Missouri State

Bobby Petrino took over in January 2020 and, in the COVID-delayed season played that spring, ended a conference championship drought that had lasted 30 years, sharing the Missouri Valley Football Conference title and reaching the FCS Playoffs in back-to-back seasons. Then, like coaches at this level tend to do, he left — for the offensive coordinator job at UNLV, in December 2022.

Ryan Beard took the program the rest of the way, through the FCS-to-FBS transition and into Conference USA for 2025. The debut season went 7-6 (5-3 CUSA), good enough for the program's first-ever Division I-A bowl bid. And then, almost the moment the regular season ended, Beard left too — for the head coaching job at Coastal Carolina.

So when Missouri State played its first-ever bowl game, the 2025 Xbox Bowl against Arkansas State, the man on the sideline was Nick Petrino — Bobby's son — serving as interim head coach for a game the previous architect had already walked away from. The Bears lost 34-28, a close one that came down to the final possessions. Casey Woods, hired that December for his first-ever head coaching job after two decades as a coordinator across four different conferences, inherits a program that keeps building real things and keeps losing the builder right after. Whether he's the one who finally sticks around is the whole question for 2026.