5 first-year college football head coaches who’ll contend in 2020

This year, first-year college football coaches may struggle early on but some will defy adversity and compete for a conference title.

Winning games in your first year at a new program is never easy. Learning your players while trying to build your own culture around the program often leads to new head coaches struggling that first season.

This year may be even more difficult to win early on with the majority of spring practices being canceled due to COVID-19.

Regardless of the circumstances, there are always new coaches who do win games early and surprise people. In 2019 Eli Drinkwitz, Mack Brown, Scott Satterfield and Ryan Day had a lot of success in their first seasons with their respective programs.

Drinkwitz parlayed his success at Appalachian State in his first head coaching job to get the head job at Missouri. Brown had a very successful season with freshman quarterback Sam Howell and was a two-point conversion away from beating Clemson. While Day had the most talent of all incoming coaches last year, filling Urban Meyer’s shoes isn’t an easy task — he still made the playoff.

This season, there are 24 new FBS head coaches. Nobody is inheriting the perfect situation Day had last season, but there’s gonna be guys who are able to win games early on.

Here are five new head coaches who have an opportunity to have success in 2020.