The Pac-12 leftovers: What will be Washington State’s and Oregon State’s ultimate fate?
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Kyle Bonagura, ESPN Staff Writer
PULLMAN, Wash. — Nothing about Saturday’s game between Oregon State and Washington State should have felt unusual. There is a familiarity that comes with having played 106 times over the past 120 years.
It’s a rivalry game in that sense. A reliable way to mark the passage of time. But this version — the first time the matchup featured both teams in the AP top 25 — might have had the friendliest lead-up to a high-stakes college football game on record.
The pregame festivities were highlighted by the schools’ mascots — Benny Beaver and Butch T. Cougar — being driven onto the field in a cart, waving each other’s flag, before sharing a dance at midfield. The WSU Cougar Marching Band played Oregon State’s fight song. Two days earlier, the schools’ presidents and athletic directors conducted a joint online press conference with a custom background of alternating OSU and WSU logos, during which WSU president Kirk Schulz proclaimed, “Go Cougs and go Beavs.”
“Just to be clear, this partnership has been super strong, but it’s on pause come kickoff for just a little while and then we’ll get back to it,” OSU athletic director Scott Barnes clarified, lightheartedly.
Following UCLA‘s and USC‘s decision last year to join the Big Ten, eight of the ten remaining schools have followed suit, scattering to the Big 12 (Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, Utah), Big Ten (Oregon, Washington) and ACC (Cal, Stanford) beginning in summer 2024.
The collapse left Oregon State and Washington State without a major conference suitor and in limbo to chart their futures together.
“Fans need to know that we are leaving no stone unturned together,” Schulz said. “WSU and OSU are aggressively pursuing all options. Staff from our two schools are meeting daily to explore alternatives and determine the best path forward. Let’s be clear, WSU and OSU are in this situation not because of the quality of our athletic programs, but because of the size of our media markets.”
For many students and alumni of both universities, it’s the college town atmospheres in Corvallis (population 60,956) and Pullman (population 32,508) that attracted them in the first place. Nowhere else on the West Coast offers a chance to escape major population centers to attend school at a place with major college athletics. In the past several weeks, that small-town dynamic — and major source of pride — has become a threat to the futures of both towns and universities.
“Clearly, us being in the news has generated a lot of angst though within the community, within our faculty staff and students,” Schulz said. “It’s just, ‘Hey, what’s next? What is it going to look like? Are we going to lose part of our identity because of where we’ll land next year?'”
For a few hours Saturday night, those thoughts were on hold as Wazzu roared to a comfortable lead before a sold-out crowd, eventually hanging on to beat the Beavers, 38-35. With the game behind them, though, their shared future is back in focus.
PULLMAN MAYOR GLENN Johnson will finish his fifth and final term later this year. He moved to town from Sacramento in 1979, when he took a job teaching broadcasting at WSU’s Edward R. Murrow School of Communication. Since 1980, he has been the voice of the Cougars, serving as the public address announcer at WSU football and basketball games.
When Johnson arrived, the Cougars did not play all their football games in town, opting to play some games — notably several Apple Cups against Washington — 90 miles up the road at Joe Albi Stadium in Spokane.
It was a practice he recalled then-coach Jim Walden did not like.
“I remember [Walden] said, ‘Hey, it’s like preparing for an away game. We should have all these games down here [in Pullman],'” Johnson said.
Walden got his way in 1983, when WSU played its final game in Spokane. Even if the sentiment was rooted in gaining a competitive advantage, the decision had a wider-ranging impact.
“Wow, you’re transforming your downtown,” Johnson said. “People saw all the restaurants get busy with all the visitors and all the fans. They loved coming back. We weren’t getting that when I first got here. And that’s one of the important things.”
