More than one college football team is navigating the postseason with a head coach or key assistant who will be elsewhere by the end of January, if not sooner.
Texas A&M coach Mike Elko, for instance, is losing both of the coordinators who helped his second season in College Station extend into the College Football Playoff, a first in program history.
Newly hired Kentucky head coach Will Stein announced Tuesday that he has hired Jay Bateman from Texas A&M as his first defensive coordinator with the Wildcats, who compete alongside the Aggies in the Southeastern Conference. Bateman currently has the same role with the seventh-ranked, seventh-seeded Aggies (11-1), who will host No. 10 Miami (10-2) of the Atlantic Coast Conference in a CFP matchup Saturday at Kyle Field.
It’s also the first playoff berth for the Hurricanes, and the winner advances to face No. 2 Ohio State (12-1) of the Big Ten in the Cotton Bowl quarterfinal on New Year’s Eve. The Buckeyes, who are the reigning national champions, received a first-round bye as one of the top four seeds in the 12-team bracket.
“His ability to develop players, create disruptive defenses, and consistently compete at a high level has stood out everywhere he’s been,” Stein said Wednesday of Bateman. “Jay brings energy, experience, and a clear vision for how we want to play defense, and we’re excited to welcome him to Kentucky.”
Bateman’s current group at Texas A&M features AP SEC defensive player of the year Cashius Howell, who had a league-high 11 1/2 sacks during the recently completed regular season.
Stein has been the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach since 2023 at Oregon, and he will remain with that Big Ten program for the remainder of the season — which continues for the fifth-ranked, fifth-seeded Ducks (11-1) when they host a CFP first-round game Saturday against James Madison (12-1). The 12th-seeded Dukes, who won the Sun Belt title, are ranked 19th in the AP Top 25.
The Dukes-Ducks winner advances to face No. 4 Texas Tech (12-1), the Big 12 champion, in the Orange Bowl quarterfinal on New Year’s Day. Oregon and Texas A&M are on opposite ends of the bracket, so Stein, 36, and Bateman, 52, wouldn’t meet on the field until the national championship game.
Otherwise, they’ll see one another in Lexington.
The well-traveled Bateman has been in the SEC since 2022, spending that year and the following season as the inside linebackers coach at Florida.
“With Will Stein being one of the brightest young stars in the profession, it was a major reason I would leave Texas A&M,” Bateman said. “I’m excited to work with one of the sharpest head coaches in the country.”
Bateman was the co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach at North Carolina from 2019-21. He was defensive coordinator at Army from 2014-18 and had the same job at Ball State from 2011-13. He was defensive coordinator and linebackers coach at Elon from 2006-2010 and coached at Lehigh in 2005 and Richmond in 2004. He was head coach at Siena from 2000 through 2003 after being defensive coordinator in 1999.
Bateman started coaching at Benedictine High School in Richmond, Virginia, in 1995 before moving to college as a graduate assistant at Hampden-Sydney in 1997.
Elko has promoted Lyle Hemphill from associate head coach for defense to defensive coordinator.
Meanwhile, Holmon Wiggins has been promoted to offensive coordinator for the Aggies.
The 45-year-old Wiggins, who was the wide receivers coach, will take over for Collin Klein, who was recently hired as Kansas State’s coach after the retirement of Chris Klieman.
Klein, 36, will remain with the Aggies throughout the CFP, and Elko said Monday that Klein will continue to call plays despite the promotion of Wiggins.
Elko said the Aggies interviewed multiple candidates for the job but “really felt like the right person for the job was Holmon Wiggins. We’ve elevated him to the offensive coordinator position, and he’s the only person we offered the job to. … We felt that was the best thing for Texas A&M football moving forward.”
Before joining Elko last season in College Station, Wiggins spent five seasons at Alabama as the wide receivers coach and also served as the assistant head coach of offense for his final three seasons on Nick Saban’s staff. In 2020, Alabama’s DeVonta Smith became the program’s first wide receiver to win the Heisman Trophy; that season also marked the first of back-to-back national championships for the Crimson Tide.