship, and there’s a cruise ship here to pick us up. So what are you going to do?”

TO UNDERSTAND HOW everything unraveled for the Big East, a short history lesson is in order. The Big East formed in 1979 as a basketball conference and stood proudly behind that sport, even rejecting Penn State as a member in the early 1980s.

But as football grew in power and financial stature, the league invited in Miami, Virginia Tech, West Virginia and several others, and began sponsoring football in 1991, allowing long-standing league members like Pitt, Syracuse and Boston College to play football in a conference for the first time. But doing so always left the league slightly off-kilter compared to others because of the unusual football/basketball dynamic.

“Ever since the start of the Big East, there always was concern about the football schools breaking away,” one former Big East official said.

Realignment hit the Big East first in 2003 when Miami and Virginia Tech left for the ACC. That summer, the remaining Big East football-playing schools decided they wanted to split away, believing their interests were no longer aligned with those of the basketball-playing schools. Kevin O’Malley, a TV executive-turned-consultant, was brought in to help then-commissioner Mike Tranghese keep the league together.

“They had actually drafted a letter that was going to be sent,” O’Malley recalled. “As far as they were concerned, the basketball schools were history. What I pointed out was something that is a recurring theme through all of this, which is how much the basketball schools and the football schools needed each other. It took a while, but we put Humpty-Dumpty back together again.”

Boston College eventually left too. Though the league added Louisville, USF and Cincinnati to fill in the gaps, the growing importance of football from a revenue-generating standpoint, most importantly during television contract negotiations and making sure it had a seat at the table in the old Bowl Championship Series, only widened the chasm between the football and basketball schools.

It became much harder for the league to not only figure out its identity — caught between its basketball tradition and the riches of football — but also to keep everybody moving forward together.

“There are no rules in this game of realignment, right? There wasn’t an arbiter. You couldn’t go to the NCAA or the federal government. It was a game we likened to musical chairs. You don’t want to be the one standing when the music stops.”

Former West Virginia athletic director Oliver Luck

“Over time, it got more contentious because the basketball side was always wary of the football side,” one former Big East athletic director said. “And as we drove some of those ideas, it was viewed as more of a football play instead of a league play.”

That essentially is at the heart of where so much went wrong, starting in December 2009. When the Big Ten announced it would explore expansion over the ensuing 12-18 months, athletic directors across the country realized a seismic shift in the landscape was about to happen. Some schools and conferences would end up with an enormous financial windfall, while others would scramble to find a suitable home.

“The day the Big Ten announced that,” former Pitt athletic director Steve Pederson said, “I think everybody said, ‘OK, here we go.’ If you don’t know whether you’re going to be one that’s going to be selected, the risk is high. So we really tried to come up with some kind of way to cement the Big East together. Understandably, a lot of schools just didn’t want to make that kind of commitment. They said, ‘Well, what if what if we had a chance to go to one of these conferences?'”

Gross remembers attending one set of meetings before the conference basketball tournament in 2011, looking at the agenda and seeing nothing listed on the topic of expansion.

“To this day, I have no idea why no one wanted to touch the subject,” Gross said. “It was almost like, if we don’t talk about it, then we don’t have to worry about it.”

He raised those concerns during the meeting. Afterward, another athletic director walked up to him and asked, “Are you guys leaving?”

Gross maintains that at that point Syracuse had no plans to leave. “I was just trying to figure out, ‘What’s the plan?'” he said. “I felt so lost. I thought for sure this would be the biggest discussion topic in the entire room.”

Whether the league was proactive or not is a matter of perspective. Multiple times, the Big East tried to form a partnership with several Big 12 schools, but it was only in response to the possibility that Texas and Oklahoma would leave.

Once Texas and Oklahoma decided to stay put, the idea fizzled.

Marinatto sent a bottle of champagne to then-Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe to congratulate him on keeping his league from disintegrating.

Soon, there wouldn’t be much to celebrate.

THE BIGGEST DISCUSSION topic in the Big East became its television rights. At the time, the Big East was working with ESPN on a new rights deal that would bump its annual payout from $36 million per year to $155 million per year. All told, the new deal would be worth more than $1.3 billion over the life of the contract. As its television partner at the time, ESPN had an exclusive negotiating window to make a deal happen with the Big East.

But there were multiple presidents and athletic directors who wanted to wait and take the Big East to the open market once that window with ESPN closed, believing its entire rights package was worth more than what ESPN was offering. That group included Georgetown, Pitt and Rutgers.

“We just felt like at the time that the deal didn’t reflect our value,” Pederson said. “As you looked at the numbers, you just said, ‘If you’re going to sign a long-term deal that you feel is undervalued, then you’re just going to be sorry almost the minute you sign it.’ We understood we were not in the same position at that point as the Big Ten or the ACC, but we felt we were in a better position than the way the numbers came out.”

Though the majority of league schools wanted to take the deal, those with misgivings controlled the conversation and became the loudest voices in the room. Things came to a head in May 2011 when the newly expanded Pac-12 with Colorado and Utah aboard announced a television package of its own with ESPN and Fox worth a reported $3 billion — substantially greater than the Big East offer.

That caused everyone in the league to reevaluate what was on the table, and the decision ultimately was made to walk away from the proposed TV deal.

“That deal came out of nowhere, and people started to ask, ‘If they’re willing to pay that for the Pac-12, why wouldn’t we be able to get more?'” one person with knowledge of the discussions said. “So now everybody’s thinking Comcast has all this money, and we had a year to go before the end of our contract, so people said we should go to the open market.”

One former Big East official said ESPN asked for a counteroffer, but none ever came. O’Malley described multiple athletic directors as being “in disbelief” that the league walked away from the deal.

“I’ve always been the ‘one in the hand is better than two in the bush,’ and that would have kept us very stable,” then-Louisville athletic director Tom Jurich said. “But I was the newcomer talking. We were very happy where we were, and maybe those schools weren’t happy. Maybe they had bigger aspirations. I don’t know.”

Officials from the schools that eventually left deny they were in negotiations with other conferences at the time the TV deal was nixed. But there are some former Big East officials who remain dubious.

One went so far as to say “sabotage” would be an accurate way to describe the way some schools led the push against the TV deal only to later leave, though others in the room at the time felt that was too strong of a word.

“There were so many people that just loved the conference and were so invested in it, and then you had double agents in the room,” another former Big East official said.

Multiple sources pushed back on that assertion.

“There was sincere and genuine effort put towards trying to figure out a way to shore ourselves up and present more value to the market to capitalize on our deal,” one former school official said. “This theory that we deliberately tried to stop the TV deal from happening because we were all at the finish line with other conferences is bulls—.”

Multiple sources confirmed that Pitt and Rutgers tried early in the process to get league members to agree to a grant of rights, in which schools relinquish control of their TV rights to the conference. But there was no consensus. With no grant of rights, no expansion plan and no television deal, there was simply nothing to hold the league together.

Add to that a perceived vacuum in leadership — with the more mild-mannered and less well-connected Marinatto now the commissioner instead of Tranghese — and it seemed like a foregone conclusion that the competing agendas threatened to fracture the conference for good.

“There was no guarantee if we did that deal things weren’t going to still shift, but it would have helped the schools left behind to at least have that in their pocket, and if we had to renegotiate it down, fine, but we still had it,” a former Big East official said.

Despite the behind-the-scenes drama, league officials spoke optimistically at media days in Rhode Island in August 2011 about the lucrative potential for a TV package despite turning down ESPN. One league official told The New York Times, “We’re excited. It feels like the tide is turning in our favor.”

