Just days before the Washington State football program was set to take the field for the DirecTV Holiday Bowl against Kyle McCord and the high-octane Syracuse Orange, head coach Jake Dickert announced he'd be leaving the program in order to take over as head coach at Wake Forest. Fortunately for fans up in the Pacific Northwest, it didn't the Cougars long to find their next head coach.

Per Adam Rittenberg and Chris Low of ESPN, 37-year-old South Dakota State head coach Jimmy Rogers has accepted a five-year deal to become Washington State's next head coach after leading the Jackrabbits to their fifth consecutive FCS semifinal appearance earlier this month.

Rogers, who spent five years as a linebacker at South Dakota State between 2005 and 2009, was the Jackrabbits' defensive coordinator when they won the National Title in 2022, and had taken over as head coach prior to the 2023 season, when they won a second consecutive FCS Championship. He compiled a 27-3 record in his two seasons as the head coach in Brookings.

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Washington State, along with Oregon State, will operate as Independents during the 2025 season before the Pac-12 returns to action in 2026 with an almost entirely new crop of programs making up the conference. Rogers will be starting almost entirely from scratch in his first season with the Cougars next fall. The team has already lost 26 scholarship players to the transfer portal this month including quarterback John Mateer, who left for Oklahoma earlier this month.

This could open the door for numerous South Dakota State starters to make the jump from FCS to FBS if they choose to follow Rogers to Pullman. That includes quarterback Mark Gronowski, who was the Walter Payton Award winner in 2023 and has twice been named the FCS National Championship Game MVP. Gronowski could choose to enter the NFL Draft, where he's expected to be a Day 3 pick after a stellar career in which he never lost a home game as a starter at South Dakota State.

Jimmy Rogers will make his Washington State debut on August 30th when the Cougars face the Idaho Vandals at Gesa Field to open their season.