The impact WSU athletics has on the local economy is difficult to quantify, but even anecdotally the importance is easy to notice. Take the locally owned American Travel Inn, a 1-star, bring-your-own-shampoo motel less than a mile from campus. WSU logos are painted all over the motel, which is adorned with signs welcoming Cougars fans. Rooms are usually less than $99 a night, but on the night before the OSU game, that number climbed closer to $500.
In the adjoining parking lot sits the Old European, a beloved breakfast spot that has been in business since 1989 and still uses family recipes that date back more than a century. On a typical morning, it’s easy to walk in, grab a booth and drink the famous fresh-squeezed orange juice almost immediately. On the Sunday following a football game, it transforms into a bustling madhouse with a line out the door.
Earlier this year, Pullman discussed plans to rebuild parts of its downtown, but had to put things on hold.
“We found out, well, by the time they could finally get all the construction done, you’re going to impact at least five home games,” Johnson said. “We as a city, city council, mayor, all of us said that we can’t do that. I mean, here are restaurants — our businesses are fully recovered from COVID and you can’t do that to ’em like that. So, we delayed the entire process until next year so we can get the thing done in time for next season. Home football games are a big economic driver for the community, and that’s far more than it used to be over the years.”
Even though there is no thought to the possibility of football going away, there is concern in Pullman and within the WSU athletic department about the long-term repercussions of the Cougars not being in a conference considered to be at the top level of college football.
“To ultimately be on the outside looking in a grouping of schools that this university has been a part of for over a century, that’s a painful moment for Washington State,” WSU athletic director Pat Chun said. “Then there’s the reality for people inside the athletic department. There’s uncertainty because everyone recognizes we’re going to reorganize our budget some way, somehow. The $35 million we got from the Pac-12 is not going to be there anymore.”
On top of the looming financial impact is the hit to civic pride.
“I think you always mentioned, ‘You’re Washington State University, a Pac-12 institution,'” Johnson said. “They also mentioned the research too, but from a general acceptance standpoint, people understand the Pac-12, especially here on the West Coast.
“Being part of the Pac-12 always has meant a lot and, well, I’ll tell you, seeing the Pac-12 basically implode, this has been tough to see.”
EARLIER THIS MONTH, a judge in Washington granted a temporary restraining order sought by OSU and WSU to prevent the Pac-12 from holding a board meeting. There was concern from the two remaining schools that the exiting members could attempt to dissolve the conference to force an equal split of the conference’s remaining assets.
OSU and WSU successfully argued that when UCLA and USC were barred from the conference board after announcing their departures for the Big Ten in 2022, it set a precedent that they did not have board or voting rights. The same approach was applied when Colorado announced it was headed to the Big 12 earlier this summer.
When Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff scheduled a board meeting for earlier this month that included all 12 schools — 10 of which will no longer be in the conference next year — OSU and WSU initiated legal action.
“The meaning of the bylaws hasn’t changed just because more members have decided to leave,” lawyer Eric MacMichael argued for OSU and WSU in court.
A preliminary injunction hearing is expected to be held in October to determine who will have voting rights on the Pac-12 board.
In the meantime, OSU and WSU have been trying to assess the value of the conference’s remaining assets and compare them with existing liabilities. It has been a slower than expected process that will ultimately determine how the schools proceed.
“We understand some of the assets that the Pac-12 has — certainly the media payments, the NCAA tournament credits, CFP — some things we understand pretty well,” Oregon State president Jayathi Murthy said. “Some things we don’t understand — even about the assets in terms of who the payments go to, who controls them, etcetera. And then there are liabilities. There are the public legal cases that are going on, so we’re trying to figure out how those are going to shape our view. There’s lots and lots of fine print and lots of other contractual obligations that the conference has. The balance of these will tell us what net assets actually exist in the conference and we’ve got to understand that before we can chart out the path forward.”
The schools expect to have some sort of clarity in the next month. In the end, the decision figures to be somewhat simple: If the assets outweigh the liabilities, the schools will likely attempt to maintain control and attempt some kind of rebuild. If the liabilities are determined to be too great, then they would likely be forced to walk away.