Clearly, not everyone felt that way.

Gross, who was in favor of taking the TV deal, said once that fell through “things were fragile and could fall apart or crumble.” He said he first heard from the ACC in early September, recalling that his phone rang as he walked to his car following a tennis match at the US Open. When ACC officials asked whether Syracuse would be interested in joining, Gross said yes without hesitation.

Within a week, the Syracuse trustees met at a hotel in Beverly Hills, California — where they had traveled to watch Syracuse play USC in football. Gross made a presentation, and the group voted to accept the ACC invitation. Similarly, the situation with Pitt and the ACC moved quickly in September. Both Gross and Pederson said they had no idea they would be joining together until the end of the process.

Despite the uncertainty and fragility of the Big East, multiple people described feeling “blindsided” that Syracuse and Pitt — two of the league’s most identifiable members, including one founding member — would leave. One person said it “shook the conference to its core.”

“Syracuse and the Big East were synonymous with one another for the entire history of the conference,” a former Big East official said. “When they left, there was no recovering.”

Added Jurich: “I know a lot of people’s feelings were hurt, especially the schools that had been in that league for a while. They were crushed because they had such a great loyalty and relationships with those schools.”

Pederson, when asked whether he thought the decision to leave surprised the league, said Pitt was always upfront about the situation. “I guess that would be from their perspective,” he said. “Nobody knew exactly where anybody might be going, and all those negotiations are very private. So maybe there were people that were surprised. I don’t know.”

At that point, any existing loyalties seemed to vanish.

“When one starts splitting away, then the avalanche occurs,” Jurich said. “Everybody was scrambling. It’s, ‘What are we going to do? How are we going to survive? How do we keep our head above water now that the TV deal is out?’ You don’t have a chance to use that as any leverage. From our standpoint, all I cared about was our program.”

Meanwhile, TCU, which agreed in November 2010 to join the Big East as a way of boosting its profile as a member of a BCS conference, pulled out to join the Big 12 in mid-October. By then, the Big East was pushing hard for Boise State to join as a football-only member — all while Louisville and West Virginia were jockeying for the last open spot in the Big 12.

“There are no rules in this game of realignment, right?” Luck said. “There wasn’t an arbiter. You couldn’t go to the NCAA or the federal government. It was a game we likened to musical chairs. You don’t want to be the one standing when the music stops.”

BOISE STATE PRESIDENT Robert Kustra took a keen interest in realignment, believing his football program had positioned itself well for a move into a bigger conference with better access to the BCS. In 2010, he met with the presidents of Utah, TCU and BYU to discuss whether Boise State was ready to make a move from the WAC to the Mountain West.

“I gave my salesman pitch, and then I said to them, ‘How can I know that the Mountain West is going to be the Mountain West it is today?'” Kustra recalled in a phone interview. “‘Are you all going to be there for the Mountain West?’ And these presidents, they were either lying through their teeth or they were completely ignorant of their athletic directors’ plans.”

Only a few days after Boise State announced it would join the Mountain West, Utah accepted an invitation to join the Pac-10. Then BYU announced it was going independent in football. In November 2010, TCU agreed to join the Big East. This was not the Mountain West the Broncos agreed to join.

At this point, Boise State had played in two BCS games as an undefeated team (2007 and 2010 Fiesta Bowls) but had never gotten a legitimate shot at playing for a national championship. Beyond national championships, the Mountain West did not have an automatic spot into the BCS, meaning Boise State would have to go undefeated every year and then hope for a selection as an at-large team.

Kustra felt he had to do something to improve those chances. He had previously lobbied the Pac-12 to no avail. So when the Big East, with an automatic bid into the BCS, called in October 2011 to see whether the Broncos would be interested in a football-only partnership, he listened.

At the time, Boise State was ranked in the top five. On paper, the move made sense: Boise State needed access to a BCS conference, and the Big East needed to fill gaps and boost its football-playing profile. As a way to make its move east more palatable, Boise State needed a travel partner from the West, boosting San Diego State into the conversation.

“I personally thought that taking the Boise State story on the road with the Big East was a great opportunity to get national coverage that we weren’t getting here in the Intermountain region,” Kustra said.

The Mountain West had taken one hit after another during realignment and could not afford to lose Boise State, its highest-profile school. Commissioner Craig Thompson worked the phones to both Kustra and then-San Diego State president Elliot Hirshman, telling them both, “There’s a lot of money being dangled in front of your face, but there’s not going to be a Big East in the long term,” according to a person with knowledge of their conversation. Thompson declined to comment for this story.

The Big East also had conversations with Air Force, Navy and Army but ultimately opted for football-only partnerships with Boise State and San Diego State. In addition, UCF, Houston and SMU would join as full-time members. The moves gave the Big East the largest footprint in the country.

But because the conference looked so different, nobody knew whether it would retain its BCS status or what a future television deal would be worth. Skepticism remained that bringing in Boise State and San Diego State from the other side of the country would actually keep the Big East together. The basketball schools were not thrilled either.

Though Boise State coach Chris Petersen and San Diego State coach Rocky Long spoke in positive terms about the move publicly, they expressed reservations privately. Long declined interview requests for this story; Petersen did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

“There were some ideas that were not ideal, but when you’re in a position like that, you start to look at everything,” Jurich said. “They were not just saying let’s put our head in the sand and say we’re fine when it truly wasn’t. Did it fit for everybody? Absolutely not, including us. It didn’t, but I don’t think you could look at and say it’s about fit when you were looking for survival.”

Several former Big East officials still believe this alignment could have worked long term at the time. But in April 2012, a plan for a four-team playoff was announced, and it became clear there would be no automatic qualifying designation for the Big East under the new format, taking away a huge advantage the league had over the Mountain West.

Marinatto resigned in May 2012 with the league in turmoil. As one friend of his said, “He was just a guy that was the student manager for the basketball team for Dave Gavitt at Providence College and was Mike Tranghese’s friend, and was handed the reins by the two of them. And the conference collapsed. That’s the weight that he carried with him.”

Whether he could have done anything differently to keep the league together is a question up for debate, considering all the outside factors that were beyond his control.

“I don’t think anybody deserves any particular blame for anything,” Pederson said.

Mike Aresco was hired as commissioner in August with an eye toward maximizing television rights. But first, Notre Dame announced it would be taking all of its Big East-affiliated sports to the ACC while remaining independent in football. When Rutgers (Big Ten) and Louisville (ACC) announced their own departures over a one-week span in November 2012, the Big East as a football-playing conference fell apart.

For good.

In mid-December 2012, the seven Big East basketball-playing schools announced a split from the football-playing schools. A few weeks later, Boise State struck a deal to return to the Mountain West. San Diego State followed shortly after that. The Broncos were given the green light to sell their home games separately from the conference’s television package, allowing them to earn more money than the other members of the conference — about $1.8 million more per year in revenues.

Kustra said the Mountain West presidents at the time called him and offered more money from television rights as a way to get Boise State back into the league.

“I’m asked, if you had to do all over again, what would you do?” Kustra said. “And I’d say, I would do exactly the way I did it. I didn’t know that the Big East was going to fold. But look what we got out of it. We landed on our feet financially. And to this day, the Mountain West is still trying to figure out what to do about that.”

Tensions over the special deal Boise State secured have grown over the past several years — and it was a major point of contention during the Mountain West’s most recent television rights negotiation.

