After a tumultuous 36 hours in the desert, it appears Arizona has honed in on its next head football coach. Bruce Feldman of The Athletic is reporting that San Jose State head coach Brent Brennan “has emerged as the top target” for the Arizona head coach position. Jason Scheer of 247Sports reported that Brennan “has been offered the head coaching job and is expected to accept”.
The moves comes after the shocking decision from former head coach Jedd Fisch leave to Arizona for the same role at the University of Washington.
Brennan has spent seven seasons at San Jose State as the head coach, finishing with a 34-48 record during that span. Over the past four seasons, Brennan has finished with a 26-19 mark, including three seven-win seasons, the Mountain West Conference title in 2020, and a Mountain West Regular Season Co-Championship in 2023. He also led the Spartans to three bowl game appearances during that time.
He was a finalist for the Arizona job back in 2020, after Kevin Sumlin was fired, before the UA elected to go with Fisch.
Brennan is no stranger to Tucson. He served as a graduate assistant at Arizona in 2000, Dick Tomey’s final year, and later spent five seasons (2005-2009) as an assistant under Tomey at San Jose State.
He also has a connection with Arizona wide receivers coach, Kevin Cummings. Brennan coached Cummings at Oregon State for three seasons (2011-2013), and the two worked together in Corvallis from 2014-2016. Cummings also served as Brennan’s wide receivers coach at San Jose State (2017-2020), before joining Arizona’s staff.
Arizona may not be out of the running for former defensive coordinator Johnny Nansen as well. Since Fisch’s departure, many UA players have taken to X (formerly Twitter), showing their support for Nansen with the hashtags #HireNansen and #StayingWithNansen.