The Ever-Evolving Landscape of College Football: From BCS Busters to Coaching Projections

College football is a dynamic world, constantly shifting with new talents, strategies, and power dynamics. From the quest for BCS bowl bids to the projections of future coaching stars, the sport remains a captivating spectacle.

The BCS Buster Phenomenon

Once upon a time, every January, the powers in college football would gather for a round of big bowl bashes, pitting some of the top conference’s biggest names in big-time bowl match-ups sponsored by big-time corporations. They called it the Bowl Championship Series, but many felt it may as well have just been called the Big Boys Club.

However, every so often, there was one program that managed to sneak in to the party. These programs were known as "BCS Busters." Northern Illinois once looked to become the second back-to-back BCS Buster in the history of the BCS, joining TCU. The Horned Frogs, no longer eligible for BCS Buster status as a member of the Big 12, reached the Fiesta Bowl at the end of the 2009 season and reached the Rose Bowl the following year. Fresno State was also once a team looking to reach their first BCS bowl game.

The Path to a BCS Bowl

One of these teams could have had a very realistic chance to clinch at least one automatic bid to the BCS. There were two ways it could happen. If either team finished in the top 12 of the BCS standings and was their conference’s respective champion, they were guaranteed a BCS bowl bid. The other way a guaranteed spot could be clinched was if they won their conference championship, finished in the BCS Top 16, and were ranked ahead of a conference champion from a conference with an automatic bid.

As an example, consider The American conference. Central Florida was once the highest-ranked team from the AAC, and they were ranked below both Fresno State and Northern Illinois. Fresno State had the inside track as it stood right then. The Bulldogs were No. 16 in the latest BCS standings and currently satisfied the BCS selection requirements (projected conference champion, ranked ahead of Central Florida, ranked in the top 16). Fresno State had the computers currently in their favor, with an average computer ranking of 15th in the nation.

The Importance of Schedule Strength

In terms of strength of schedule, Fresno State lacked a power punch. Although Northern Illinois was currently one spot behind Fresno State in the BCS standings, the Huskies had the computers in their favor. Northern Illinois was ranked 13th in the computer average and 17th in the BCS standings. There was not much ground to make up for Northern Illinois to jump over Fresno State and the schedule could actually work in their favor. Because Fresno State would only play a maximum of 12 games that season (no make-up for the lost Colorado game), the Huskies would have one extra game to showcase their team.

The Case of BYU

BYU’s victory this past weekend against Boise State earned the Cougars a spot in the Fight Hunger Bowl as part of their previously arranged bowl line-up as an independent. Because BYU plays as an independent, they do not fall under the same BCS qualification requirements as Fresno State and Northern Illinois. Also, because the Cougars were not currently ranked in the BCS Top 25, time was running out for BYU to make a case for a BCS at-large spot. Under the current rules, BYU can only qualify as an at-large candidate by cracking the top 14 in the BCS standings. Can BYU climb from unranked to the top 14 before the end of the season? It goes without saying BYU needs some teams ahead in the polls to start losing, including Fresno State and Northern Illinois. BYU also needs to win the remainder of their games, starting with a road win at Wisconsin in two weeks and a road game at Notre Dame later in November. If they do that, then BYU would have a record of 10-2 with wins on the road against Wisconsin and Notre Dame as well as a surprising Houston team and a blowout of Texas back in Week 2.

Projecting the Future: Head Coaches in 2030

Projecting the future of college football coaches is a difficult task, but also a pretty fun one.

In college football years, five seasons from now might as well be a lifetime. Heading into 2026, the average tenure of the 68 Power 4 head coaches is 4.75 seasons. Yes, that includes 15 just-hired coaches, but if you remove from the sample set Kirk Ferentz, who is about to coach his 28th season at Iowa, that average drops to just under 4.5 seasons.

Go back to 2021, and you’ll find 19 power conference head coaches in the same place they started that season. Only 13 P4 coaches (19 percent) are set to enter the upcoming season in at least their seventh year with their current school. Among those are Florida State’s Mike Norvell, Baylor’s Dave Aranda and Maryland’s Mike Locksley, who have maybe the three hottest seats in the country.

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We’re five years and two hires removed from LSU firing Ed Orgeron less than two full seasons after winning the 2019 national title. Brian Kelly, Orgeron’s replacement, didn’t last four full seasons. Now Lane Kiffin, whose four previous college head coaching tenures averaged three and a half seasons, takes over in Baton Rouge.

Kiffin’s career is a study on how the trajectory of a coach can rapidly rise and fall, another reason why projecting five seasons out is so difficult. How about this: Five seasons before Ryan Day replaced Urban Meyer as head coach at Ohio State, he was the offensive coordinator for a 7-6 Boston College team.

