Oregon
Who are potential Oregon State coaching candidates? Meet these 4 names
Watch Oregon State celebrate its win against Washington State
Oregon State players and fans celebrate their 10-7 victory against Washington State on Nov. 1 in Corvallis.
Oregon State football is looking for its new head coach.
While a disastrous season is coming to an end Nov. 29 with a matchup against Pac-12 foe Washington State, the Beavers’ search for a head coach is well underway.
Oregon State began the season with Trent Bray at the helm, but fired the OSU alum after an 0-7 start and just two seasons in charge. Interim head coach Robb Akey has led the Beavers to a 2-2 record since but has not emerged as a top candidate for the job long term.
Nearly a dozen major college football programs across the country have fired their head coaches this season. Stanford, UCLA, Arkansas, Penn State, Florida, LSU, Auburn, California and more are filling vacancies and competing for top candidates.
The national coaching carousel is speeding up and Oregon State has some hefty competition in the search for the right head coach to lead the Beavers into a new era of Pac-12 football in Corvallis.
Here are some of the coaches reportedly gaining traction as candidates for the Oregon State football head coaching job.
Paul Chryst
Chryst does not currently operate as an NCAA coach, but he has the most experience of nearly any candidate rumored to be in the running for the Oregon State gig.
Chryst, 60, is a Madison, Wisc., native who played quarterback for the Badgers in the 1980s. He jumpstarted his coaching career with West Virginia, followed by short stints with teams in the Canadian Football League and NFL.
In 2003, Chryst joined the Oregon State staff as an offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, a job that lasted just two years. Chryst was notably in charge of the offense with OSU legends in quarterback Derek Anderson and running back Steven Jackson.
He then jumped to Wisconsin for seven years in similar roles before landing his first head coaching job with Pittsburgh in 2012.
Wisconsin called Chryst back in 2015, where he spent seven years as the Badgers’ head coach. He had an overall record of 86-45 as head coach of Wisconsin.
Kerry Eggers, a longtime sports reporter based out of Portland, reported Nov. 24 that Chryst pulled his name out of contention for the OSU role despite being a favorable candidate.
Tosh Lupoi
Lupoi is currently the defensive coordinator and linebackers coach for the Oregon Ducks. Lupoi, 44, joined the Ducks in 2022 and has been an integral part of the team’s success in the transition to the Big 10.
He’s a California native who played for the Golden Bears in the early 2000s. His first coaching gig was with the Golden Bears, too; he served as defensive line coach from 2008-11.
A jump to Washington in the same role in 2012 was followed by a five-year run with Alabama. With the Tide, Lupoi acted as a defensive analyst, then linebackers coach, then co-defensive coordinator and linebackers coach.
In 2019, Lupoi moved to the NFL. He was a defensive line coach for the Cleveland Browns, Atlanta Falcons and Jacksonville Jaguars in consecutive years until joining the Ducks in 2022.
Lupoi is a two-time national champion as a coach with Alabama but has never been a head coach. His credible defensive coaching experience working with some of the most talented defenders to come out of college over the last decade, as well as his recruiting prowess, would make him an enticing get for numerous programs.
On Nov. 24, Oregon head coach Dan Lanning said Lupoi is a “relentless worker,” and will make “an outstanding head coach,” one day when the right job comes along.
With a recent California head coaching vacancy, Lupoi has also emerged as a candidate for that job. There has been no official reporting on Lupoi’s interest in the Oregon State job despite social media buzz.
JaMarcus Shephard
Shephard is currently an assistant head coach, co-offensive coordinator and wide receivers coach at Alabama. The 42-year-old Indiana native joined the Tide’s staff in February of 2024 following a career that’s taken him across the country.
After starting out as a high school coach in the mid-2000s, Shephard took a job to Western Kentucky, where he acted as an assistant in numerous facets from 2011-15.
Shephard had a brief one-year role with Washington State before moving to Purdue in 2017. There, he was pass game coordinator and eventually co-offensive coordinator and wide receivers coach.
His name was recalled by Washington in 2022-23 under current Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer. Shephard served as assistant head coach, pass game coordinator and wide receivers coach for an offense that fielded now-Atlanta Falcons QB Michael Penix and all-American now-NFL receivers Rome Odunze and Ja’Lynn Polk.