With either scenario, the most likely result is a future intertwined with schools from the Mountain West Conference. Whether that’s a reverse merger with the Mountain West schools moving to the Pac-12 as a block to benefit from the brand value or WSU and OSU going the opposite direction remains to be seen. For fans, any difference would be mostly semantics.
The current Mountain West media rights deal pays its member schools roughly $6 million annually; however, there figures to be an increase should OSU and WSU factor in.
It’s still theoretically possible, too, that OSU and WSU could operate the Pac-12 as a two-team conference the next two years — essentially acting as independents — but that option is viewed as a last resort, sources told ESPN. (The NCAA gives conferences a two-year grace period to reach designated minimums for member schools should they fall below the required thresholds.)
“The fact that we are waiting for some additional information does not mean that we haven’t been focused every day on what that scheduling scenario might look like and engaged in the proper conversations to make sure that when we do have that information we’re pressing go,” Barnes said.
At WSU, one of the most confounding parts of the conference realignment game has been the criteria for evaluation. If everything is being driven by TV media value, why is WSU being penalized for the size of Pullman when the Cougars have consistently been one of the biggest TV draws in the Pac-12 for several years?
“Depending on the metric you look at, we’re either in the top fourth, top third or top half [of the Pac-12] consistently over five, 10 years,” Chun said.
In an era where nearly all games are either broadcast on national TV or streamed, individual market size does not translate to larger audiences in the way it did when football was broadcast regionally. Where is the logic in the idea a school is more valuable from a TV standpoint because it’s located in a larger media market if there are years of evidence showing that school doesn’t translate to TV viewers? Rutgers, for example, is in the largest media market in the country, yet the Scarlet Knights were among the least-watched Power 5 programs in the country last season.
These are questions WSU has been left unable to sufficiently answer.
SINCE ARRIVING IN Pullman as the defensive coordinator prior to the 2020 season, Jake Dickert has consistently had to navigate through murky waters.
In 2020, it was the COVID season. In 2021, he took over as interim coach after Nick Rolovich and several assistants were fired for refusing to take the COVID vaccine. Now in 2023, there’s the uncertainty about his program’s standing within major college football.
“My number one job is the focus of seeing through the fog and understanding what’s on the grass matters,” Dickert told ESPN.
Through it all, Dickert has methodically taken the team in the right direction. Following the win against Oregon State, WSU jumped to No. 16 in the AP poll. It’s the Cougars’ highest ranking since 2018, when they reached as high as No. 7, and just the fifth time they’ve been ranked this high in September over the past 40 years.
“I said this summer I felt confident that we put together a really good team and no one was talking about it and we can do it in our own way,” Dickert said. “Our team is greater than the sum of its parts. … We got zero five star [recruits], zero four stars. We got zero. But we’re greater than the sum of our parts because of our connection and how we play and the buy-in that they have to their job.”
That track record with recruiting gives Dickert confidence that regardless of how the conference situation plays out, they’ll still be able to maintain a standard that fans can be excited about. It almost goes without saying that the Cougars have historically benefitted from being in the Pac-12 from a recruiting standpoint, but there has never been a time when they were consistently recruiting peers with the more high-profile brands in the conference. From that standpoint, their place in the college football ecosystem would remain very similar, though it remains to be seen how susceptible they would be to raids for top players through the transfer portal or how appealing a destination WSU would be for players looking to prove themselves at a higher level.
Take Saturday’s win against Oregon State, for example. Quarterback Cam Ward, a transfer from FCS Incarnate Word, put on a show while connecting on a combined 15 passes for 333 yards and four touchdowns just to Kyle Williams and Josh Kelly, both of whom transferred from Mountain West schools in the offseason. Some players of that caliber will inevitably not consider WSU if its not in a major conference.