Life comes at you fast in college football, though with the cost of paying players rising, some schools are showing a little more patience with their head coaches. With that in mind, we have most of this year’s new hires making it to 2030.

Putting this puzzle together required answering a series of questions, each more difficult than the next: Will this coach do well enough in the next four seasons to keep the job he has? Will he do well enough to get a better job? What is a better job in 2030?

We considered previous ties to schools and, to some small extent, the athletic director who might be hiring the next coach.

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Projected Coaches by School (2030)

California: Lupoi. There has been buzz around the Bears since Lupoi was named head coach of his alma mater in December. Cal also tends to have a lot of patience with its coaches.
Clemson: Rhett Lashlee, SMU head coach. This is a complicated time to assess both Swinney and Clemson, with the program coming off its worst season in almost two decades.
Arizona State: Kenny Dillingham, Arizona State head coach. The 35-year-old Dillingham is positioned to be maybe the hottest candidate in the upcoming hiring cycle, and Florida State could be the best job available. It seems like a match, though convincing Dillingham to leave his alma mater won’t be easy.
Indiana: Mike Shanahan, Indiana offensive coordinator. The former Pitt wide receiver and Pennsylvania native seems destined to be a head coach soon, and Narduzzi’s contract runs through 2030.
Tennessee: Josh Heupel, Tennessee head coach. Heupel has done a great job pulling Tennessee out of a ditch, but expectations are sky-high throughout the SEC.
Florida State: Tony White, Florida State defensive coordinator. White is a former Syracuse defensive coordinator whose career trajectory took a hit last season in Tallahassee, but there is still time for him to re-establish himself. But let’s talk about the current coach and the wild swings in the coaching stock market. After a 10-win debut at Syracuse in 2024, Brown, a former Georgia assistant and Matt Rhule protege, seemed destined for an SEC head coaching job in the not-too-distant future. Now, coming off a three-win follow-up and with the athletic director that hired him at Syracuse heading for retirement, he’s probably another losing season away from the hot seat.
Syracuse: Vince Kehres, Syracuse defensive coordinator. Kehres won two Division III national titles as head coach at Mount Union after taking over for his Hall of Fame father, Larry Kehres, and is coming off a successful stint as Toledo’s defensive coordinator.
Arizona State: Marcus Arroyo, Arizona State offensive coordinator. Arroyo started getting UNLV pointed in the right direction before an AD change led to his firing. The AD who hired him at UNLV?
Colorado: Kenny Guiton, Wisconsin quarterbacks coach. Good luck forecasting when and how Sanders’ time in Boulder will end. Colorado has a new AD in Fernando Lovo, who has strong ties to Urban Meyer.
Iowa State: Matt Entz, Fresno State head coach. Rogers could turn out to be a star, but historically, Iowa State is a tough job.
Kansas: Andy Kotelnicki, Kansas offensive coordinator. Kotelnicki returned to KU as offensive coordinator after a two-year stint at Penn State that included some P4 head coaching interest.
Oklahoma: Brent Venables, Oklahoma head coach. Venables has alternated 10-win and six-win seasons since arriving in Norman.
Oregon: Ra’Shaad Samples, Oregon running backs coach. Samples is only 31 but has already worked for Sean McVay with the Rams, Kenny Dillingham at Arizona State and Dan Lanning at Oregon. He’s a Dallas native and the son of Reginald Samples, a highly successful Texas high school coach.
USC: Lincoln Riley, USC head coach. Riley’s four years at USC have felt unsatisfying for everyone involved, but the two sides are also kind of stuck with each other because of his massive contract.
FIU: Willie Simmons, FIU head coach. Simmons, a Tallahassee native and former Florida A&M coach, broke a five-year bowl drought in his first season at FIU. We might be selling him short.
Michigan State: LeVar Woods, Michigan State special teams coach. Ferentz would be 76 at the start of the 2030 season. Don’t rule out that he’s still coaching the Hawkeyes. Woods is one of a few Ferentz disciples who has long been speculated to be a possible successor. After nearly 20 years on Ferentz’s staff, he returned to his alma mater a few months ago to work for Pat Fitzgerald.
UCLA: Bob Chesney, UCLA head coach. Maybe the hardest call on the board. Chesney has star qualities. But UCLA is also a tough job. If he can find the formula for success there, he could end up on the short list for just about any job in the country. Otherwise, Westwood might end up being a career speed bump.
Michigan State: Max Bullough, Michigan State defensive coordinator. We’re a little skeptical of Fitz’s second act. This might be an aggressive timetable for the former Michigan State linebacker to become the head coach of his alma mater, but the Bullough family is football royalty in East Lansing.
Minnesota: Bryant Haines, Indiana defensive coordinator. Haines was hard to place because on one hand the Broyles Award winner seems on track to land a head coaching job as soon as this year.
Wake Forest: Jake Dickert, Wake Forest head coach. Dickert’s first season at Wake Forest produced a surprising nine wins.
Ohio State: James Laurinaitis, Ohio State linebackers coach. Since Woody Hayes’ 28-year tenure ended in 1978, no Ohio State coach has held the job more than 13 seasons (John Cooper).
Oregon: Lanning. Lanning might have the best job in the country.
Minnesota: P.J. Fleck, Minnesota head coach. Fleck is a fascinating case study. He has done an undeniably good job in his decade at Minnesota. You have to go back to the first half of the 1900s to find a Gophers football coach with a better winning percentage than Fleck’s .600. But he has cracked double-digit wins with the Gophers only once, in 2019.
Alabama: Kalen DeBoer, Alabama head coach. Two seasons into DeBoer’s time at Alabama, it certainly hasn’t been bad. But it hasn’t quite clicked.
BYU: Kalani Sitake, BYU head coach. Sitake nearly took the Penn State job last year, but the connection to his alma mater was too strong to break - especially while the Cougars were still in the Playoff hunt.
Florida: Jon Sumrall, Florida head coach. Is Alabama a better job than Florida in the current state of college football? Maybe not.
Auburn: Golesh. Golesh is Auburn’s third coach since it fired Gus Malzahn after the 2020 season.
Washington: Jedd Fisch, Washington head coach. Fisch was on the radar at Florida this winter. He’s a good coach and an adept climber of the career ladder.
Memphis: Charles Huff, Memphis head coach. The last three Memphis coaches were hired away by Virginia Tech, Florida State and Arkansas.
Missouri: Eliah Drinkwitz, Missouri head coach. Timing is everything in life. If there had been as much coaching movement in 2024 (after Drinkwitz knocked out a second straight double-digit-victory season at Mizzou), maybe he would already be in a new gig.
LSU: Charlie Weis Jr., LSU offensive coordinator. It was tempting to slide Weis in at Notre Dame, where his father’s tenure famously ended with one of college football’s first whopping buyouts ($19 million).
Texas A&M: Mike Elko, Texas A&M head coach.

