Inside the college football carousel with UCLA, Stanford recruits

Coaching turnover has always been part of college football’s rhythm.

Programs chase fresh starts. New faces arrive with promises of new visions. Administrators convince themselves the next hire will be the one to deliver on long-held dreams.

This year, though, the churn has reached a new level.

So far, schools have shelled out a record $185 million in buyouts, per Front Office Sports, as programs rush to beat recruiting deadlines, leverage NIL advantages and stay afloat in the transfer-portal arms race.

Twenty-eight head coaches have been fired or moved this cycle — not an all-time high, but part of a striking pattern. Since NIL arrived in 2021, yearly totals have hovered at unprecedented levels: 28 in 2025, 29 in 2024, 31 in 2023, 24 in 2022 and 28 in 2021.

Before that, from 2008 to 2020, only four seasons exceeded 27 coaching changes, per 247Sports. All other years came in at 24 or fewer, and 24 occurred only once.

The explanation isn’t complicated. College football now operates more like the NFL. Coaches earn massive salaries, players earn real money and boosters and administrators expect results immediately.

Miss the playoff? Miss a championship window? A reset often follows. And on the flip side, coaches see opportunities — bigger checks, better NIL setups, deeper recruiting pockets — and don’t hesitate to move.

So what happens to recruits caught in the middle? What happens to the kid who picked UCLA because of DeShaun Foster, only to see him gone three weeks into the season? Or to the recruit who committed to Stanford and watched Troy Taylor lose his job a month later?

Two of San Joaquin County’s top prospects, Edison’s Langdon Horace and St. Mary’s Kenneth Moore III, know the turbulence firsthand.

As Moore III put it, “It’s like recruiting all over again.”

‘UCLA felt like home for me’

The UCLA recruiting camp was winding down, heading into the one-on-one portion of the day.

Recruits circled the field as coaches called out the top wideout and top defensive back for a showcase rep. Moore III was named the receiver.

Not bad for a kid who wasn’t even planning to be there. The four-star recruit had sworn he was finished with camps after Stanford — his dream school — let him walk away from its camp without an offer.

Then came the rep. One snap. One picture-perfect release. One clean grab. That was all Foster needed.

Before Moore could even catch his breath, the UCLA offer arrived.

“It’s a place I’ve always wanted to go,” Moore III said. “It has outstanding academics, the football speaks for itself, and you’re in Los Angeles — the connections you can make there, the networking, the people you meet. The coaching staff and recruiting staff who are still there continue to show me love to this day.”

Not even six months later, Moore made it official, committing on Nov. 23, 2024.

“My advice to him was, don’t pick a school because of a coach,” his father, Kenneth Moore Jr., said. “Obviously, those are the people you build relationships with, but at the end of the day, the school and campus life matter. I told him that has to be at the forefront of his mind when he’s choosing a school.

“Football season lasts for a quarter of the year. You’re still going to be there six months after that.”

It felt like any other Sunday. St. Mary’s had just faced Oak Ridge two nights earlier, and Moore III was trying to make up for lost sleep. His phone kept buzzing, and he kept silencing it — until he finally checked the screen.

“What are you going to do?” the text read.

Foster, the very coach who offered him, was fired on Sept. 14, 2025.

“I didn’t know how to feel at first, because I’d never really experienced a head coach getting fired,” Moore III said. “I didn’t know what to do.”

He dialed his dad, talked it through and hung up — and right then, it hit. Schools were back in the mix instantly.

“It was hard, because there’s no right answer on what to do when a coach gets fired,” Moore III said. “It put me in a tough spot. UCLA was where I committed, it was where I wanted to be, and then all of a sudden, that happens. It’s like recruiting all over again.”

He even took an official visit to Washington State, his father Kenny Moore Jr.’s alma mater, but ultimately decided UCLA was still where he wanted to be. He signed on Dec. 3.

“The positive in all of this is that UCLA’s recruiting staff never stopped making Kenny a priority,” Moore Jr. said. “From day one, he’s been their guy, and even with all the changes, that hasn’t changed. They call him every single day. They always tell him, ‘Other schools are going to love you, but we’re going to love you harder.’”

Graduating from St. Mary’s this month rather than waiting until spring gives him extra breathing room. It’s time he’ll use to settle in under new UCLA coach Bob Chesney, connect with the staff and get familiar with the place he’s about to call home.

“It was cool to see where my dad went to college, because he always talked about why he chose it,” Moore III said. “He had a bunch of offers in high school, too. It was cool to see what drew him there. It was a great place, but it wasn’t for me. It wasn’t home.

“UCLA felt like home for me.”

‘Never left in the dark’

A Stanford offer is different from most. To even be considered, a recruit must first meet the school’s admissions standards.

So when Edison three-star wide receiver Langdon Horace received his offer on Jan. 31, 2025, the decision came quickly. By Feb. 21, he was committed.

“As soon as the offer came, the love was immediate,” Langdon said. “It just felt different. It felt genuine. The coaches call me pretty much every day. Knowing I’m high on their board, I felt like out of all the schools I had, this one gave me the best chance to be good at my sport.”

Soon after, Stanford fired coach Troy Taylor on March 25.

The news was still breaking when wide receivers coach Tyler Osborne — the coach who’d offered him — was already calling. Whatever uncertainty Langdon felt in those first few seconds vanished instantly.

Osborne checked in at every step: when Frank Reich was appointed interim coach, during the search for a long-term hire and again when Tavita Pritchard officially took over.

“I was never left in the dark,” Horace said. “They were able to keep me updated, and that’s what really helped.”

It doesn’t hurt, either, when the general manager is Andrew Luck, the former No. 1 pick in the NFL Draft.

“He definitely knows what he’s doing,” Horace said. “He was one of the great quarterbacks, and he’s so smart that there was never any worry. When someone who’s already done what you hope to do is running the program, it becomes easy to trust him and want to learn from him.”

He added, “Most of our conversations are about how I play and how excited he is for me to get there. And when I got the news that I’d been admitted into the school, coach Luck was the first to call me.”

Pritchard was officially hired on Nov. 28, and reached out to Horace the following day. Six days after that call, Horace signed.

“He just told me that he’s seeing my film and likes how I play,” Horace said. “Just him as a coach, what I’ve heard and what I’ve seen, you know, I definitely trust him. I think he’s going to be a great addition to the staff, and I put all my trust in Him, and I think we’re going to be great moving forward.”