Meanwhile, the newly reconfigured Big East – with Xavier, Creighton and Butler – has been led by Villanova basketball over the last decade, winning national titles in 2016 and 2018. But perhaps the biggest news in recent years involved UConn, which decided to go independent in football so it could rejoin the Big East, where it thrived as a basketball power. The Huskies officially rejoined in 2020 after a seven-year absence.

The American Athletic Conference — renamed and rebranded after the basketball split — has thrived as a Group of 5 conference. The league has secured the most Group of 5 automatic bids into the four-team playoff. With the playoff format soon expanding to 12 teams, its chances of making the playoff have increased. But the same could be said for Boise State in the Mountain West.

“Realignment hit us pretty hard,” said Aresco, now the AAC commissioner. “We were in disarray, making sure that the conference would survive. But it turns out, not only did we survive, we thrived immediately. We’ve been thriving ever since.”

While that is true, there are still those with a deep abiding affinity for the Big East who remain emotional about its breakup 10 years later. Because, as one former league official said, “it’s not what it was and will never be the same again.”

ESPN reporter David Hale contributed to this report.

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Ranking every open Power 4 job in college football

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Ranking every open Power 4 job in college football

  • Adam RittenbergOct 22, 2025, 07:00 AM ET

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      College football reporter; joined ESPN in 2008. Graduate of Northwestern University.

The 2025-26 coaching cycle wasn’t expected to be calm, like its predecessor. But few forecasted such a robust line of storms rolling through the sport in the first half of the season.

All four power conferences have had a firing. Penn State’s ouster of James Franklin, midway through his 12th season and barely 10 months removed from the team playing for a spot in the national title game, sent a message around the sport: Almost no coach is safe. Franklin and Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy, fired Sept. 23 from his alma mater, have a combined record of 298-150 in the FBS.

There are seven Power 4 schools looking for head coaches: Stanford, UCLA, Virginia Tech, Oklahoma State, Arkansas, Penn State and now Florida. Two other, notable, non-Power 4 jobs, Oregon State and UAB, are also on the hunt. More openings certainly could come, including Auburn and Kentucky in the SEC, Wisconsin in the Big Ten and Florida State in the ACC. And that’s not even counting the inevitable vacancies that will occur when sitting head coaches leave for other jobs.

The process of ranking the open jobs contains hard data, such as win-loss performance over time, recent postseason appearances and, while controversial to some, recruiting/transfer class rankings. The College Football Playoff is a major factor, both in terms of access and the varying pressure levels coaches face to be part of the 12-team field occasionally or regularly. Money matters more than ever in the sport, although accurately gauging each school’s financial strength (or appetite) is tricky. They all say they’re committed to winning.

“It’s a little bit different now than just saying, ‘Oh, it’s the SEC or the Big Ten,'” a coaching agent said. “It’s about where can you be successful within your conference to have a chance to go to the playoff?”

Leadership stability also resonates. How secure is the athletic director hiring the coach? University presidents move around much more frequently than they used to and have final say on major investments such as football coach hires. What’s the presidential situation at these schools?

The following Power 4 jobs rankings are based on the following five areas:

I tried to view these jobs as coaches do and ask: Which jobs offer the best path to success in the respective league? Which had the right mix of support and expectations? The SEC and Big Ten are the two most well-resourced leagues, but not every SEC or Big Ten job is better than every Big 12 or ACC job.

Here’s a look at the current rankings:

Opened: Oct. 12 with firing of James Franklin

On-field performance: PSU is 44-17 since the start of the 2021 season and 90-33 since the start of the 2016 season. The Lions won their most recent Big Ten title in 2016 and reached the league title game last season. They also made their CFP debut in 2024, beating SMU and Boise State before falling to Notre Dame 27-24 in a semifinal matchup at the Orange Bowl. Only seven other FBS teams have won more than 90 games since 2016, and Penn State has six 10-win seasons during that span. The team had six CFP top-12 finishes before making the expanded field. Penn State’s last national title came in 1986.

Access to CFP: As a Big Ten member, Penn State doesn’t have to win its conference or, in some seasons, even reach the league title game, to qualify for the CFP. Franklin’s teams certainly would have had more CFP appearances if the field was 12 teams earlier. But the Big Ten schedule is tougher, featuring road trips to the West Coast and the emergence of Indiana, a historic bottom-feeder, under coach Curt Cignetti. Penn State still has had — and should have — one of the league’s most talented rosters, and certainly boasts a true home field when Beaver Stadium is fully activated, especially at night. Seasons of nine or more wins are realistic and attainable and, for the most part, will vault teams such as Penn State into the CFP mix.

Roster-building: Penn State remains, by far, the most historically successful program in the Northeast, and can access recruiting hotbeds there as well as to the Southeast (Washington D.C. area) and to the West (Ohio, Michigan). “If you’re doing it right, you’ve got Jersey, New York, you can reach into the DMV,” a former Penn State staff member said. Penn State consistently has top-20 recruiting classes and has stepped up its investment for transfers, bringing in several notable wide receivers this offseason. The Lions had the No. 3 overall offseason and have proven they can retain top players and add new stars.

University leadership: Pat Kraft is in his third year as athletic director and showcased the power he has obtained in making a difficult midseason coaching change. He’s regarded as one of the nation’s top athletic directors and views Penn State as a destination job after stints at Boston College and Temple. University president Neeli Bendapudi also has been in her role since 2022 and has shown a strong commitment to athletics and football, greenlighting key investments, including what will be a very expensive coaching transition. Franklin often recognized the support he received from both Kraft and Bendapudi.

Financial support: A school doesn’t make a front-end financial decision such as firing Franklin without being committed on the back end with his replacement and a top group of on-field assistants and supporting staff. Kraft made it clear that Penn State is positioned to compete for national championships. Beaver Stadium is undergoing a $700 million renovation, and Penn State has been aggressive in retaining top players, and adding key transfers and assistants such as defensive coordinator Jim Knowles. Penn State’s upcoming apparel partnership with Adidas will bring increased revenues to athletics.

Why the job ranks here: Despite a longer-than-expected national championship drought, Penn State has been very close to a breakthrough and has the financial structure to make the next step. The Big Ten is a bit deeper but doesn’t have as many CFP-ready programs as the SEC. Penn State is undoubtedly one of them.

Opened: Sunday with firing of Billy Napier

On-field performance: The lack of a single College Football Playoff appearance is jarring for a program that won three national championships between 1996 and 2008. Florida is 28-30 since the start of the 2021 season, tied for 84th nationally in winning percentage (.483). The Gators had three consecutive top-10 finishes in the CFP standings from 2018 to 2020 and would have made the field several times under former coach Dan Mullen if it were larger. But the team has largely floundered in SEC play in recent years, losing three or more conference games in eight of the past 12 seasons (not counting 2025).

Access to CFP: The SEC affords Florida both a larger number of entry points and more profile-boosting opportunities. The league is also increasingly deeper, not only with the additions of Oklahoma and Texas, but with the emergence of teams such as Missouri and now Vanderbilt. Florida’s rival Tennessee is coming off a CFP appearance, and perennial underachiever Texas A&M is the league’s only unbeaten team in 2025. Plus, you have to deal with Alabama, Georgia, LSU and others. Florida will need to leapfrog several programs and hope some teams come back down to earth in the coming years.