Buster Faulkner: A Coaching Profile

Buster Faulkner (born September 19, 1981) is an American football coach and former player who is the offensive coordinator for the University of Florida.

Playing Career

Faulkner played three years at Valdosta State, passing for 7,100 yards and 64 touchdowns while helping the team achieve a 47-6 record. His best year for Valdosta State came during his sophomore year where he completed 327 of 503 passes for 3,941 yards and 44 touchdowns.

Coaching Career

Faulkner started his coaching career in 2005 as a student assistant for Valdosta State. After one year at Valdosta State, Faulkner became a graduate assistant at Georgia for the 2006 season. Faulkner then returned to Valdosta State as their quarterbacks coach for one season, after which he was promoted to be their offensive coordinator.

Faulkner boasts 20 years of experience on college football coaching staffs - including 13 as an offensive coordinator - and three national championship rings.

Georgia Tech (2023-Present)

Faulkner is currently the offensive coordinator at Georgia Tech. In his first two seasons with the Yellow Jackets, Faulkner has directed a Georgia Tech offense ranked in the top half of the Atlantic Coast Conference in rushing (first in 2023, second in 2024), total offense (third in 2023, sixth in 2024), scoring (fourth in 2023, eighth in 2024) and passing efficiency (fifth in 2023, eighth in 2024) both seasons. The Jackets have also surrendered the fewest sacks in the league each of the last two seasons (1.15 per game in 2023, 0.69 per game in 2024).

In his initial season at Georgia Tech in 2023, Faulkner directed a Tech offense that led the ACC in rushing (203.8 ypg - 12th nationally) and ranked among the conference leaders in total offense (424.6 ypg - third), scoring (31.1 ppg - fourth) and passing efficiency (139.12 - fifth). The Jackets were also tops in the ACC in fewest sacks allowed (1.15 pg - 15th nationally) and ranked second in the league in third-down conversions (.431).

Individually, five Yellow Jackets earned all-ACC recognition on the offensive side of the ball, including third-team running back Jamal Haynes, Tech’s first 1,000-yard rusher in six years. The quintet of all-conference honorees also included quarterback Haynes King, who was one of only two Power Five players with at least 2,800 passing yards, 700 rushing yards, 25 touchdown passes and 10 touchdown runs in 2023, freshman wideout Eric Singleton Jr., whose six touchdown receptions were just one shy of the Tech freshman record, and linemen Joe Fusile and Jordan Williams.

