What to know about Louisville football's Jeff Brohm heading into Week 12 game vs Clemson

NCAAF College Football News, Photos, Stats, Scores, Schedule & Videos...

The 2025 college football coaching carousel has been unlike anything the sport has seen in its recent history, with 11 FBS programs firing their coach since the start of the season.

From that flurry of activity has come speculation about who will fill those various roles, particularly around high-profile vacancies like LSU, Penn State and Florida.

There’s one name that has come up frequently for several of those jobs.

Until an overtime loss to Cal last week dropped his team to 7-2 on the season, Jeff Brohm had Louisville in the middle of the College Football Playoff conversation in his third season at the school. Over the course of his 12-year FBS head coaching career, Brohm has racked up wins at places where sustained success isn’t necessarily a guarantee, transforming Western Kentucky, Purdue and now Louisville into nationally relevant programs that regularly make bowl games. In each of those three stops, he has taken at least one of his teams to a conference championship game.

That track record of success and his high-scoring, quarterback-friendly offenses have made Brohm a sought-after commodity in what figures to be a wildly competitive race for major-conference programs trying to find a new coach, with his name connected to both the Florida and Penn State openings.

Though it remains to be seen whether Brohm would leave the school where he played and the city where he grew up — and there are reports from this week that Louisville is working on an extension to keep him at the university — he’ll be one of the most breathlessly discussed coaches in this year’s cycle.

As Brohm and his Louisville team get ready to take on Clemson on Friday, Nov. 14, here’s a closer look at the Cardinals’ coach:

Jeff Brohm Louisville

Brohm is in his third season at Louisville, having arrived at the school from Purdue after the 2022 season.

Though it’s not necessarily common for a sitting Big Ten coach to leave for an ACC program, there were other factors that brought Brohm to the Cardinals. Louisville is home for Brohm, the city where he was born and raised before going on to star at quarterback for the Cardinals in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Brohm comes from a long line of Louisville football players. His father, Oscar, played at the school, as did his brothers Greg and Brian, the latter of whom was the 2007 Orange Bowl MVP and a second-round pick in the 2008 NFL Draft.

The prodigal son’s return has paid immense dividends for Louisville. Over the past three seasons, Brohm has racked up 26 wins, more than any other coach in the ACC during that stretch. In 2023, the Cardinals won 10 games in a season for the first time in a decade and made their first-ever ACC championship game appearance. They followed that up in 2024 with nine wins, including a victory in the Sun Bowl.

Louisville has reached those win totals with a certain flair, too. Last season, the Cardinals were tied for seventh in the FBS in scoring offense, averaging 36.5 points per game while Brohm helped transform the previously injury-plagued Tyler Shough into a top-40 NFL Draft pick. Despite running backs Isaac Brown and Duke Watson missing time this season with injuries, and even with subpar quarterback play from USC transfer Miller Moss, Louisville is still averaging 32.9 points per game this season, which is tied for the 35th-best mark in the 136-team FBS.

For all he has accomplished as a coach, Brohm remains perhaps most famous for an on-field interview he did while the quarterback of the XFL’s Orlando Rage in 2001, when he returned to play for the team just six days after a serious injury in a game that resulted in a hospital visit.

Jeff Brohm coaching career

Louisville is Brohm’s third head-coaching stop, as he previously served in that role at Purdue (from 2017-22) and Western Kentucky (from 2014-16).

At Purdue, he took over a program that had gone 9-39 in the previous four seasons and immediately got it to a bowl, going 7-6 in his debut season in 2017. By his fifth season in 2021, the Boilermakers went 9-4, tied for their second-most wins in a season in program history. The following year, they made their first and only appearance in the Big Ten championship game. Not only was Purdue languishing before Brohm got there, but they’ve struggled since he left, with a 7-27 record since the start of the 2023 season.

Brohm earned the opportunity at Purdue after a stellar three-year run at Western Kentucky, where his teams averaged 44.6 points, 356.6 passing yards and 526.2 yards of total offense per game over the course of his stint. The Hilltoppers finished in the top six nationally in scoring offense in each of his three seasons, including in 2016, when they averaged an FBS-best 45.5 points per game. Western Kentucky went 23-5 in his final two seasons at the school. The Hilltoppers’ 12 victories in 2016 and 11 victories in 2015 are the two highest single-season win totals in the program’s history as an FBS member.

Brohm had previously worked as an offensive coordinator at Louisville, Western Kentucky and UAB, along with stints as a position coach at Louisville, Illinois and Florida Atlantic. He began his coaching career in 2002, as the head coach of the Louisville Fire of the AF2, the now-defunct Arena Football League’s developmental league.

Here’s a stop-by-stop look at Brohm’s coaching career:

2002: Louisville Fire (head coach)
2003-06: Louisville (quarterbacks coach)
2007: Louisville (assistant head coach/passing game coordinator)
2008: Louisville (assistant head coach/offensive coordinator)
2009: Florida Atlantic (quarterbacks coach)
2010-11: Illinois (quarterbacks coach)
2012: UAB (offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach)
2013: Western Kentucky (assistant head coach/offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach)
2014-16: Western Kentucky (head coach)
2017-22: Purdue (head coach)
2023-present: Louisville (head coach)

Jeff Brohm record

Now in his 12th season as an FBS head coach, Brohm has a record of 92-54. He went 30-10 at Western Kentucky and 36-34 at Purdue. He’s 26-10 at Louisville nine games into his third season at his alma mater.

Jeff Brohm record vs top-five teams

In addition to his high-powered offenses, Brohm has become known for winning big games.

Brohm’s teams are 4-4 against opponents that are ranked in the top five nationally at the time of the matchup. Most recently, Louisville upset then-No. 2 Miami 24-21 on the road on Oct. 17.

Jeff Brohm age

Brohm is 54 years old.

Jeff Brohm salary

According to the latest USA TODAY coaches salary database, Brohm brought in $5,981,057 in total pay, making him the 43rd-highest-paid coach on the list.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Who is Jeff Brohm? What to know about the Louisville football coach

More at NCAAF College Football News, Photos, Stats, Scores, Schedule & Videos