Chaos on the carousel: Mark Story and Caroline Makauskas on coaching hires
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky hired Will Stein to boost offense, scoring and in-state recruiting ties.
- Brian Hartline moved to South Florida; Ohio State experience should aid recruiting.
- Coaching movement reshaped power balance as SEC and Big Ten pursued top candidates.
The day after Kentucky introduced Will Stein as its new head football coach, Herald-Leader sports reporter Caroline Makauskas and sports columnist Mark Story discussed this season’s coaching carousel, Stein’s selection and movement around the Southeastern Conference and beyond.
Will Stein to Kentucky
Caroline Makauskas: I think it makes sense to start in the SEC and I think it makes sense to start with Will Stein. He’s young. He’s only 36. What do you think of this hire?
Mark Story: I think this worked out about as well as it could have for Kentucky. I think, in an interesting way, their timing and being late to the market actually benefited them. Most of the action here seemed to be promoting Group of Five head coaches, which I would call the Cignetti Effect.
But what that did was, by the time Kentucky came open, a lot of the really hot coordinators were still available and Kentucky wound up considering two offensive coordinators. But I think the fans would have been happy with either hire. They hired Will Stein and they apparently also talked to Brian Hartline, the now- or soon-to-be former Ohio State offensive coordinator who, after he was not named the Kentucky coach, was named the South Florida head coach. So in that sense, I think, that market in terms of the rising coordinator market was wide open for Kentucky when the UK job finally came to market. I think Stein has a really good reputation nationally as an offensive mind. You look at the numbers, obviously Oregon has talent. I mean, he’s coaching good talent and that helps. That’s the bottom line, really, but their offenses have been good, and he has ties, he grew up a Kentucky fan.
It’s interesting how much that gets emphasized over the fact that he played for Louisville, which you almost never hear mentioned.
That fascinates me. But he knows the state, he’s got a national profile, at least among the national college football media. So I think there’s a lot to like about Will Stein at Kentucky.
Makauskas: I think so, too. Something that kept coming up yesterday was this idea of ‘It’s time for an explosive offense. It’s time for an offense that can score more than 17 to 21 points a game,’ that was something Barnhart said. He wants to be able to put up a significant amount of points in order to compete in the conference and then beyond, maybe in a playoff situation. And (Stein) was putting up big numbers at UTSA.
Story: Yeah, he was. You know, I think it’s natural in coaching transitions to sort of want sort of the opposite of what you had.
And sometimes, I think that gets overblown because if you’ve had a really good defensive coach, if the best candidate is also a really good defensive coach, I don’t see any reason not to do that. But I do think it’s just kind of natural to sort of want what you haven’t had. And Kentucky has struggled offensively, especially the last few years. So, yeah, I think the fans will get behind the idea of bringing in an offensive-minded coach and the older fans will hearken back to the air-raid days. And Will Stein is not an air-raid coach, but that was when Kentucky was really putting points on the board.
Now, the one thing that always worries me a little bit when you hire a quote-unquote “offensive coach,” you know, how is the defense going to be? I mean, by the end of the air-raid days here, the Hal Mumme era, people were pretty tired of losing 59 to 35. That had stopped being fine. So I’m interested to see who Will Stein hires as his defensive coordinator. To me, that will be the most important hire he will make. So I’m anxious to see what he does.
Makauskas: Definitely. And something exciting, that actually is only exciting to me, as I told Jon (Hale) yesterday, Will Stein and I had overlap at the University of Texas. And I didn’t get a chance to ask him, but I’d love to know his favorite taco spots.
Story: Did you hook ‘em?
Makauskas: I didn’t, but maybe sometime in the future we’ll get to connect over that period. The Charlie Strong era down in Austin.
Story: There’s been some scuttlebutt that Charlie Strong may be the defensive coordinator choice. It would be weird because in this state he’s thought of as the Louisville head coach. So, yeah, that that would be something.
Brian Hartline lands at South Florida
Makauskas: Let’s go down to Florida, because you brought up how Brian Hartline was considered for this job, which is true.
Story: Alex Golesh just parlayed the South Florida job into the Auburn job.
