Sherrone Moore is too new to have much of a coaching tree, but who else in the Big Ten has the best coaching trees?
To establish a solid coaching tree, you need to have incredible longevity in college football. While the Big Ten has certainly had their fair share of legendary coaches, the current landscape of coaches in the conference doesn’t have a ton of tenure. Coaches such as Dan Lanning, Lincoln Riley, Sherrone Moore and Ryan Day just haven’t been around long enough to establish deep coaching trees.
With that in mind, which active Big Ten football coaches do have the best coaching trees?
Honorable Mention: Luke Fickell (Wisconsin)
Fickell really only has one name in his coaching tree and it’s tangential at best: New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel. Fickell and Vrabel played with each other back in the day at Ohio State before entering coaching. They also coached on the same Buckeye staff for a few years. When Fickell was elevated to interim-head coach in 2011, Vrabel technically coached under him.
Vrabel has since gone on to be a head coach with the Tennessee Titans and New England Patriots. I wouldn’t technically consider Vrabel part of Fickell’s coaching tree since they worked alongside each other significantly more than one for the other.
5. James Franklin (Penn State)
Frankin’s coaching tree is not vast, but it does have a few notable names. Ricky Rahne coached under Franklin at both Vanderbilt and Penn State predominantly as a QB coach but with a few other various roles sprinkled in. In 2020, Rahne left Penn State to become the head coach at Old Dominion where he has gone 20-30 as head coach.
The other notable names under Franklin are Joe Moorhead and Manny Diaz. Moorhead spearheaded lethal Nittany Lion offenses in 2016 and 2017 before leaving to become Mississippi State’s head coach. He struggled with the Bulldogs going just 14-12 in two years before being fired. Since then he has coached as an assistant at Oregon and head coach at Akron.
Diaz had already been a head coach at Miami prior to coaching Franklin’s defense at Penn State. However, he recently returned to the head coaching ranks as Duke’s head coach where he went 9-4 in 2024.
4. Barry Odom (Purdue)
Odom appears here for one name and one name only: Josh Heupel. Odom was the head coach at Missouri from 2016 through 2019. In his first two years, Heupel served as Odom’s offensive coordinator and QB coach. Heupel was then hired to be UCF’s head coach in 2018 where he remained for three years before being scooped up by Tennessee before the 2021 season.
Heupel amassed a 28-8 record at UCF and is 37-15 at Tennessee. He was named SEC Coach of the Year in 2022 and has a CFP appearance to his name in 2024 (though that didn’t go very well).
3. Kirk Ferentz (Iowa)
The top three on our list include much longer lists of names on the coaching tree. Ferentz has a large tree, though there isn’t a ton of quality to it. Some names in the Ferentz tree include John Bonamego, Jack Cosgrove, Chuck Long, and Bobby Wilder. The more notable names are Bret Bielema (who we’ll see again later) and Joe Philbin.
Bielema started his coaching career at Iowa in 1994 as a graduate assistant. In 1996 he was promoted to linebackers coach where he remained until 2001. Ferentz has been head coach at Iowa since 1999 so there were a few years of overlap.
Joe Philbin has been bouncing around in the coaching ranks since 1984. He is most known for being the head coach of the Miami Dolphins from 2012 to 2015. Philbin coached under Ferentz at Iowa from 1999 to 2002 as the offensive line coach. He left for the Green Bay Packers and the NFL in 2003 and has bounced around there ever since. Philbin is currently the offensive line coach for the Las Vegas Raiders .
2. Greg Schiano (Rutgers)
When you’ve coached as long as Greg Schiano has, you’re bound to hire a few future stars. In his first stint with Rutgers , Schiano hired several notable names who went on to be successful head coaches elsewhere. The most notable are P.J. Fleck and Mario Cristobal.
Schiano’s first stint lasted from 2001 to 2011. From 2001 to 2003, a little known Mario Cristobal was his offensive line and tight ends coach. Cristobal left in 2004 to become Miami’s tight ends coach. He got his first head coaching gig in 2007 at FIU before successful stints at Oregon (2018-2021) and Miami (2022-present). As a head coach, Cristobal is 84-76 with most of his success coming in his latter years at Oregon.
Fleck, now Minnesota’s head coach, was the Rutgers wide receivers coach in 2010 and 2011. After one season in the NFL with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers , Fleck got his first head coaching job with Western Michigan in 2013 before jumping to Minnesota in 2017.
Other names in Schiano’s coaching tree include Bill Cubit, Darren Rizzi, Brian Jenkins, Joe Susan, Darrell Hazell, Kyle Flood and Jeff Hafley.
1. Bret Bielema (Illinois)
Bielema has been a head coach three times in his career: Wisconsin from 2006 to 2012, Arkansas from 2013 to 2017, and Illinois from 2021 to today. In that time he’s had a litany of coaches underneath him move on to head coaching jobs throughout the country.
Dave Doeren, North Carolina State’s current head coach, held a few various positions with the Wisconsin program from 2006 to 2007. Doeren got as high as defensive coordinator by the end of his tenure before jumping to Northern Illinois and subsequently NC State .
Paul Chryst was Bielema’s offensive coordinator at Wisconsin from 2006 to 2011. In 2012 he left to become Pitt’s head coach where he remained until 2015 when he returned to Madison. Chryst served as Wisconsin’s head coach until 2022.
Chris Ash served under Bielema at both Wisconsin (2010-2012) and Arkansas (2013). He would eventually get the head coaching gig at Rutgers where he failed spectacularly. Ash is currently the defensive coordinator at Notre Dame .
At Arkansas, Sam Pittman was Bielema’s associate head coach and offensive line coach from 2013 to 2015. He left for the same role at Georgia in 2016 where he spent a few years before returning to Arkansas to take over as head coach in 2020. Pittman remains the head coach of the Razorbacks.
For Bielema, the list doesn’t end there. Charlie Partridge and Thomas Hammock are a few more notable names to coach under Bielema. It’s clear that Bret has the best coaching tree of all the active Big Ten head coaches at the moment.