Roster-building: Talk to coaches who faced Napier’s Florida’s teams and it became clear that talent wasn’t what held back the Gators. “They look pretty,” an SEC coordinator said before facing Florida. “They’ve got good-looking players.” Florida signed the nation’s No. 10 recruiting class in both 2024 and 2025, headlined by players such as quarterback DJ Lagway, edge rusher LJ McCray and wide receivers Dallas Wilson and Vernell Brown III. Napier wasn’t nearly as active in the portal, preferring to develop players through high school recruiting, but Florida’s next coach should have the ability to push for more top transfers.

University leadership: Most SEC athletic directors don’t get a third chance at hiring a football coach after the first two don’t pan out, but Florida’s Scott Stricklin will have that opportunity here. Stricklin, who has led Florida’s athletic department since 2016, received a contract extension last month that takes him through October 2030. Florida has excelled in other sports, including a men’s basketball national title in April, but football has fallen short under Stricklin’s watch. The university in August named an interim president in Donald Landry, after selecting Michigan’s Santa Ono this spring, only to have the hire rejected. Florida hasn’t had much stability since early 2023.

Financial support: For years, Florida thrived on the field without making major investments in facilities and other key areas of the program. The frustration with the Napier era was that the university made commitments in multiple areas, and the team’s performance still regressed. In his statement announcing Napier’s firing, Stricklin said: “UF has never been more invested in the success of this football program — elite facilities, robust NIL opportunities and comprehensive support for our student athletes and staff — than we are today.” But will that be enough? As a Florida staffer noted this week, “With money for the most part being equal going forward, this is not an elite job.”

Why the job ranks here: Florida is the only SEC program in a state loaded with talent and now has the financial infrastructure to support its coach as he chases a national championship. But the overall coaching churn and uneven results in Gainesville can’t be ignored.

Opened: Sept. 23 with firing of Mike Gundy

On-field performance: Two things can be true: The program has cratered since the start of the 2024 season, but Oklahoma State also played for a Big 12 title in 2023 and 2021. The Pokes also had seven 10-win seasons between 2010 to 2023. The Pokes are 33-26 since the start of the 2021 season — 4-14 in the last season plus — and are 76-46 since the start of the 2016 season. They are still one of the top remaining brands in a Big 12 Conference without Oklahoma and Texas, and recorded 10 AP Top 25 finishes between 2008 and 2023.

Access to CFP: This category should boost the Oklahoma State job in the eyes of coaches and their representatives. The Big 12 doesn’t have historic powers like the other three power conferences, and should have a wide-open race for one or more CFP spots in most seasons. In early 2022, Gundy was bullish about what Oklahoma State could become in a reshaped league, telling ESPN, “Put all the schools down on paper and look at the success they’ve had — the wins, the bowl games, all the stuff — over 15 years, then Oklahoma State should be leading the charge. I’m just going on success, the facts. That doesn’t mean that we start on any higher level. What that means is if we push forward and make a strong commitment, then we could get to a high level in the new conference.” Despite the recent struggles, he isn’t wrong, and the right coach could soon help Oklahoma State rise again.

Roster-building: Gundy’s recruiting classes rarely popped on the national radar and seemed to fall off in recent years, but for a long time he consistently developed players, especially quarterbacks and wide receivers, and found talent within the state and in nearby north Texas. Oklahoma State can access the Dallas recruiting market and other regional hotbeds. The key is to have a stronger approach toward personnel, both high school recruiting and transfers, and the financial clout to attract and retain top players. Gundy’s NIL comments ahead of the Oregon game clearly backfired on him, but Oklahoma State has to rally more financial support for its next coach to compete with Texas Tech and other Big 12 programs that have stepped up.

University leadership: When Oklahoma State was rolling, the school had a stable (if combustible) triumvirate of Gundy, athletic director Mike Holder and super booster T. Boone Pickens. Even after Pickens died in 2019, there seemed to be enough alignment between Gundy, athletic director Chad Weiberg and university president Kayse Shrum, who led the university from July 2021 until February. Her surprising resignation, amid questions about how funds were appropriated, pushed Oklahoma State into a period of uncertainty. Weiberg’s contract ended July 30 but he continued working as AD, and will remain in the role, president Jim Hess recently told The Tulsa World. Hess took over as interim president following Shrum’s resignation but was named to the permanent role in April. He and Weiberg must project stability during the search and ultimately rally donors behind their selection.

Financial support: Even after Pickens’ death, Gundy believed in the financial muscle of Oklahoma State’s booster base, telling ESPN in 2022, “There’s a lot of Oklahoma State people that have done well in the corporate world and have money to invest and donate. But it really helps when you’re winning and having success because people want to be a part of a winner.” Oklahoma State hasn’t been winning and Gundy is gone, so it’s imperative for Weiberg and Hess to rally support behind the next coach. The school once was way ahead in facilities but fell behind with NIL and the areas needed to win in today’s game. “You’ve got fan attendance, you’ve got donors that just didn’t like Gundy and are willing to spend,” an industry source said. “And you got a conference that other than Texas Tech, your resources are going to be near the highest point.”

Why the job ranks here: If Oklahoma State has a strong plan, it should be able to rise fairly quickly in a league without behemoth brands. The team isn’t far removed from CFP contention and can get there faster than other programs on this list.

Opened: Sept. 14 with firing of Brent Pry

On-field performance: The program’s heyday under Hall of Fame coach Frank Beamer has faded a bit but remains more visible than others on this list. From 1993 to 2011, Beamer’s teams went 185-58, ranking second behind Florida in wins and fourth in winning percentage (.761). Virginia Tech had AP Top 25 finishes in all but three years during that span, while winning seven conference titles and playing for a national title in 1999. Beamer’s successor Justin Fuente had some initial success — winning 19 games in his first two seasons — but Virginia Tech hasn’t won more than seven games in a season since 2019. Virginia Tech has a large and loyal fan base that can provide a top home-field advantage, but the team needs to give those people a reason to care.

Access to CFP: Here’s where the job could really pop, especially if the CFP field expands and there are more slots for the ACC to have multiple entries. Virginia Tech’s best attribute is being a football-first school with a winning tradition that, if supported correctly with the right people in charge, could become a semiregular contender for league championships again. The ACC has more notable brands than the Big 12 does in Clemson, Florida State and Miami, but all have been vulnerable, even this season. And after those three, which program can match Virginia Tech’s history and potential? “The climb to the top is not nearly as steep as the climb in those other leagues,” a Virginia Tech source said. “If you’re at Florida, Auburn or Arkansas, you’re playing Ohio State every week. Here, you can play Wake, Georgia Tech and Boston College.”

Roster-building: Virginia Tech might never dominate regional recruiting like it did under Beamer, but its ability to access pockets of talent certainly remains. There are good players within the state, certainly in the Washington D.C. area, and Virginia Tech can also easily recruit North Carolina and Tennessee from its location. The key will be retaining players, as Virginia Tech saw cornerback Mansoor Delane and other notables from the 2024 team transfer out, and being increasingly more competitive for top transfers.

University leadership: Whit Babcock has led Virginia Tech’s athletic department since 2014 and hired both Fuente and Pry. But his true influence on the next coaching hire — and the program at large — is being debated. He has been visible in the campaign for additional athletics department funding, and last month the school’s board added $229 million to the department’s budget during the next four years. Coaches still should be asking pointed questions about how much longer Babcock remains in Blacksburg. University president Timothy Sands has also been in his role since 2014. He has a hands-on role in athletics and also serves as chair of the NCAA Division I Board of Directors.

