When Will Penn State Hire Its Next Head Coach? Pat Kraft’s Timeline to Replace James Franklin
After Penn State Football’s bye week this weekend, Pat Kraft and the Nittany Lions will enter week three of the “national coaching search” to replace James Franklin as Penn State’s head football coach.
After 12 years with Franklin at the helm of the Penn State football program, the Nittany Lions are in unfamiliar territory with a midseason coaching vacancy.
As such, the timing of Kraft finding Franklin’s replacement is very up in the air. Here are a few options of when a replacement for Franklin might be named.
4 Timelines for Penn State Football to Replace James Franklin
Option 1: Hire before November 30
The first option is the best for impatient fans wanting a replacement as soon as possible.
Penn State could hire Franklin’s replacement before the regular season ends if Pat Kraft chooses a replacement that is currently available and not coaching this season. Kraft has a few options in this route, including Urban Meyer, Jimbo Fisher, and Pat Fitzgerald.
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Option 2: Hire between November 30 and December 19
If Pat Kraft elects to hire a current college head coach or coordinator, the earliest that the coach would likely be hired would be after the regular season ends on November 30.
For this route, the coach hired would likely be a coordinator or head coach of a team that did not make the college football playoff. So far in the college football playoff era, we have seen that coaches are willing to leave their teams before the team’s bowl games, but not a College Football Playoff game.
So, if a hire happens during this period, it would most likely stem from a non-college football playoff team after the regular season and before the team’s bowl game.
Option 3: Hire between December 19 and January 2
Realistically, this is the latest window that most fans would be comfortable with.
This window would allow Pat Kraft to find a coordinator or head coach for a college football playoff team that was eliminated in the first or second round of the College Football Playoff.
This would also allow Kraft to hire a head coach before the transfer portal window opens on January 2, which is extremely helpful in potentially keeping players out of the portal and filling a roster for the 2026 season.
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Option 4: Hire after January 2
If Pat Kraft waits until after January 2 to hire a new head coach, it is likely he will be looking at a coordinator for a College Football Playoff team making a deep run, or an NFL coordinator (perhaps, Buffalo Bills’ offensive coordinator Joe Brady?), after the NFL season ends.
As mentioned in option 3, this could create issues in fielding a competitive team in 2026, with players on Penn State’s current roster potentially feeling uneasy without certainty at head coach and entering the transfer portal and other teams getting the pick of the litter before Penn State is able to assess players in the transfer portal window.
We are still very early in the process of Pat Kraft finding Penn State’s replacement for James Franklin. Depending on which window Kraft elects to hire a replacement, however, could determine what type of hire Kraft chooses for Penn State’s next coach.
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