While much light has been shed on the more-recently opened Florida and LSU jobs down in the SEC, the highly-esteemed Penn State job remains a relatively quiet and open race to this point.
Of course, it wasn’t long before the gales of November arrived early to blow the search away from Matt Rhule and towards a different potential top candidate. A Penn State alumni, Rhule was an easy name tacked onto the short list of suitable James Franklin replacements, but the buzz between the two parties hasn’t been too hot so far, while Rhule just inked an extension to stay with Nebraska.
At this point, a marriage between Rhule and his former school seems far-fetched this coaching cycle, although nobody can ever trust for certain where one college football coach will be from month to month these days.
In light of Rhule’s new deal and updated comments from him that Nebraska is a long-term “home” on the Pat McAfee Show, let’s look at the updated odds for who is most likely to end up with the Penn State head coaching job using a service called Kalshi.
Let’s take a look at their highest-trading coaches for the Penn State job at the moment. Whatever the price is for a coach — like Jeff Brohm at 36¢ — you buy in for that principle, 36¢, and either lose that or get it back plus win what’s left of the dollar, which would be 64¢ in this case. So the closer to $1 your number is on these metrics, the more the public is betting on them, thus painting them as the more likely candidate.
Louisville’s coach Jeff Brohm brings his team out onto the field / Scott Utterback/Courier Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Hopefully all that above made actual sense. Because here is the list of highest-priced (AKA most likely, per the Kalshi trading market) Penn State head coaches following news of Matt Rhule’s extension:
- Jeff Brohm (Louisville) | 36¢
- Brian Hartline (Ohio St.) | 26¢
- Eliah Drinkwitz (Missouri) | 19¢
- Matt Campbell (Iowa St.) | 13¢
- Brian Kelly (LSU) | 9¢
- Urban Meyer | 7¢
- Mike Elko (Texas A&M) | 7¢
- Brent Key (Georgia Tech) | 7¢
- Joe Brady (Buffalo Bills) | 7¢
- Manny Diaz (Duke) | 6¢
*Odds as of 2:00 p.m. ET 10/30/25
You might see websites or social media accounts reference Kalshi odds for various things, but it’s important to know what you’re actually looking at, because Kalshi’s percentages are often misleading, and their odds, while interesting, are usually totally unfair. Like, you have Brohm to Penn State trading for a 36¢ loss vs. 64¢ profit while betting him NOT to take the job only offers an 89¢ risk vs. an 11¢ profit. That’s not even close to even odds! You’d normally have it about 30-70 and 35-65 or something along those lines.