Despite having to prominently utilize three different quarterbacks in 2024 due to a midseason injury to King, the Jackets’ offense continued to hum in its second season under Faulkner. Tech once again ranked among the ACC and national leaders in rushing offense (187.0 ypg - second in the ACC and 32nd nationally) and finished in the top half of the conference and nationally in total offense (424.5 ypg - 35th nationally), scoring offense (28.9 ppg - 55th nationally) and passing efficiency (138.47 - 52nd nationally). Other statistical highlights included Tech finishing third nationally in fewest sacks allowed (0.69 pg) and 11th in the nation in fewest turnovers lost (10).

Seven Yellow Jackets earned all-ACC recognition on offense in 2024, highlighted by guard Keylan Rutledge, who also became Tech’s first non-specialist to earn first-team all-America honors in 10 years. King turned in another ultra-impressive season as the orchestrator of Faulkner’s attack, becoming the first NCAA Division I FBS quarterback in at least the last 69 years (since 1956) with 2,000 passing yards, 10 touchdown passes, a 70% completion percentage and two or fewer interceptions in a season.

Georgia (2020-2022)

Faulkner came to Tech after winning two national titles in three seasons as an offensive quality control assistant for quarterbacks at Georgia (2020-22). At UGA, he played a significant role in constructing and fielding one of college football’s top offenses, highlighted by the Bulldogs finishing in the top five nationally both in scoring (41.3 ppg) and total offense (501.1 ypg) in 2022. Georgia quarterback Stetson Bennett IV finished fourth in voting for the 2022 Heisman Trophy in Faulkner’s final year on the UGA staff.

Prior Coordinator Roles

Prior to his three-year stint at Georgia, he spent 10 seasons as offensive coordinator at Southern Miss (2019), Arkansas State (2016-18), Middle Tennessee (2011-15*) and Murray State (2010). His 11 seasons as a coordinator also includes a season as OC at Valdosta State in 2008.

In his lone season at Southern Miss, the Eagles led Conference USA and ranked in the top 20 nationally in passing offense (289.5 ypg) en route to a seven-win campaign, which remains tied for the program’s third-most wins in a season in the past 11 years.

At Arkansas State, Faulkner’s offenses led the Sun Belt Conference and ranked in the top 20 nationally in total offense each of his final two seasons with 466.2 ypg in 2018 (17th nationally) and 494.8 ypg in 2017 (10th nationally). He helped lead to the 2016 Sun Belt championship, the 2018 Sun Belt West Division title and three bowl games in his three seasons at ASU.

In his five seasons at Middle Tennessee, the Blue Raiders averaged more than 31 points a game and from 2013-15, rolled up more than 5,000 yards each season, which marked the first time in program history that Middle Tennessee recorded 5,000 yards of offense in three-straight campaigns. Middle Tennessee finished no worse than .500 in each of Faulkner’s four full seasons as offensive coordinator* and earned a pair of bowl berths.

Prior to making the jump to the NCAA Division I FBS level, Faulkner cut his teeth as an offensive coordinator at Murray State. In his lone season at MSU, the Racers led the Ohio Valley Conference in scoring (42.2 ppg), passing (362.2 ypg) and total offense (486.3 ypg) while ranking among top five nationally in all three categories. Murray State also led the nation in completions and completion percentage and quarterback Casey Brockman, who only started the final six games of the season, was named OVC Player of the Week three times, FCS National Player of the Week twice and second-team all-conference.

Faulkner’s one season at Murray State was preceded by a season as quarterbacks coach at Central Arkansas (2009), where UCA’s offense ranked in the top 25 in NCAA Division I FCS in every major offensive statistic.

Three of Faulkner’s first four seasons in coaching came at his alma mater, Valdosta State, where he began as a student assistant in 2005, served as quarterbacks coach in 2007 and was promoted to offensive coordinator in 2008. In ’07, he helped lead the Blazers to the NCAA Division II national title. As offensive coordinator in ’08, VSU advanced to the national quarterfinals behind freshman quarterback Chris Hart, who accounted for more than 3,000 yards of offense and 27 touchdowns en route to being named Gulf South Conference Freshman of the Year.

Faulkner spent the 2006 campaign as a graduate assistant at Georgia, working with UGA’s quarterbacks and offensive line.

Personal Life

An Atlanta-area native, Faulkner was a three-year starter at quarterback at Parkview H.S. in Lilburn and led the Panthers to the 1997 Georgia 4A state championship, the first state title in school history.

In all, he has won three national championships, six conference titles and four division crowns at the collegiate level and a state championship at the high school level as a player and coach.

Faulkner earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Valdosta State in 2005. He and his wife, Tia, have a son, Harrison, and two daughters, Hadley and Haisley. Buster and Harrison became the first father-son duo to both win Georgia high school state championships as starting quarterbacks when Harrison led his North Oconee H.S. squad to the 4A state title in 2024.

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