“I always look at the positive side,” Johnson said. “It’s only the way it can be as a mayor. There’s enough people saying, ‘Oh, woe is us,’ and that kind of thing. But you’ve got to sit back and say, ‘Okay, what can we make out of this?'”
The most obvious answer is this: As college football’s postseason system evolves, WSU’s access to an expanded playoff will likely be easier from outside one of the expanded power conferences than from within. Assuming there remains a designated slot for a non-power conference team, the Cougars would be much better positioned for that than a team like, say, UCLA, which doesn’t have a track record to indicate it will compete at the highest level in the Big Ten.
So while there are serious budget concerns on the horizon that will have a negative impact on the athletic department and community, WSU — and Oregon State — remains intent on doing whatever it takes to stay relevant in major football.
Dickert summed it up succinctly: “We belong.”
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Dan Wetzel
Ryan Day is 81-10 as the head coach of Ohio State, including 11-0 this year as the Buckeyes try to repeat as national champions. It’s a breathtaking run of success.
Yet Day is famously 0-4 against Michigan over the past four years, including a shocking home defeat to a middling Wolverines team a year ago. Another loss Saturday in Ann Arbor, especially as an ESPN BET 11.5-point favorite, would invite continued scorn and frustration.
It is why you’d think Day is the coach under the most pressure to win a specific game this weekend.
Then along comes Lane Kiffin saying, hold my Hotty Toddy.
Kiffin has yet to publicly declare where he will work next season — let alone the rest of this season. It might be LSU. It might be Florida. Or it might be Ole Miss, where he has the 10-1 Rebels ranked sixth heading into Friday’s Egg Bowl at Mississippi State.
“An announcement on Coach Kiffin’s future is expected the Saturday following the game,” Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter wrote in a statement.
It’s a game Kiffin had better win.
Forget the rest of this chaotic story. The long, slow drag-out of an announcement. The fact that Kiffin had family members reportedly tour other schools and towns … while still working in Oxford. The daily cryptic book excerpts Kiffin sends out on social media, leaving fans to try to decipher their meanings.
Or even the fact the decision is merely “expected” on Saturday.
Maybe. Or maybe not. Who really knows? It’s Lane. Maybe he’ll pick a hat, like recruits do, or have Jesse Palmer come to town for a “Bachelor”-style rose ceremony.
If nothing else, Kiffin, a personality like no other, has set up Friday’s game in Starkville, Mississippi, as a game like no other — one of the most “must-win” contests a coach has ever faced.
Ole Miss is having its greatest season in more than 60 years. The College Football Playoff is waiting. A home playoff game, which might be the biggest sporting event in state history, is at hand. The Rebels are absolute national semifinal contenders, if not capable of winning the whole thing. Kiffin himself has never had a season this successful.
Yet if Ole Miss gets upset Friday by its archrival, it could all collapse. If so, the blame will be singular.
Day can lose and, despite the embarrassment, move on to bigger challenges.
Kiffin might never live down creating a circus of speculation and distraction as he considers quitting on a playoff team.
His defenders can blame the clunky calendar, but life is about timing. Sometimes it doesn’t work in your favor. Leaving a team with big possibilities (it is extremely unlikely Ole Miss would allow him to coach in the playoff) for the perceived greener grass of another program would be an extraordinary decision. Is he a coach or a job hunter?
Emotions will be bitter enough if Kiffin leaves after securing a victory that puts Ole Miss in the playoff. If the Rebels lose, though? They aren’t assured anything, falling into a crowded group of 10-2 contenders seeking an at-large bid. They could get left out.
Making matters worse, it’s quite possible Kiffin bails the next day. That would give the College Football Playoff committee the option of downgrading the Rebels because they lost their head coach the way it downgraded Florida State two years ago because it lost its starting quarterback to injury.
Just like that, the dream season would have a nightmare conclusion … just as the perpetrator skips town. How will that go over?
