Fifteen FBS teams are still unbeaten after Week 5. Thirty-four programs started this season with a new head coach, and three of them are on that list: UCLA under Bob Chesney, Utah under Morgan Scalley and James Madison under Billy Napier.

Two of those three share a starting point. So does a third team on the list, Indiana, now in its third season under Curt Cignetti. Follow the head-coaching moves behind those three programs and they all run through Harrisonburg, Virginia.

That kind of lineage usually shows up in a coaching tree. Now it shows up on rosters, too. When a head coach leaves, his players can follow him, stay put or go somewhere new. These three programs each got a different answer to that question, and all three are undefeated in October.

Cignetti left James Madison for Indiana after the 2023 season, and a group of Dukes went with him. They already knew his practice rhythm, his language and his standards. That gave a first-year staff something rare: a core of players who could teach the system to everyone else in the building.

Indiana still builds through the portal, from different sources now, adding a measured class of transfers this cycle. One of them took over the offense. Josh Hoover came from TCU to play quarterback for the defending national champion, replacing a Heisman Trophy winner. At Rutgers in Week 5 he completed 20 of 27 passes for 251 yards and four touchdowns. Indiana is 5-0.

James Madison replaced Cignetti with Bob Chesney. In his second season the Dukes went 12-2, won the Sun Belt and reached the College Football Playoff for the first time. Then UCLA hired him.

This time the movement was bigger. Offensive coordinator Dean Kennedy came with him, and so did about a dozen James Madison players, most of them on the same day in late January. UCLA rebuilt in both directions, bringing in more than 40 transfers since November.

Wayne Knight is the name to know in that group. He spent four seasons at James Madison, and in two under Chesney he went over 100 yards from scrimmage 12 times. Last season he finished with 1,770 yards from scrimmage and 10 touchdowns, including a 200-yard rushing day in the Sun Belt Championship against Troy. When Chesney left, Knight went with him.

For a staff rebuilding a Power Four roster in one offseason, players like Knight do two jobs. They produce on Saturdays, and they arrive already knowing what the coaches want, which shortens the time it takes dozens of new teammates to catch up. UCLA is 4-0 and averaging 281.5 rushing yards a game. Knight has 445 of them and nine touchdowns on 49 carries.

That leaves James Madison, which has now handed a winning roster to a new head coach twice in three seasons. Billy Napier came from Florida with a Sun Belt résumé already in hand: 40-12 in four years at Louisiana. He inherited five returning starters and a roster with dozens of new faces.

George Pettaway is one of the players who stayed.

He came to Harrisonburg the long way. A four-star recruit from Suffolk, Virginia, he signed with North Carolina and found himself behind Omarion Hampton. After two seasons he transferred to James Madison, arriving for Chesney's first year. Last season he was Knight's backup: 34 carries, 195 yards.

When Knight left for UCLA, Pettaway faced the question every player on the roster faced, with a new staff coming in and a running back room about to be rebuilt around him. He stayed. Asked about the transition in the preseason, he kept it short: "The past is the past."

On Saturday against Marshall, he carried 14 times for 206 yards and two touchdowns, including a 73-yarder, the longest run of his career. James Madison won 45-17 and moved to 5-0 for the first time since 2023. Pettaway became the first Duke to rush for 200 yards in a game since Dec. 5, 2025, when Wayne Knight did it in the Sun Belt Championship.

The three programs took different routes through the same cycle.

One program kept adding to a roster its coach had already shaped. One staff brought its own people across the country. One kept a core together through a second coaching transition.

What they have in common is players who knew the place, the system or both, deciding whether to move with the coach or stay. Each of those decisions set up the next one. Knight's choice opened the carries Pettaway turned into 206 yards on Saturday.

Indiana plays at Nebraska on Oct. 10, and James Madison goes to Georgia Southern. UCLA visits Oregon the same day, which sends Wayne Knight back to Autzen Stadium, where James Madison played its first College Football Playoff game in December.

Counted October 4, 2026, for the 2026/27 cycle. Explore the network.

How we count. Transfer movement reflects moves recorded on the UpNext network for the 2026/27 cycle, since Nov. 1, 2025. Player and game details come from public reporting and school releases. Game results as of October 4, 2026.