Financial support: Virginia Tech has never had trouble drumming up interest in its football program. It has lacked the finances to maintain its place in college football’s hierarchy. But the recent board decision and upcoming budget increase could be a game changer, both for the type of candidate Virginia Tech attracts — or, potentially, in Shane Beamer’s case, bring back — and how the program operates going forward. “We know that Virginia Tech is not going to be status quo, but they’ve still got to show some deliverables on that,” an industry source said. “If Virginia Tech wasn’t making this new $229 million cash infusion, you wouldn’t think about it.”

Another industry source pointed out, “If you’re Virginia Tech, you’re never going to be resourced, like Miami, Clemson and Florida State.”

Why the job ranks here: Virginia Tech is a football school in a winnable conference that can take a significant step with newfound financial backing and the right coaching hire.

Opened: Sept. 28 with firing of Sam Pittman

On-field performance: Arkansas is the ultimate wild card on this list. The program has a great long-term history, including a 1964 national championship and an impressive run in the Southwest Conference from 1959 to 1989, which included 10 league titles and 19 AP top-20 finishes. But life in the SEC hasn’t been kind to the Razorbacks, other than brief spurts under Houston Nutt and Bobby Petrino, and the recent results have been very poor. Since the start of the 2017 season, Arkansas is just 40-63 with only three winning seasons and just one with more than seven victories. The Hogs haven’t had a winning record in SEC play since 2015, and the conference is only getting tougher.

Access to CFP: Perhaps more than any other category, CFP access is a problem for Arkansas. SEC membership affords more opportunities to access the playoff, especially if and when the system expands in the coming years but think about how many teams Arkansas must rise beyond to work its way into contention. There are the SEC’s traditional powers — Alabama, Georgia, LSU, Tennessee, even Florida — new additions with CFP credentials in Texas and Oklahoma, programs with more resources and better locations such as Texas A&M and Auburn, and emerging teams such as Ole Miss, Missouri, South Carolina and now Vanderbilt. Even if Arkansas can maximize its vast financial potential, it has so much competition for still a relatively small number of CFP spots.

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2:40

Arkansas AD Yurachek explains the details on Pittman firing

Hunter Yurachek speaks to the media on the decision and process of letting go the respected Sam Pittman, the decision to move forward with Bobby Petrino and further expectations.

Roster-building: Arkansas doesn’t have as large a pool of high-level in-state recruits as most other SEC teams. The Razorbacks need a strong hit rate on who they get, and then develop, retain and attract others to fill out their roster. Arkansas has historically accessed Texas but the presence of Texas A&M and now Texas and Oklahoma makes things harder. The team also looks to the Memphis area, as well as states such as Louisiana, Georgia, Florida and Alabama. “It’s an awesome place,” an industry source said. “They’ve got a great fan base, they’ve got a great home venue, they’ve got facilities. They’ve got a lot of things there. It’s just, you’ve got few players in your state.”

University leadership: Athletics director Hunter Yurachek has been in his role since December 2017. He technically has hired two football coaches but wasn’t overly involved in the search that landed Chad Morris until the very end. Yurachek, who made previous AD stops at Houston and Coastal Carolina, has made some bold moves at Arkansas, such as hiring John Calipari in men’s basketball, Pittman in football and interviewing Deion Sanders for the football job. His recent comments about Arkansas’ ability to compete for national championships in football drew criticism and a later clarification, so there’s some tension around him. Charles Robinson has served as Arkansas’ chancellor since November 2022 after an interim period.

Financial support: There’s a ton of money in northwest Arkansas and around the university, especially through the Walmart and Tyson Foods connections. The key is whether Yurachek and Arkansas can drum up enough support for football to give the program a better chance at competing with the SEC heavies. “Arkansas has the booster network that is capable of doing something significant,” an industry source said. “I don’t know if they will, but they can.” Perhaps Yurachek’s recent comments (and clarification) will be an inflection point for Arkansas’ deep-pocketed stakeholders, as money is a differentiator for the program. “Historically, it’s been one of the bottom jobs in that league, in terms of proximity to players and all those things,” an industry source said. “But in this new era, it should be and could be a much better job than what it’s been in the past, but it all hinges on the financial investment.”

Why the job ranks here: Despite success in other sports, Arkansas’ backslide in football and position within an increasingly challenging conference creates a steep climb to CFP relevancy. Arkansas has definite growth potential but must improve at harnessing local financial support.

Opened: March 25 with firing of Troy Taylor

On-field performance: Recency bias factors in here, as Stanford not long ago was among college football’s most consistently strong programs. From 2010 to 2017, Stanford went 85-23, tying for sixth nationally in best winning percentage (.787). The Cardinal had three straight AP top-7 finishes from 2010 to 2012, finished No. 3 in 2015 and finished outside of the AP top-20 just once. But the transfer portal/NIL era in the sport hasn’t been kind to Stanford, which didn’t adjust well and quickly slipped on the field. The dissolution of the Pac-12 and joining the ACC as a West Coast school has brought challenges, too. Stanford has had four consecutive 3-9 seasons. Although interim coach Frank Reich has outperformed expectations this year at 3-4, Stanford won’t be favored in many games down the stretch.

Access to CFP: The ACC doesn’t have as many elite programs to climb over as the SEC or Big Ten, and should supply multiple CFP berths in most seasons. But Stanford has some significant challenges, especially its location and the strain of long road trips. The Cardinal will regularly travel multiple time zones away from campus, and face league members with more direct access to recruiting hubs such as South Florida, Atlanta, Dallas and Washington D.C. Stanford would have made the CFP several times if the field were 12, but regaining anywhere near that level of consistent excellence will be much tougher in this environment.

Roster-building: Stanford is coming off of a hellish offseason that included the spring coaching change and the departures of several top players, including linebacker David Bailey (Texas Tech), wide receiver Emmett Mosley V (Texas) and quarterback Bear Bachmeier, now starting for undefeated BYU. On the flip side, Stanford recruited those players and seemed to be improving its roster. General manager Andrew Luck is all in and definitely a positive force for the program’s future. But Stanford will always have its limitations, especially with transfers. The portal can’t be such a net negative for the program to compete in the ACC. “If they can get back to recruiting good linemen, good tight ends, a good quarterback, defensive line, they’re going to have the money you can get a Stanford kid that wants to be there,” an industry source said. “The thing about Stanford is, if you can get kids, you can really develop them, because if they’re there, they want the Stanford degree, so they’re not going to transfer.”

University leadership: The arrival of new leadership in both Luck (hired in November) and athletic director John Donahoe, previously CEO at Nike, should elevate optimism about Stanford’s future in football. Donahoe’s business experience might be especially valuable. Then again, Stanford is an elite private school that sponsors 36 sports and wants to be great at all of them. Where does football really fall on the list of priorities? University president Jon Levin has been in his role since August 2024, after leading Stanford’s business school as dean for the previous eight years.

Financial support: Earlier this month, Stanford announced a $50 million gift from alum Bradford M. Freeman that will go to the football program. Levin called it a “game-changing gift,” and Luck mentioned scholarships and institutional NIL in his statement. Stanford has financial streams but also one of the smaller fan bases in the Power 4, and a massive athletic department that wants to excel in basketball, baseball and the Olympic sports. The key will be upgrading the recruiting operation after its second coaching transition in three years — after 12 years of David Shaw — and keeping its best players on The Farm.