Ole Miss is an 8.5-point favorite. It should defeat a Mississippi State team that has shown admirable growth this year but is still rebuilding. This is the Egg Bowl, though. Anything can — and has — happened. Upsets. Comebacks. A guy costing his team by mimicking a urinating dog during a touchdown celebration.
This thing is almost always wild.
“Coach Kiffin and I have had many pointed and positive conversations regarding his future at Ole Miss,” Carter wrote in his statement. “While we discuss next steps, we know we cannot lose sight of what is most important — our sixth-ranked team that is poised to finish the regular season in historic fashion.
“Despite outside noise,” Carter wrote, “Coach Kiffin is focused on preparing our team for the Egg Bowl.”
He better be. And then Ole Miss better win it.
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Dan Wetzel
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Dan Wetzel
ESPN
- Dan Wetzel is a senior writer focused on investigative reporting, news analysis and feature storytelling.
Attorneys for Brian Kelly have informed LSU in a letter that the school’s claim that it had not “formally terminated” Kelly as its football coach has “made it nearly impossible” for him to get another coaching job.
According to the letter, which was sent Nov. 18 to LSU athletic director Verge Ausberry and board of supervisors member John H. Carmouche, Kelly says he “reserves all rights to seek any and all damages to the fullest extent permitted by law” for the interference in any potential job candidacy.
“As you know, there is absolutely no basis to LSU’s contrived positions that Coach Kelly was not terminated or that cause existed for such termination,” the letter, which was obtained by ESPN, reads. “LSU’s conduct, including its failure to confirm that Coach Kelly was terminated without cause and its unsupported allegations of misconduct on the part of Coach Kelly, has made it nearly impossible for Coach Kelly to secure other football-related employment.
“LSU’s conduct continues to harm Coach Kelly, particularly during this critical hiring period.”
LSU declined comment because it is part of an ongoing legal matter.
The LSU board of supervisors voted Friday to allow new president Wade Rousse to formally terminate Kelly. The board did not indicate whether the firing would be for cause or without cause.
Kelly, 64, was initially relieved of his duties Oct. 26, one day after a 49-25 loss to Texas A&M dropped the Tigers to 5-3. At the time, the school made clear in public statements that the dismissal was performance-related.
In November, according to a legal filing by Kelly, the school informed Kelly’s representatives that then-athletic director Scott Woodward did not have the authority to dismiss Kelly. The school then stated it had reason to fire Kelly “for cause,” which would impact the payout of his contract, which is about $54 million.
In response, Kelly filed a petition of declaratory judgment in the 19th Judicial District for the Parish of East Baton Rouge (Louisiana), asking for a judge to assert that Kelly was fired Oct. 26 without cause.
In a separate letter, this one dated Nov. 19 and obtained by ESPN, Kelly’s attorneys say that Carmouche told them that Carmouche had “expressed his hope” they’d agree to send written confirmation of Kelly’s firing without cause, but only after meeting with a board member and Rousse.
The letter claims Carmouche asked that Kelly withdraw the petition for declaratory judgment.
The Nov. 19 letter also said Kelly will not withdraw the petition for declaratory judgment until he “receives written confirmation” signed by the board of supervisors chair Scott Ballard, Ausberry and Rousse “that his termination was without cause” and that LSU will “fulfill its contractual obligation to pay Coach Kelly the full liquidated damages.”
Kelly’s attorneys say that the legal wrangling and confusion have made it difficult for Kelly to pursue open head coaching jobs in college football. There are currently nine vacancies in the power conferences, with others expected to open as the coaching carousel begins after the regular season ends this weekend.
Kelly came to LSU from Notre Dame in 2022 and went 34-14 overall. He previously coached Cincinnati, Central Michigan and Grand Valley State (Michigan), where he won two Division II national titles.
ESPN’s Mark Schlabach contributed to this report.
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Adam Rittenberg
Ed Orgeron needed a rope.