I’m not close enough to South Florida to know how that program is resourced, what their NIL situation is, but just as a general rule, a Division I head coaching job in Florida, if you are sufficiently resourced, you can win. I mean, you have access to a ton of talent in that state. Now, there’s a bunch of schools down there, and it’s competitive to recruit that talent, but it’s still a good place to be. So no, I wasn’t that surprised.
Makauskas: We know he knows how to recruit to Ohio State.
Story: Yeah, he’s probably been the most effective recruiter of wide receivers maybe ever in college football history. It’ll be interesting to see how that translates. And (his) hands-on experience of running the offense I don’t think was as deep as Will Stein’s, which may have tipped the situation here in favor of Stein. So it’ll be interesting to see just how he fares branching out. But I think had Kentucky hired Brian Hartline, I think the fans would have been on board with that. I think people would have been excited.
I think, for South Florida, that’s a heck of a get. You have the same questions I mentioned with Will Stein. He’s never been a head coach. You know he’s an offensive guy, what kind of defense will he put on the field, all that, but you’re getting a guy who’s been part of a tremendously well-run operation, which is Ohio State football, so he knows what it needs to look like. And, as you said, he’s an unbelievable recruiter. And that’s not a small thing, to have a head coach who can go in the living rooms and get it done.
Around the SEC
Makauskas: Staying in the state of Florida, Florida has hired John Sumrall, a guy who a lot of people around Lexington and surrounding areas wanted to end up at Kentucky.
Story: It was fascinating, though, the day the hire was made, because Kentucky fans — this was obviously before the Will Stein hire, and really before the Kentucky search had sort of come to fruition — Kentucky fans, many of them were just distraught that Florida had hired Jon Sumrall, but the funny thing was Florida fans were also distraught that Florida had hired Jon Sumrall. So that was hilarious.
Makauskas: No one seemed to be happy on the internet when that was announced. But in my mind, they’re getting a guy who has done big things at a school like Tulane, and there are other coaches around during this cycle that maybe wouldn’t be as good a fit as Jon Sumrall. Do you think he’ll succeed there? Or could he?
Story: Well, yeah, I do. I mean, I think Jon’s personal ability. I mean, Jon’s an impressive guy. If you’ve ever dealt with Jon, you understand why people follow him. He has innate leadership skills. He went to Troy when Troy hadn’t been very good and immediately led a huge rebuild. Tulane was a different challenge because they had been good with Willie Fritz. So, that was a maintaining job, but he has maintained. They’re in the American Athletic Association Conference Championship Game this week. So he’s won everywhere he’s been. He has impressive personal qualities. I’m not sure why Florida’s had so much trouble being good because Florida, boy, do they have a lot of advantages. I would be surprised if Jon is not able to fully take advantage of the advantages Florida boasts.
Makauskas: I’m with you. We talked a little bit about South Florida. I am going to ask you about Alex Golesh to Auburn. This was a name that we heard possibly going to a couple of different places, ended up in Auburn. How do you feel about that one?
Story: I like that. I think Alex Golesh is a really sharp offensive mind. He went to South Florida when South Florida was not good, and he got them on track. I think they went 9-3 this year. They beat Florida. He’s out of the Josh Heupel school. So he’ll bring an exciting offense. I like that hire. I think Auburn finally fooled around and got it right.
Makauskas: It was bound to happen.
Story: Law of averages, you would think.
Makauskas: I want your take on the Lane Kiffin of it all at LSU. After all of the drama and speculation and the waiting, he’s ended up in Baton Rouge, and it has taken over the news cycle. Do you think that it’s a good fit?
Mark Story: That’s a great question. Lane Kiffin is obviously a very gifted coach. Also, he seems to just have a natural knack for chaos and drama. Part of me wonders if Ole Miss wasn’t just kind of a unique setting that allowed his good parts to shine and his, maybe, less-good parts were not as important. And I wonder if LSU, which is a huge pressure cooker, if that’s going to sort of bring out some of the downsides of Lane’s personality.
That being said, Lane Kiffin is an incredibly gifted offensive coach. He did a tremendous job at Ole Miss. He won at Florida Atlantic. You could make a case that LSU is the best job in the country if you’re just looking at a state that produces a ton of talent. I don’t know that Tulane is much of a threat to LSU in recruiting, so LSU basically has that talent, a lot of it, to itself. They pour a ton of resources into football, and they certainly really, really care. This is a very talented coach taking a really good job. So to that extent, it’s great. Now, as I said, I do wonder a little bit about if the pressure and the expectations may sort of activate some of the less-appealing parts of Lane’s personality.