Why the job ranks here: Stanford’s recent on-field struggles, awkward placement in the ACC and limited recruiting pool creates some unavoidable obstacles, but Luck’s leadership and a renewed commitment to the program generates genuine hope.

Opened: Sept. 14 with firing of DeShaun Foster

On-field performance: UCLA hasn’t completely bottomed out like some other programs on this list, but the team also hasn’t won anything substantial in a generation. The Bruins’ last conference title came in 1998, capping a stretch of three in six seasons. UCLA had five AP top-10 finishes between 1982 and 1988 and consecutive top-8 finishes in 1997 and 1998. But since then, the program has fallen mostly into irrelevance, while fan apathy has grown. The Bruins had only one AP Top 25 finish under Chip Kelly, billed as a transformational hire at the time, and haven’t won 10 games in a season since 2014. They have posted a winning record in conference play just twice since 2016.

Access to CFP: Just like the SEC, the Big Ten will afford its members more CFP slots, no matter how the format changes in the future. But UCLA has so many teams to climb over — teams with more recent success, more fervent support and better resources. Of the four West Coast schools added to the Big Ten, UCLA lagged behind the other three in most key categories. Washington and Oregon have played for a national title in the playoff era, and USC has at least had three CFP top-10 finishes in the past decade. UCLA has finished in the final CFP standings just twice, and never higher than 14th.

Roster-building: UCLA is the only current open job located right in the middle of a major recruiting hub. There’s talent throughout Southern California, and UCLA has to get more top players to Westwood. DeShaun Foster made some brief recruiting inroads, and UCLA made a big personnel splash this spring by adding Tennessee quarterback transfer Nico Iamaleava, a Long Beach native. If UCLA continues to invest in transfers like Iamaleavea, it could move up in the Big Ten. But for far too long UCLA’s location hasn’t been the major advantage it should be.

University leadership: There’s a lot of attention on athletic director Martin Jarmond, who has been in his role since May 2020. He drew criticism for his handling of the last UCLA coaching transition, when Chip Kelly strung along the school before taking Ohio State’s offensive coordinator role, leading to Jarmond’s promotion of Foster, who wasn’t on the head-coaching radar anywhere else. Chancellor Julio Frenk has been in his role since January, after nearly a decade as president at Miami, which increased its investment in the football program. “The biggest problem there is the [University of California] system, and the stadium,” an industry source said. “Leadership, stadium resources are a real issue.”

Financial support: The good news is it’s not as bad as it used to be. UCLA built a nice on-campus operations center, made a major coaching splash by hiring Kelly and flexed this spring with the Iamaleava transfer. But questions remain about UCLA’s financial commitment, even if they’re rooted more in perception than reality. Everyone has seen the pictures of a half-empty Rose Bowl, and the interest level in UCLA in the crowded Los Angeles sports and entertainment market seems lukewarm at best. Money certainly motivated UCLA’s move to the Big Ten, and the school now must show its commitment to help its next coach. “UCLA can absolutely get behind the program and spend more money,” an industry source said. “But I don’t think they have the booster network to all of a sudden jump to the top quarter of the league in funding.”

Why the job ranks here: UCLA hasn’t been consistently good for a long time and now plays on the Western flank of a conference with more top-tier programs that have fewer problems acquiring talent and filling their stadiums.

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Which NHL teams have the most to prove in 2025-26? Placing 13 teams into tiers

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October 22, 2025

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Which NHL teams have the most to prove in 2025-26? Placing 13 teams into tiers

  • Neil PaineOct 22, 2025, 07:00 AM ET

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      Neil Paine writes about sports using data and analytics. Previously, he was Sports Editor at FiveThirtyEight.

Few teams in NHL history have proved themselves in the face of their doubters more than the Florida Panthers of the past few seasons.

After getting humiliated as a Presidents’ Trophy winner in 2022 — swept by the Tampa Bay Lightning as their historic offense was mostly silenced — Florida rebuilt its identity under Bill Zito and Paul Maurice, traded for toughness with Matthew Tkachuk, leaned into defense and the goaltending of Sergei Bobrovsky, and turned those lessons into a championship blueprint: three straight Stanley Cup Final appearances, back-to-back titles and a bona fide dynasty.

But when one team proves so much, it doesn’t leave much room for others to do the same. So in many ways, this NHL season will be defined by the teams outside of South Florida that need to do a lot of proving of their own.

To help sort out which clubs have the most on the line in this prove-it 2025-26 season, we grouped 13 of them into five categories of teams with work to do and boxes to check. These range from longtime contenders still knocking on the door to hyped up-and-comers, possibly-past-their-prime powers and franchises whose fans would simply love them to prove they can make the playoffs every so often.

The common thread for all is that they have to change the story around their team, just like Florida had to do a few years ago. Let’s unpack each — and see who’s under the most pressure to get the job done this season.

The now-or-nevers

We’ve written about it here before, but the primary victims of Florida’s success in recent seasons have been the teams that repeatedly came close to a title but couldn’t break through. So this group is all about those that are seeking to prove they can finally make the championship leap — and especially those with a ticking clock on how long they can keep trying, and failing, to turn their potential into a parade.

Chief among this type of team? Clearly the Edmonton Oilers, who finally skated for the Cup for the first time in the Connor McDavid–Leon Draisaitl era in 2024 after never previously advancing further than being swept in the conference finals. But back-to-back losses to Florida have raised the question of whether they can ever truly get over the hump.

The main things to prove might be whether the returning tandem of Stuart Skinner and Calvin Pickard can provide better goaltending than the .866 SV% they collectively posted in last season’s Final — and if this season’s offense, bolstered by the additions of Jack Roslovic and Andrew Mangiapane, can score enough for it not to matter.

Though McDavid recently inked a contract extension, it only runs through 2027-28, so the Oilers’ window to compete still has a short shelf life.

And then there are the Carolina Hurricanes and Dallas Stars, who are well past the point where they need to at least break through to the Final, if not win the Cup. The two teams have combined to win an incredible 62 playoff games (32 for Dallas, 30 for Carolina) since 2022 without a single Stanley Cup Final appearance to show for it. No other team in the league had more such wins than the New York Rangers‘ 23.

For Carolina, the team must demonstrate that its strategy of dominating possession — the Hurricanes have led the NHL’s offensive zone time-tracking metric every year it has existed — isn’t destined to forever be stonewalled by an elite goalie when the team runs up against one in the playoffs.

Dallas needs to prove that all the offseason moves it made (including moving on from coach Peter DeBoer to Glen Gulutzan) were necessary to get this team to the next level.

Dallas is younger, whereas Carolina has more of its core locked up longer, but both teams can feel the weight of time, and expectations, demanding a Finals run … maybe even against one another.

The snakebit histories

Now we get to the teams that haven’t even made it far enough to qualify as a now-or-never breakthrough candidate. These teams have had plenty of regular-season success, but they perpetually lose in Round 1 of the playoffs — or, on the odd occasion, win a series before a big letdown in the next round.

And over the past handful of seasons, nobody fits this mold more than the Toronto Maple Leafs and Winnipeg Jets.

Since 2018-19, Toronto and Winnipeg rank third and seventh in total standings points, respectively, and yet they are the only members of the top eight on that list to fail to win 40 playoff games in that span — and neither is even close to that mark. (Neither has 30 wins, much less 40.)

The Leafs‘ history of choking in the playoffs is extensive and well-documented. Before 2023, this team hadn’t so much as won a single postseason series since 2004, and the Leafs still haven’t reached the conference finals since 2002 — to go with zero Cups since 1967, the final year of the NHL’s Original Six era.