Shephard is renowned for his work with top-end wide receivers, such as Alabama’s Ryan Williams, and as a hard worker on the recruiting trail.
Shephard is reported to be on Oregon State’s candidates list by On3.
Brent Vigen
Vigen is currently the head coach at Montana State. He’s led the Bobcats to a 10-2 record this season in the Big Sky Conference, with the team’s only two losses coming in the first two weeks to Oregon and South Dakota State.
Vigen, 50, is a North Dakota native with 15 years of assistant coaching experience at North Dakota State. His roles spread across the offense from tight ends coach, quarterbacks coach, running backs coach and was eventually named offensive coordinator from 2009-13.
Following that, Vigen had a two-year stint with Wyoming, where he was offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, followed by three years of associate head coaching duties. Vigen, notably, was Buffalo Bills QB Josh Allen’s coach and coordinator at Wyoming.
Since 2021, Vigen has been head coach of Montana State. He has an 88% win percentage with the Bobcats, the best in MSU history. In 2022, Vigen won the Eddie Robinson Award for college best coach of a Football Championship Subdivision team.
Vigen landed at the Portland International Airport earlier this week, as reported by The Oregonian’s Ryan Clarke, but did not share what he was doing at PDX.
Rumors and social media are in a frenzy that Vigen made the trip to Oregon to interview and meet for the Oregon State coaching vacancy.
Justin Wilcox
Wilcox was the head coach of California for the past nine seasons before being fired by the Golden Bears on Nov. 24.
Wilcox, a Eugene native, went to Junction City High School and played for the Ducks upon graduation. He played from 1996-99 under head coach Mike Bellotti.
Before his nine-year tenure with California, Wilcox travelled the country as a defensive coordinator with a track record of producing quality defenses.
From 2006-09, Wilcox was the defensive coordinator at Boise State. He then bounced to Tennessee for the same gig, then Washington, then USC, then Wisconsin. Wilcox spent less than two years at each of those schools before taking the reins in Berkeley in 2017.
At Cal, Wilcox delivered a career record of 48-55 all time. Wilcox was 5-4 against Oregon State, including a 34-15 win this season over former OSU head coach Trent Bray.
The 49-year-old is not likely to be a candidate for top head coaching vacancies around the NCAA following his more-to-be-desired stint with Cal. But his defensive mind and years of experience make him a quality candidate for the opening in Corvallis.
Landon Bartlett covers high school sports and Oregon State for the Statesman Journal. He can be reached at lbartlett@salem.gannett.com or on X or Instagram @bartlelo.
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Sports Seriously
AUSTIN — Save your gripes about NCAA referees. Oregon women’s basketball guard Katie Fiso contended with much more hostile officiating conditions in her driveway.
Fiso grew up playing one-on-one against her twin brother in games so competitive that punches were sometimes thrown. As referee, their dad swallowed his whistle.
The family motto? “You don’t see no blood, there’s no foul,” Fiso said with a grin.
As Fiso stood outside Oregon’s locker room on Thursday and reminisced on those driveway battles, she admitted she never thought she’d be here: Putting together a breakout sophomore season and leading the No. 8 seed Ducks into a first-round NCAA Tournament game against No. 9 seed Virginia Tech on Friday.
It’s a bittersweet moment for Fiso, whose eyes fill with tears when she thinks of two people who aren’t here to witness it. Last winter, in the middle of Fiso’s freshman season at Oregon, her dad and her grandfather died within two weeks of each other.
Their memories will inspire Fiso when she takes the court for the Ducks this week.
“Basketball has always been an outlet for me, kind of like (to) get away from all this reality. When I step off the court, it’s like I step into the reality and realize he’s not here no more,” Fiso said. “I have a lot of passion for this game because I love it so much, so that’s where I get my love from. I do it for my dad, I do it for my grandpa, I do it for all these people, I do it for my family. So it’s very intentional when I’m on the court. I don’t take any moment for granted.”
Her father, Joseph Fiso was the one who taught Katie and her five siblings the value of hard work and grittiness on the basketball court. He woke them up at 6 a.m. every Saturday to go to the YMCA, where Katie played against boys much older than her and learned to stand her ground.