But just in terms of a football choice, LSU is a better job than Ole Miss. I understand that hurts people’s feelings. I get it. There were people saying they should have let Lane stay and coach in the playoff, and pragmatically I would agree with that. That would have given this year’s Ole Miss team the best chance to succeed in the playoff.
But just in the real world, there was no chance in heck that could happen. I mean, this wasn’t like he left to go to UCLA. He left to go to a team that Ole Miss fans hate and consider a big rival. There’s no way a jilted fan base is going to accept him standing on the Ole Miss sideline as the LSU head coach.
Makauskas: We talk about expectations that a fan base could have and maybe how they see their program versus how other people see their program, and, maybe a similar school in that regard, Arkansas and the hiring of Ryan Silverfield. I’m seeing a lot of fans online being quite upset with that hire, feeling like they felt they could get someone maybe more established or someone who was quote-unquote “a bigger deal” on the coaching carousel.
Mark Story: It was fascinating. It looked like for a while Sumrall was going to Auburn, and then Alex Golesh was being linked to Arkansas and then whatever happened, Sumrall and Auburn broke down. Auburn gets Golesh, then Arkansas, Ryan Silverfield, who I think has done a perfectly fine job at Memphis. If I was grading that one, I probably would be a little below the others, and again, I think Silverfield did a perfectly competent job at Memphis, but I’m sort of with the Arkansas fans. That, to me, is not an exciting hire.
Chaos in the Big Ten
Makauskas: I really want to pick your brain about Penn State, how for a moment there it seemed as though it was the best job available and here we are. They still don’t have someone to coach their team.
Story: With this disclaimer, if they wind up hiring a good coach, the process of how they got there doesn’t matter at all. It just matters who you get. It doesn’t matter who you don’t get. Now, having said that, yeah, this reminds me of the infamous Tennessee search that blew up. That’s just what this has started to feel like. It’s fascinating. They offed James Franklin so early, and it was like, all right, these schools, they’re going to get going on the search, and they didn’t appear to have anything set up. That’s clear.
It’s really fascinating to see where this is going to go. Again, I learned this with the Rich Brooks coaching search here at Kentucky. That search was kind of a disorganized mess, but it wound up hiring a guy who did a good job. That’s all that matters. Your process only matters if you wind up making a bad hire.
Makauskas: I saw something yesterday that said Penn State’s coaching search has, in a way, netted other coaches $300 million in extensions — a guy like Cignetti staying at Indiana, someone like Kalani Sitake at BYU staying, all of these people who say, “Oh, I could win here.” Do you think that that sort of reflects a change in where the game is?
Story: It’s interesting. See, to go back to Lane Kiffin, I think that’s one reason why Ole Miss fans are so upset. Because we are in an era where coaches seem more willing to stay sort of in non-traditional places.
There was a time that if Curt Cignetti had gone to Indiana and had two good years then had a chance to go to Penn State, he would have left tire marks getting out of Bloomington to head east. And now, the money is spread out. It’s harder for the quote-unquote “big schools” to just buy somebody out of a job because you can make huge money anywhere. So, yeah, I do think it reflects somewhat of a different era.
Makauskas: Are there any jobs or coaches that we have not yet mentioned that maybe the hire stood out to you for one reason or another?
Mark Story: I’m interested to see how Pat Fitzgerald does at Michigan State. He was really good at Northwestern, and we saw them up close because they played Kentucky in the 2017 Music City Bowl. But setting aside the hazing scandal, they had fallen off at the end of his tenure. So I’m fascinated to see, having been out of it for a while, is he rejuvenated?
And Michigan State is a job where you can win. Michigan and Ohio State are in your neighborhood, and that makes it tough, but Michigan State has a pretty good history. So I’m anxious to see what he does. I wonder, you know, my impression of him was he was kind of an old-school kind of coach. And I wonder how he’s going to fare, fully in this era of free transferring and the revenue share and all that. So, I’m really interested in that one.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
This story was originally published December 5, 2025 at 7:00 AM.