As part of that, they own an eight-game losing streak in winner-take-all playoff games, the second-longest such skid in hockey history. There are micro-level things Toronto also needs to convince us about, such as offensive life after Mitch Marner (so far, so good) and if it can ever get the playoff goaltending it needs. But the main thing to prove is that the Leafs can overcome the ghosts of this franchise’s many past failures.

Winnipeg‘s playoff struggles feel less biblical but are no better in the aggregate. After winning two total series in its first go-round — before the franchise relocated to Arizona — the version that rose from the ashes of the Atlanta Thrashers made a conference finals run in 2018 but has advanced to the second round only twice since then.

Last season was supposed to change all that, but the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Jets barely beat the Blues in Round 1 and were then knocked off by the Stars as league MVP Connor Hellebuyck was outplayed by Jake Oettinger in net. Now the Jets have to show that their ascendance last season was no fluke, that they can be a playoff team in addition to a regular-season one, and that Hellebuyck can handle the pressure after three straight terrible postseason performances.

The hype trains

This is the place for those teams with young, exciting talent that haven’t exactly proved what they can do yet. They’re fun, marketable and full of promise — but as so many of the league’s up-and-coming squads of the past can tell you, promise alone lasts only so long.

Within this group, the New Jersey Devils stand out a bit because they have been riding the hype train a little longer than the other two teams. The 2022-23 Devils appeared to announce themselves early as the league’s next big thing behind a roster that ranked fourth on offense, eighth on defense … and third youngest in average age.

But electric center Jack Hughes missed parts of the next two seasons, the team regressed and fired its coach, and the Devils only slightly reclaimed their prior potential last season. The 2025-26 version is off to a good start, but New Jersey needs to win some playoff series to get back to where we assumed it would be by now.

As for the Montreal Canadiens and Chicago Blackhawks, both have started the season fairly strong with rosters that rank 1-2 in the NHL in youngest average age.

Along with the Devils, the Canadiens were anticipated to be one of the league’s most improved teams this season, building on their playoff return a season ago with a young core that is now pretty well locked in after defenseman Lane Hutson‘s recent contract extension.

Now the job for Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Noah Dobson, Hutson & Co. is to see how much better they can continue to get this season — and whether they’ll belong in the Cup-contending conversation by the spring.

The Blackhawks are further from that goal than the Canadiens, but new coach Jeff Blashill has them playing much better than they did a season ago. Connor Bedard continues to make progress, and Frank Nazar has been an early-season star, while the Blackhawks appear to be a bit better on the goal-prevention side as well.

Chicago must prove that last season was simply a disappointing speed bump along its road to rebuilding a new winner with Bedard as the centerpiece.

The do-overs

Last season, the hype machine broke down for a number of teams that were expected to be Cup contenders, and perhaps no teams were bigger offenders than this trio. Each is out to show that 2024-25 was a fluke and it deserves another shot in 2025-26.

The New York Rangers‘ collapse might have been the most jarring. A team that had finished top seven in fewest goals allowed per game for three straight seasons suddenly ranked 19th, allowed the sixth-most shots per game and got a combined .896 SV% from Jonathan Quick and Igor Shesterkin, who couldn’t paper over their issues anymore. The Jacob Trouba trade fractured the locker room, the power play cratered and a team that had made the Eastern Conference finals in 2024 unraveled far faster than anyone expected.

After making even more offseason changes — out were Peter Laviolette, Chris Kreider and K’Andre Miller; in were Mike Sullivan and Vladislav Gavrikov — the remade Rangers must get back to their previous business.

The Boston Bruins‘ fall was even steeper by the numbers. In fact, the Bruins saw the largest year-over-year drop in goal differential of any team (minus-1.13 goals per game) after transitioning from what was once a record-breaking veteran core to the league’s eighth-youngest lineup. What was supposed to be a smooth handoff turned into a full-scale identity crisis when Boston’s seven-year streak of top-five scoring finishes snapped to the tune of a No. 26 ranking on that side of the ice in 2024-25.

Now the remaining nucleus of David Pastrnak, Charlie McAvoy and Jeremy Swayman has to prove that it, too, can carry an era of Bruins hockey the same way Brad Marchand, Patrice Bergeron, David Krejčí, Zdeno Chara, Tuukka Rask, Torey Krug and others did in the past.

And then there were the Nashville Predators, whose 68-point season represented a staggering 31.5-point shortfall versus their preseason Vegas projection — the biggest miss in the NHL. What once looked like a loaded Preds roster with scoring, depth and Juuse Saros in net instead seemed disjointed from the start and never found success at either end.

Most of the group that was supposed to win last season is back now, and some are bouncing back nicely. Others, however, are like Steven Stamkos, Brady Skjei and Filip Forsberg — from whom Nashville still needs more bang for the salary-cap bucks being spent.

The drought-enders

When the Ottawa Senators finally made the playoffs last season, for the first time since going to the 2017 Eastern Conference finals, they ended what was tied for the NHL’s seventh-longest postseason drought of all time.

However, Ottawa was not the only franchise with a playoff-less streak that long — or even longer — and its achievement just turned up the pressure on the other two teams in that category to make their own postseason returns.

First, the Buffalo Sabres: Their playoff drought is now an NHL-record 14 seasons long — four more than the second-longest in league history — and the organization is well past the territory where incremental improvements suffice anymore. The youngest current Sabre, Zach Benson, was still in kindergarten the last time Buffalo played a postseason game, and zero players on this season’s roster were in the NHL when the drought began.

After a modestly positive goal differential in 2023-24, Buffalo backslid to minus-22 last season, and that regression has seemed to carry over to 2025-26 thus far. The Sabres’ low playoff odds already don’t paint a pretty picture, but they have to prove they can end this streak one of these years.

Finally, there are the Detroit Red Wings, whose own nine-season drought is not too far off from Buffalo’s — and completely uncharacteristic for one of hockey’s most storied franchises. The “Yzer-plan” was designed to restore the glory years, but Detroit has ranked better than 24th in goal differential just once during the skid (2023-24) and gave back all of those gains last season.

The good news in Hockeytown is that the 2025-26 team has started strong, bringing its playoff odds up above a coin flip. But Detroit has been down this early-season path before, only to collapse down the stretch, so the Wings hanging on to their playoff position might be the biggest prove-it on our list.

Both clubs have stockpiled young talent and patience in equal measure, but the next step remains to end their droughts and prove the long rebuilds were worth the wait.

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Ohtani, Vlad … and then who? Player rankings and superlatives for the 2025 World Series

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October 22, 2025

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Ohtani, Vlad ... and then who? Player rankings and superlatives for the 2025 World Series

  • Kiley McDanielOct 22, 2025, 07:00 AM ET

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    • ESPN MLB Insider
    • Kiley McDaniel covers MLB prospects, the MLB Draft and more, including trades and free agency.
    • Has worked for three MLB teams.
      • Co-author of Author of ‘Future Value’

The Los Angeles Dodgers are the overwhelming favorites to win the 2025 World Series and become the first repeat champion in a quarter century.

That doesn’t mean they’ve cornered all the talent in this year’s Fall Classic.

In fact, the American League champion Toronto Blue Jays feature two of the top three players heading into the series and nearly half of our top 20.

Let’s dig into the stars — ranking the best of the series participants on how good I think they’ll be in this series and predicting who will take home some superlatives by the time the dust settles.

