Report: Lance Leipold, Jake Dickert emerge as strong candidates in Michigan State coaching search

As Michigan State has gone down the road of officially firing ousted football coach Mel Tucker, a number of names have emerged as potential candidates to fill the vacant head coaching role. The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman reported this week that a pair of upstart Power 5 coaches are in strong consideration.

Both Kansas’ Lance Leipold and Washington State’s Jake Dickert have emerged as prime choices early in the process, according to Feldman. Both coaches have midwestern roots, specifically in the state of Wisconsin.

Feldman noted other Power 5 coaches are likely to get consideration, but said that Leipold and Dickert are the current leaders: “A couple of top candidates have emerged in the early stages of the Michigan State coaching search, a source told The Athletic Thursday. As expected, Kansas’ Lance Leipold is seen as a strong option for the Spartans. The other name I’m hearing is Washington State’s Jake Dickert, who, like Leipold, has roots in the state of Wisconsin,” Feldman wrote.

Leipold has been the coach at Kansas for two-plus seasons, leading the Jayhawks to back-to-back 4-0 starts in 2022 and 2023 for the first time since prior to the U.S. entering World War I. He went 2-10 in his first season but has quickly turned the Jayhawks into a competitive, exciting outfit and the school has subsequently announced massive investments in football infrastructure. He’s 10-7 since the start of 2022. He previously went above .500 — 37-33 — in six seasons at Buffalo.

Before Buffalo, Leipold won six national championships at Division III Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he amassed a 109-6 overall record.

Leipold said on Thursday that he intends to retire coaching the Kansas football team, a proposition that could be put to the test by a Big Ten program looking to make a splash hire.

“You can never say never in this game because you never know exactly what happens internally or externally,” Leipold said via the On 2nd Thought podcast. “But it’s our expectation that we finish my career at the University of Kansas.”

Dickert stepped into the Washington State job in difficult circumstances in 2021, taking over the Cougars mid-season. They went 3-3 the rest of the way and since Dickert has built the Cougars into a solid program. He’s 14-9 as the head coach and has Washington State out to a 4-0 start this season.

And having turned 40 in August, Dickert would be on the younger end of Power 5 head coaches.

Earlier in the week, Feldman highlighted a number of other candidates that MSU could target, including Duke head coach Mike Elko, Colorado offensive coordinator Sean Lewis and Kansas State head coach Chris Klieman.