“I would always get pushed around, I would always get crowded so hard and my dad was like, ‘Hey, go harder at her!’” Fiso recalled. “Like, I would be in here getting D’d up by these old men. But I didn’t realize that it actually was helping me over time, in the long run.”
On Dec. 4, 2025, Joseph was in Eugene to attend Katie’s game. The morning of Oregon’s matchup against Washington State, Joseph Fiso died in his sleep at the hotel.
Grief threatened to swallow Katie whole. Basketball was a reminder of everything she and her dad shared.
Almost immediately after she found out about his death, Fiso got back in the gym to shoot hoops and clear her mind. She bawled her eyes out. Being on the court was at once painful and a relief, but Fiso learned to use the sport to tap into her emotions instead of to escape from them.
“I was definitely second-guessing myself and my worth,” Fiso said. “My mind was all over the place. Trying to be in the game and also dealing with life stuff was definitely difficult. So I took it upon myself over the summer to work on myself and not keep all those feelings inside, actually feel them. So that’s when I tapped in a lot to my faith and it gave me that confidence, that my worth is not in this basketball because it’s so fleeting and up and down, but it’s in someone who is always gonna love me and say ‘It’s OK, you’re always perfect in my eyes.’”
After playing 9.7 minutes per game and averaging 3.1 points off the bench for Oregon as a freshman, Fiso is now a full-time starter who leads Oregon in average minutes (32), points (15.3) and assists (6.3).
She’s playing with new confidence that accentuates the Ducks’ depth and allows her to feel free on the court. When she makes a mistake, she brushes it off and realizes that it doesn’t determine who she is as a basketball player.
“It’s a blessing to be here in this spot,” Fiso said. “Not a lot of people get this opportunity to be at this stage and play at this high level, so I’m thankful. I feel like all those days I was playing with my brothers and playing with my siblings, it helped me prepare for moments like this.”
Oregon coach Kelly Graves has known Fiso since her older brother was a practice player for Graves’ Gonzaga team. Graves followed Fiso’s career at Garfield High School in Seattle, where she won three state championships – a fourth was in reach before the pandemic prematurely ended the season – and was voted Washington state’s Gatorade Player of the Year.
Graves already knew Fiso’s potential when she arrived in Eugene, but he didn’t fully see it emerge until a breakout game at the end of her freshman season. In the 2025 NCAA Tournament, Fiso shot 4-of-6 from the field and scored eight points in 19 minutes in Oregon’s first-round win against Vanderbilt.
From there, Fiso only continued to build.
“I think once she realized, ‘Hey, this is kind of my team,’ you saw how she embraced that role,” Graves said. “Even though she’s just a sophomore, she’s the one that’s leading the group. She’s leading the huddles, leading practice, and that’ s not easy for someone her age, but she’s got it in her.”
Fiso is one of several Oregon players who adjusted to new roles this season. Sophomore forward Ehis Etute, the nation’s No. 2 offensive rebounder, and junior guard Ari Long both stepped into the starting lineup after coming off the bench last season. So did junior guard Sofia Bell, who spent last season getting her rhythm back after an injury curtailed her freshman season. Senior forward Mia Long, a transfer from Fresno State, is new to the program but provides a veteran presence.
“Our players have done a pretty good job of not just accepting their roles necessarily, because they can evolve and change, but executing them,” Graves said. “These are homegrown kids that again, didn’t play much. You look at Katie and Ehis, they had very small roles last year. Ari, a supportive role. Sofia Bell to some degree. And that’s four of our five starters so I’m proud of that. They have developed, they have gotten better, they figured out what they need to do to get playing time and they’re making the most of it.”
Fiso deftly balances her scoring responsibilities with slinging dart passes to her teammates. She ranked second nationally with seven points-assists double-doubles this season, the most by a Duck since Sabrina Ionescu in 2019-20.
“I would say I’m more of a finesse, get downhill type of girl, but I’m also a playmaker,” Fiso said. “I got a little swag in my game.”
Graves said Fiso shares intangibles with two of the prolific point guards he’s coached, Ionescu and Courtney Vandersloot.
