Ranking the Big Ten coordinator changes

It was a quiet spin on the coaching carousel for Big Ten head coaches, but there was plenty of action at the coordinator level.

Courtesy Nebraska Athletics

If you’re a fan of the coaching carousel, sorry if the transition from 2024 to 2025 left you wanting. At the top of the sport, it was a quiet cycle. The Big Ten and the SEC combined for just one head-coaching change with Purdue hiring a resurgent Barry Odom off a successful run at UNLV. The Big 12 and ACC each had two head jobs change hands but only two of those were due to firings.

All told, 63 of the 68 Power 4 teams (including Notre Dame) will run it back with their existing head coaches in 2025.

The real action was at the coordinator level, jobs that are becoming $2 and $3 million gigs at the power level. These are big hires and, in some cases, need to have an immediate impact.¹

Three Big Ten teams—Nebraska, Ohio State, Washington—are swapping out coordinators on both sides of the ball. Another nine schools made one change. Illinois, Iowa, Michigan State, Northwestern and Oregon have all made it this far without making a coordinator change.

What to make of all the movement in the Big Ten? I’ve taken the liberty of pulling all these hires together and ranking them. I didn’t set out to do this, but they largely fell into one of three tiers: Well-Played, Sure and You Sure?

There’s enough randomness involved with all of this that it’s important to note that any hire can work out or not. Really what I’m trying to assess here is how well a team did in pushing things towards the “works out” end of the scale relative to its standing in the league and the hiring market overall.