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.
HILLSBORO, Ore. — Officials confirm one person is dead after a small plane crashed into a field near the Twin Oaks Airpark in Hillsboro, Ore., on Friday evening.
No other details were released about the deceased individual or the type of aircraft involved. The Washington County Medical Examiner is on the scene. There were no other reports of injuries or deaths.
The crash sparked a grass fire that then spread to a nearby field. The fire has since been extinguished.
Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue (TVF&R) crews responded to the airpark along Southwest River Road outside of Hillsboro in Washington County.
Investigators with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have been called to the scene to take over the investigation.
Westbound traffic is closed on River Road from Scholls Ferry past Twin Oaks Airport, according to TVF&R.
The Twin Oaks Airpark is home to flight training programs.
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KATU News has a crew heading to the scene; this story will be updated.
Farm groups oppose Oregon recycling fees with ‘no public oversight’
Published 8:00 am Friday, June 12, 2026
Agriculture groups claim an Oregon program meant to increase recycling of product packaging is eating into farm profits and want state regulators to suspend its enforcement.
Lawmakers passed the state’s “Recycling Modernization Act” in 2021 but it only became effective last year and critics argue its implementation has been “lackluster.”
Certain growers and other product producers are required to raise money through fees to ensure their packaging materials are recycled under the program.
But the Oregon Farm Bureau and the Oregonians for Food and Shelter agribusiness group argue the fees are set by a “third-party entity” using a “confidential, proprietary methodology” with “no government accountability.”
“There’s no public oversight over who is getting charged how much, or what the overall budget should be,” said Katie Murray, executive director of Oregonians for Food and Shelter. “It’s not how our members should be paying into a regulatory program.”
A designated “producer responsibility organization” — the Circular Action Alliance nonprofit — sets the fee formula, which lacks transparency and doesn’t protect farmers from “arbitrary or unrecoverable costs,” according to the agriculture groups.
A representative of the Circular Action Alliance was not available for comment as of press time.
Farmers who pack their own crops, such as berries, are subject to the fees directly, but they also may end up paying more for inputs, such as pesticides, whose manufacturers are also subject to the fees, Murray said.
“Growers are going to get hit from multiple directions for multiple stacked-up fees from this program,” she said.
Proponents of the Recycling Modernization Act, which passed as Senate Bill 582 five years ago, argued that it’s an extension of the same approach that Oregon uses for recycling cans and bottles, which also initially faced resistance but has since been widely embraced.
“Polls show that our constituents support recycling and are not happy with the current status,” said former Sen. Lee Beyer, D-Springfield. “They don’t like the idea of their recycling going into the dump. This bill begins to address those concerns.”
The program’s opponents counter that farmers oftentimes already contribute to recycling efforts, such as with clamshell containers for berries that incorporate recycled materials, so the fees are duplicative of those efforts.
“The fees could exceed what the average berry farmer earns in a year, putting some farms at risk of closure and driving up food costs for Oregon families,” said Lauren Kuenzi, government and political affairs director for the Oregon Farm Bureau, during a legislative hearing earlier this year.
Farm groups asked lawmakers to exempt certain packaging for berries and meat from the fees earlier this year, which was opposed by the program’s supporters, who argued it would saddle other manufacturers with higher costs.
That proposed exemption, House Bill 4030, was approved by the House Climate, Energy and Environment Committee but ended up dying in the House Rules Committee earlier this year.
Meanwhile, the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors filed a lawsuit against the program last year and in February won an injunction blocking Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality from enforcing the program against its members.
A federal judge approved that preliminary injunction after finding the lawsuit raised “serious questions” about the merits of the plaintiff’s arguments and determining there’s a “likelihood of irreparable injury” from the program.
A five-day trial in the case is scheduled for July 13, so critics want Oregon regulators to “pause” its enforcement more broadly at least until the matter of the program’s legality is cleared up.
“Place the program on hold until the courts can make a ruling,” Murray said.
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Nearly half of Oregon counties are now in emergency drought status as the state adds a high-tech tool to its firefighting arsenal.
The Oregon Department of Forestry says the new multi-mission aircraft could help crews find fires before they grow out of control.
The aircraft is packed with artificial intelligence, thermal imaging and night vision, and uses advanced mapping software to detect heat and track new fire starts.
When lightning strikes in remote parts of Oregon, officials say the race to find a fire begins immediately. The plane then flies in behind the storm, scanning the landscape for hot spots and early signs of fire.
“It’s a new tool in the toolbox to help us identify, detect and get firefighters to new fire starts around the state as quickly as possible,” said Kyle Williams, ODF’s deputy director of fire operations.
Williams said the aircraft can pick up heat from new fires even before flames are visible.
“And minutes matter. Seconds matter,” Williams said. “This plane is cutting those minutes and seconds down significantly.”
That information goes straight to crews on the ground, helping them prioritize the most dangerous fires.
Officials say rapid response is key to keeping new fires from spreading before they get out of control.
The aircraft replaces a plane that has been in service for more than 40 years and is part of a $13.23 million investment funded through state bonds and contributions from forest landowners.
Officials say the project has been in the works since 2018.
Fire officials add dry conditions are already developing in parts of the state, raising concerns about a challenging summer fire season.
“The fire starts that do happen are going to require rapid response,” Williams said. “This is going to help us with aggressive initial attack.”
Officials say the goal is simple — find fires fast, keep them small and protect Oregon communities before the next big fire takes off.
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