In late September 2013, Orgeron had been named interim coach at USC, following the school’s infamous middle-of-the-night firing of Lane Kiffin on the tarmac at LAX. Orgeron had been a head coach at Ole Miss, and now had another opportunity, at a program he loved. He wrote down several things he wanted to do in operating the USC program.
First, he borrowed an exercise from former Trojans coach Pete Carroll, and obtained a rope from the fire department. He assembled everyone involved in the program — players, coaches, support staff, even administrators — and paired up groups for tug-of-war: running backs against linebackers, offensive line against defensive line, and so on.
“I got the coaching staff to pull against the administration, and I let the damn administration win,” Orgeron told ESPN. “If I knew what [would happen] at USC, I would have pulled a little harder.”
His main point was that neither side really gained an edge when pulling in opposite directions.
“I said, ‘I want everybody in this room — and there’s a lot of people — get on the same side of the rope, and let’s pull,'” Orgeron said. “That sent a message: One team, one heartbeat. When a firing happens, something is segmented, and you’ve got to try to piece it together as much as you can.”
Orgeron led USC to a 6-2 finish that fall but wasn’t retained. When he was named LSU‘s interim coach in early 2016, he once again did the tug-of-war exercise. After going 5-2 that fall, Orgeron had the interim tag removed. Three years later, his LSU squad won the national championship.
Interim coaches inherit vastly different situations at different points in the calendar, but they share a mission: to guide a ship jostled by change through choppy waters.
“When you become the interim head coach, it’s never a good thing,” said Tim Skipper, appointed UCLA‘s interim coach in September after spending the entire 2024 season as Fresno State‘s interim. “It’s never a good time.”
Interims must guide teams through a range of games, while dealing with a range of emotions. Amid uncertain futures for both players and coaches, interims make decisions for the moment. Some have major success, like Orgeron, and end up getting the tag removed. Others fully know they’re just placeholders and try to keep things from falling apart until resolutions are reached.
The 2025 season has placed a spotlight on interim coaches, as jobs have opened in every major conference ahead of a wild coaching cycle. We’ve already seen one game featuring opposing interim coaches. As most seasons wrap up this week, ESPN spoke with current and former interim coaches and identified some of the key things to do, and avoid, as they navigate a bumpy landscape.
The initial transition
Some coach firings are anticipated for weeks or months, while others, like Penn State‘s ouster of James Franklin after a three-game losing streak this fall, are jarring. But whatever circumstances surround the coaching change, interims are thrust in front of teams filled with emotion.
“When that happened on Sunday, it was like a funeral,” said Oregon State interim coach Robb Akey, named to his role after the school fired Trent Bray on Oct. 12. “We had to be able to pull the guys up and get them moving on.”
The timing of the changes also factors in for interims. Both Virginia Tech and UCLA fired their coaches only three games into this season.
“That’s a long time to try to hold a team together,” said Philip Montgomery, appointed to be Virginia Tech‘s interim coach from his offensive coordinator role Sept. 14. “Most of these guys were recruited by Brent and signed on for that part of it. When you rip that away from them, then all of a sudden, there’s a lot of emotions, and you’re trying to handle all of that and trying to somehow keep them focused, keep them jelled together, and for us, find a way to go win games and have a productive season.”
After Pry’s firing, Montgomery relied on his eight-year tenure as Tulsa’s head coach. He addressed the team, went over general guidelines and gave players the platform to vent.
“Once you laid [those guidelines] down, you can’t go back and forth with it,” he said. “It’s got to be steadfast.”
Skipper didn’t have the same experience to lean on, but he had been an interim the year before at Fresno State, taking over in July when Jeff Tedford stepped down and guiding the team to a 6-7 record. Skipper had played at Fresno State and was in his second stint as a Bulldogs assistant.
He arrived at UCLA this summer as special assistant to coach DeShaun Foster. Upon being named interim coach after Foster’s firing, Skipper had a plan from what he had done at Fresno State, but he barely knew the UCLA team. Since UCLA had an open week, Skipper held a mini training camp. He met individually with players and had them clean and organize the locker room.