Top 20 players in the World Series

1. Shohei Ohtani, SP/DH, Dodgers

Ohtani put up a combined 9.4 WAR in the regular season and is a huge favorite to win the National League MVP again. Then, he one-upped himself with one of the greatest athletic performances of all time: six scoreless innings with 10 strikeouts and three home runs in the clinching game of the NL Championship Series.

2. Vladimir Guerrero Jr., 1B, Blue Jays

Guerrero had a big regular season — 3.9 WAR despite the sixth-worst ball-in-play luck in the league — but has been white hot in the playoffs, leading postseason players in most major offensive categories.

3. George Springer, DH, Blue Jays

Springer led the Jays in WAR in the regular season, has been very good this postseason and his iconic ALCS Game 7 homer will live on.

4. Yoshinobu Yamamoto, SP, Dodgers

All four of the Dodgers’ starting pitchers are on a heater, but Yamamoto was the best of the group in the regular season by a lot and one of the top five pitchers in baseball.

5. Blake Snell, SP, Dodgers

Snell missed the first two-thirds of the season with shoulder inflammation but came back looking as good as ever. He might be on the best run of his career right now, with a 0.86 ERA in three playoff starts and the second-best underlying numbers (xFIP and xERA) in the playoffs among starters, behind Detroit’s Tarik Skubal.

6. Mookie Betts, SS, Dodgers

Betts, a clear future Hall of Famer, is 33 years old and has lost the standout power from his peak years but is still an impact player.

7. Freddie Freeman, 1B, Dodgers

One of the most consistently elite hitters of this era, Freeman just keeps performing — and he has a history of coming up large in the playoffs.

8. Alejandro Kirk, C, Blue Jays

Kirk was quietly the second-best all-around catcher in the league this year behind Seattle’s Cal Raleigh, but isn’t a huge star since his value is largely driven by on-base skills and pitch framing.

9. Max Muncy, 3B, Dodgers

Muncy is surprisingly solid as a baserunner and a defensive third baseman, and he’s always been a dangerous hitter.

10. Tyler Glasnow, SP, Dodgers

Glasnow’s walks crept up during the regular season and the playoffs, but he’s been missing bats as always and is inducing weak contact during his current hot streak.

11. Will Smith, C, Dodgers

Smith hasn’t been very good offensively in the playoffs but had the third-best WAR amongst catchers in the majors this season, behind only Raleigh and Kirk.

12. Ernie Clement, 2B/3B, Blue Jays

Clement posted a quietly solid 3.2 WAR this season, driven mostly by contact and defense, but has gone to another level in the postseason, hitting .429 with almost no ball-in-play luck, due to his 4% strikeout rate. He’s on a heater, but the Dodgers’ staff is the type to possibly end that streak.

13. Daulton Varsho, CF, Blue Jays

Varsho is above average at basically everything on the baseball field but isn’t truly elite at much. He missed time with shoulder and hamstring issues this year but was on track for a career-best 4-ish WAR season.

14. Kevin Gausman, SP, Blue Jays

Gausman posted the 10th-best pitcher WAR in baseball this season but has one of the lowest fastball velocities of pitchers in that range and has been hit around in the playoffs, though his career playoff performances are close to his regular season quality.

15. Tommy Edman, 2B, Dodgers

Edman is a good defender at almost any position but had the 12th-least lucky ball-in-play outcomes this regular season. That luck has turned around in the playoffs.

16. Trey Yesavage, SP, Blue Jays

Like Gausman, Yesavage’s splitter is his best secondary pitch, and he doesn’t have standout fastball velocity or breaking ball quality. That said, Yesavage’s splitter has been confounding hitters in his six career big league appearances, half of which have been in the playoffs.

17. Bo Bichette, SS, Blue Jays

It sounds like Bichette will be able to return to the Jays’ lineup for the World Series, but he’s been out the past six weeks with a knee injury and it’s hard to know what he’ll look like in the short term.

18. Addison Barger, RF, Blue Jays

Barger is usable defensively at a number of positions and broke out this year to be an above-average hitter, mostly due to his power.

19. Andy Pages, CF, Dodgers

Pages hasn’t been terrible at the plate this postseason, but he was a standout hitter (.272 average, 24 homers) and defender (plus-7 runs in 117 starts in center field) in the regular season, en route to 4.0 WAR.

20. Teoscar Hernandez, RF, Dodgers

Hernandez hit for power in the regular season (25 homers) but didn’t draw many walks or stand out defensively. This postseason, he’s been hitting for even more power on a rate basis, so he sneaks on this list.

Superlatives

Fastest pitch of the World Series will be thrown by: Roki Sasaki

Sasaki narrowly wins this matchup with the hardest-thrown pitch among these teams in the playoffs at 100.8 mph, and he’s fresher than Louis Varland (100.7 mph) and can go more max effort than Ohtani (100.3 mph).

Others in the mix: Ohtani

Best breaking pitch will be: Emmet Sheehan‘s slider

Sheehan’s slider was, per pitch thrown, the best pitch on the Dodgers’ staff this season. It doesn’t have a gaudy spin rate or crazy movement but he throws it hard and hitters can’t seem to track it.

Others in the mix: Yariel Rodriguez‘s slider, Braydon Fisher‘s slider, Brendon Little‘s curveball, Jack Dreyer‘s slider, Glasnow’s curveball, Shane Bieber‘s curveball

Best changeup/splitter will be: Yesavage’s splitter

Yesavage offers a unique combination of movement profile (his slider moves to his arm side), a very high arm slot, and short extension which brings his release even higher. Hitters haven’t seen something like this before, then add in a killer splitter (which he barely threw at East Carolina, where he was last season) and hitters don’t know what to do.

Others in the mix: Yamamoto’s splitter, Gausman’s splitter, Snell’s changeup

Most whiffs will be thrown by: Snell

Snell has been red-hot in the postseason (I explain why here) and should get two starts, but there’s a number of strong candidates for this.

Others in the mix: Yamamoto, Yesavage, Glasnow

Hardest hit ball in play will be hit by: Guerrero

The odds for this are as close to 50/50 as you can get. Guerrero (120.4) and Ohtani (120.0 mph) were second and third in max exit velo during the regular season behind Cincinnati’s Oneil Cruz (122.9). Ohtani has a slight edge in playoff max EV at 117.7 to Vlad’s 116.0. I’ll lean to Vlad because he’s been running hotter at the plate and thus will get a few more chances to smoke one at a gaudy number, but Ohtani will be facing a weaker pitching staff, so this is still a coin flip.

Also in the mix: Ohtani

Highest sprint speed will be recorded by: Clement

The other main candidates are part-time players who might get only some chances to open it up on the bases, but I expect Clement to be on base often in the series.

Others in the mix: Hyeseong Kim, Edman, Myles Straw

The batter who will record the most hits: Guerrero

Clement (second in postseason hits with 18) might be held back a bit by the quality of the Dodgers’ pitchers while Guerrero (first in postseason hits with 19) also makes a ton of contact but gets the margin for error of having huge power, too.

Others in the mix: Clement, Nathan Lukes, Betts, Freeman, Springer

Best defender will be: Kirk

If you consider framing to be a part of defensive value (you definitely should) and also factor in positional difficulty (I think you should), then Kirk is the answer. He’ll be impacting roughly half of the pitches in the series and he was the second-best framer in the league behind San Francisco’s Patrick Bailey this regular season.

Others in the mix: Clement, Edman, Betts

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