Back with another coach hiring grades. Below is the other posts if you want to keep up and see what I think for other job fillings.
https://fanspo.com/nfl/s/general/p/-cOh94hJfm4Q7c/2025-coaching-hiring-grades-link
Michigan (2025 HC: Sherrone Moore; 2026 HC: Kyle Whittingham): B
This is by far a short term hire. This will work for a season or two, but may not last five seasons. The obvious reasoning for Michigan to hire Whittingham is to hire the OC in Jason Beck and he becomes the HC when Whittingham retires and then bring in Devon Dampier if Bryce Underwood chooses to leave, which it seems Underwood is staying. I like the hire and think this is best they can go after so late in the carousel, but there are no long term success I see coming out of this.
Michigan State (2025 HC: Jonathan Smith; 2026 HC: Pat Fitzgerald): C+
I am slowly growing to like this, but I still have doubts especially in his ability to deal with the NIL era which he lacks experience of and the fact he has been out of the game for so long making me wonder if it will affect him at all. Besides all of that, he is a winner and he proved it at Northwestern making two Big Ten Championship appearances and three ten win seasons in 17 seasons. To win or at least make a bowl game at a school like Northwestern is a mental Super Bowl at it's own and shows how good of a coach he is to be able to get nine winning seasons out of it. But, what I keep coming back to is he has been out of the game for so long, can he jump back in like nothing happened?
Penn State (2025 HC: James Franklin; 2026 HC: Matt Campbell): A
My personal favorite hire and I honestly think this is an upgrade compared to what they had the last ten plus years since Paterno was fired. I am a big Matt Campbell fan and have been following him before Iowa State, since his last year or two of Toledo and watched him take a historically bad program to the Big 12 Championship is a huge program changer. I see a lot of similarities of him and Curt Cignetti, but there is one thing that stands out that makes both polar opposites from each other which is recruiting and transfer portal. Cignetti uses heavy transfers in his lineups, Campbell is more old school where he recruits players primarily and they all work their way up to the top of the lineup and he only brings in transfer portal kids to bolster depth or if he feels like a certain position is going to be weaker than that previous year. He is going to bring an old style to Penn State which I feel like would work better than trying to emulate Cignetti's success.
UCLA (2025 HC: DeShaun Foster; 2026 HC: Bob Chesney): C-
In the era where geography doesn't matter, I think geography affects this hire. A Northeast guy who spent his entire career on the Atlantic coast decides to take a bigger job in Pasadena, California with zero experience west and will rely heavily on transfer recruits because how difficult it is to recruit in state without any experience recruiting in state. I don't like the hire and would be willing to give this a D, not D+ a D. This is obviously a hire hoping to emulate Cignetti's success but I don't think it will get anywhere. Also, before I have those "Chip Kelly is a Northeast guy who coached Oregon and UCLA" just remember how much experience he had before being a HC in the West Coast than Chesney did. And, before I get those "NFL hires Northeast guys to West Coast teams" also realize that NFL and college are two separate things when it comes to coaching because geography does not apply recruiting in state talent because NFL teams don't go after in state talent, they go after the best available or team fits.
There is my Big Ten coach hiring grade. I will have the SEC one posted in the next day or two if I don't post it later tonight. Let me know your thoughts down below!