“We were oh-fer,” Skipper said, referring to the team’s 0-3 record. “We just needed a win.”
He then took the whole team bowling, an activity usually reserved for the preseason or bowl game prep, and ensured every lane had a mix of players from different position groups.
“They just bowled their ass off and talked s— and had a good time,” Skipper said. “It was another opportunity to get them smiling.”
Managing the coaching staff
When schools fire head coaches, they usually retain the rest of the staff to finish out the season. The remaining coaches face uncertain futures. Unless the next permanent coach keeps them on, they’ll be looking for fresh starts.
“We all go home and you’ve got wives that want to know where we’re going to live and where we’re going to eat and how the bills are going to get paid,” Akey said. “We’re all in the coaches’ portal, too. It’s a unique situation that you wouldn’t wish on anybody. You wouldn’t wish it on an enemy.”
Interim coaches say the key is not letting the anxiety seep into the program’s daily operation.
“What to avoid is … to become these independent contractors that do our own thing, our own way,” LSU interim coach Frank Wilson said. “It’s not having letdowns and having self-pity.”
Interim coaches almost always come from within the existing staff. One day, they’re sitting among their assistant peers; the next, they’re at the head of the table.
“You need to take charge of the staff and make them accountable and be the head coach, but don’t be a butthole,” Orgeron said. “Don’t come across too hard because the day before, you were an assistant with those guys.”
After firing Troy Taylor in late March, Stanford general manager Andrew Luck brought in Frank Reich, who coached Luck in the NFL, to lead the program. Reich had more time to prepare for an interim season — he said he never would have taken the job any other way — but also didn’t know the players or assistant coaches when he arrived.
“I lean on them a lot,” Reich said of the assistants he inherited at Stanford. “I ask them what they think. Give me your perspective. Give me the context and history of this player, this citation. That’s a big part of it.”
Interim coaches often have to shuffle staff responsibilities, including playcalling. Montgomery kept offensive playcalling duties at Virginia Tech while also serving as head coach, just as he had done at Tulsa. Arkansas did the same thing when offensive coordinator Bobby Petrino was elevated to interim coach. Montgomery saw value in keeping Pry’s staff together, noting the stability would help the players.
Oregon State fired its special teams coordinator shortly before it did Bray, who also served as the team’s defensive playcaller. When Akey became the Beavers’ interim coach, he had to sort out responsibilities.
Skipper had an even more chaotic situation at UCLA, where defensive coordinator Ikaika Malloe parted ways with the school after Foster’s firing. Then, after Skipper’s first game as interim, offensive coordinator Tino Sunseri also parted ways with UCLA. Skipper had defensive coordinator experience but wanted no part of the role, given everything on his plate.
He asked Kevin Coyle, who had been Skipper’s defensive coordinator when he played, to make a midseason move from Syracuse and lead the defense. Skipper then looked internally and had Jerry Neuheisel, the 33-year-old tight ends coach who played quarterback at UCLA and had spent almost his entire career there, to become offensive coordinator. They were both coach’s kids — Neuheisel’s father, Rick, coached UCLA from 2008 to 2011 — and Jerry was among the first staff members Skipper got to know after he arrived.
“I was always like, ‘This is a smart dude, he knows ball, he’s going to be a coordinator one day,’ just me saying that to myself,” Skipper said. “And it just worked out that I had the opportunity to hire him and we made it happen.”
Recruiting and the future roster
As a longtime assistant and then Ole Miss’ head coach, Orgeron built a reputation as a ravenous recruiter. So what did he do when he became interim coach at USC and then LSU?
“I recruited even harder,” he said.
He held recruiting “power hours” every Monday with calls to prospects and recruiting meetings on Friday mornings and evenings. On Saturdays before games, Orgeron and the staff would gather, put on “College GameDay,” eat breakfast and FaceTime recruits, asking about their high school games the night before.