“She’s got that same mentality and I think that’s why you’re seeing her succeed now,” Graves said. “But she’s still a work in progress. She’s got a long ways to go and she’s going to continue to get better and better, but she’s going to have a great pro future, I think.”
ESTACADA Ore. (KPTV) – According to Governor Tina Kotek, 100% of Oregon school districts have adopted a cell phone ban. On Wednesday, Kotek visited Estacada High School (EHS) to see her policy in action.
“Research tells us that constant cell phone use distracts from learning and can create mental health issues,” Kotek said. “For our students to thrive, we have to make every hour of class time as high-value as possible. Getting rid of distractions like cell phones is one way we can prioritize student success and transform our education system to get better results.”
Last summer, Kotek issued Executive Order 2509, which bans Oregon public school students from using their cell phones at school. The policy officially went into effect on Jan. 1.
According to Superintendent Ryan Carpenter, the Estacada School District has approximately 2,100 students, with 51% under the poverty line and 18% qualify for special education services. Carpenter said the majority of school districts in Oregon have these same statistics, making EHS a great spot for Kotek to see her policy in action.
Kotek visited two classrooms at EHS and received feedback from students about the cell phone ban. While some students said the ban has made it harder to research certain assignments in class or to coordinate after-school plans, overall, students said they’ve noticed positive impacts.
“At first, I wasn’t the biggest fan, but as the semester has gone on, I’ve found a lot more positivity in it,” said Sophia Morales-Meraz, a sophomore at EHS. “I find myself reaching less for my phone, having stronger connections and talking more to my classmates, and spending more time just really enjoying the moment.”
“I’m definitely more engaged in lessons with my teachers because I’m able to focus on what they’re saying…” said Cooper Skroch, a junior at EHS. “My attention span has gotten a lot better now that I don’t have to use my phone during the day.”
EHS teachers said they have noticed improvements, too. In addition to seeing more engagement from their students, language arts teacher Jeff Mellema said the policy has brought joy back to his career.
“I got into this profession because I like the one-on-one with kids, I like interacting with students,” Mellema said. “I like helping them along the process of their learning and this policy’s made that part easier.”
Without cell phones in schools, Carpenter said parents raised concerns about contacting their child in case of an emergency. But Kotek said school staff are prepared to bridge that communication gap and connect students with their parents, if needed.
Carpenter said the cell phone ban has not only resulted in higher attendance and graduation rates, but it’s also established a stronger sense of community at EHS.
“A lot of great things are happening,” Carpenter said. “We’re experiencing barriers in every child’s life and to remove cell phones is just one barrier to help us continue to get kids to be successful.”
After receiving feedback from students, Kotek told FOX 12 that she does not plan to make any changes to the policy moving forward.
Copyright 2026 KPTV-KPDX. All rights reserved.
PORTLAND, Ore. (KATU) — Opponents of Oregon’s proposed gas tax hike are not giving up in their efforts to force the courts to intervene before voters’ pamphlets are sent out for the May primary.
Former state lawmaker and attorney Julie Parrish, along with Thomas Rask, filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Portland.
The suit was filed on behalf of the Right to Vote on the Gas Tax political action committee and several individuals and names Secretary of State Tobias Read as the defendant.
The suit requests an emergency hearing to consider a temporary restraining order.
The plaintiffs allege that shortening the timeline Oregonians had to submit arguments for or against the measure violated the rights of disabled voters.
Under Oregon law, residents must either collect 500 signatures or pay a $1,200 fee to submit an argument.
They also point out that Secretary of State Read warned lawmakers in a letter earlier this year that they were jeopardizing timelines by blowing past deadlines to pass the legislation.
A Marion County judge already ruled against the plaintiffs earlier this year, although a federal judge did issue a temporary restraining order.
PAST COVERAGE | Rulings on Oregon’s Gas Tax Referendum
Oregon lawmakers passed SB 1599 along party lines, moving the referendum from the November general election ballot to the May primary.
Democratic lawmakers contend that moving the referendum to an earlier date gives the state more time to consider budget cuts.
The gas tax hikes are widely expected to be rejected by voters regardless of when they are held.
No court date has been set for the latest lawsuit. KATU will continue to track developments.
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