Orgeron’s pitch?
“This is USC, this is LSU,” he told the players. “Most of the things that you are committed to or the things that you loved about it are always going to be here. They’re going to make the right choice, and they’re going to get a coach that helps us win a championship. Stay with us, stay to the end, don’t change now, let’s see what happens.”
Orgeron made sure never to lie to recruits. He didn’t tell them he would be the next coach, even though he wanted to be.
The difference now from Orgeron’s two interim stints is that coaches also must monitor their own roster. Until a recent rule change, players were able to enter the transfer portal in the first 30 days after a head coaching change. Skipper’s main goal when named interim at Fresno State and UCLA was to have no players enter the portal. He also didn’t let up in contacting UCLA’s committed recruits and those considering the program.
“We’re trying to still spread the good word about UCLA football, UCLA as a university, as an academic institution, all of that,” Skipper said. “So we’re working to the end, ’til they tell us to leave.”
Interim coaches have limits in recruiting, though. They typically aren’t offering scholarships, as those decisions ultimately fall on the permanent head coaches. Reich, who knows he’s done at Stanford following the season, has deferred most questions about the team’s future to Luck.
Montgomery has spent most of his recruiting energy on the prospects who initially committed to Virginia Tech.
“Most of those guys are saying, ‘Hey, I’m committed but I’m open. I want to see what happens and who they hire and what they’re going to do, what’s the next move going to be before I fully say, hey, I’m back in 100 percent again,'” Montgomery said.
Managing the end of seasons
There’s nothing tidy about the end of the college football regular season. Even when there hasn’t been a coaching change, teams are scrambling to finish recruiting. Assistant coaches are often moving jobs. Players are thinking about what’s next.
Finishing the season with an interim coach only adds to the chaos.
This week, Montgomery will lead Virginia Tech into its rivalry game at No. 19 Virginia, but the Hokies last week hired their new coach in Franklin, who was out of work for barely a month. Franklin is contacting recruits and putting together his staff, while letting the current team finish out 2025.
John Thompson twice was named Arkansas State‘s interim coach for bowl games, as the school went through three consecutive one-year coaches (Hugh Freeze, Gus Malzahn and Bryan Harsin). When Malzahn left for Auburn in early December 2012, he took several staff members. Eight days later, Arkansas State hired Harsin. Thompson, meanwhile, was unsure of his future and charged with guiding the team through the GoDaddy.com Bowl.
“You’ve got coaches going everywhere, who’s going with this group, who’s going with that group?” Thompson said. “That was the most difficult thing. You’ve got guys that are trying to get a job, some that already have taken another job, but they’re still there with you.”
After his hiring, Harsin began sitting in Thompson’s meetings.
“Never said a word,” Thompson said. “I conducted the staff meetings, conducted practice, did everything, and he just sat there, you know? And he ended up hiring me [as an assistant], but that was kind of a strange deal. I said, ‘I’m not going to pay him any attention,’ but it was uncomfortable.”
The turbulent few weeks made wins in both bowl games Thompson coached that much sweeter. He “absolutely loved” coaching both Arkansas State teams, which featured players who had been through five coaches in five years, but never let the constant flux overwhelm their goals.
Some interim coach stories have happy endings, like Orgeron getting the LSU job two days after leading the team to a win against Texas A&M, or Kent State last month removing the interim tag from Mark Carney. More often than not, though, interims are not promoted nor retained, as programs reboot with new leaders.
They’re temporary stewards, coaching very much for the moment, and trying to maximize the experience for players.
“The name ‘Coach,’ the label ‘Coach’ means something, right?” Akey said. “We’re supposed to be growing young guys up. We’re supposed to be helping them develop. And, well, here’s the opportunity to do it, because you got hit with a bunch of adversity, and it’s going to happen to you in life.”
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