After 39 years, Ray Priore departs Penn football; Rick Santos hired as new head coach.
After the Penn football team concluded its 2025 season with a 17–6 win over Princeton on November 22, senior wide receiver Jared Richardson offered a heartfelt message to his coach Ray Priore.
Fresh off becoming the sixth player in program history to eclipse 1,000 receiving yards in a single season, Richardson called his college football finale “special” in large part because “Penn was the only Division I school to give me an offer.” Then, turning toward Priore, the senior who concluded his college career ranked third all-time at Penn in receiving yards (2,505), fourth in receptions (193) and tied for second in touchdowns (27), said: “Thank you, Coach P—I appreciate the opportunity. Penn’s going to hold a special place in my heart for the rest of my life.”
It would be among the final warm moments between Penn’s longtime coach and one of his players. Two days later, Priore announced he’d be stepping down from Penn after 39 years at the University.
“To say coaching at the University of Pennsylvania has been the honor of a lifetime is an understatement,” Priore said in a statement. “Penn has been my second home for 39 years, the last 11 of which I have had the privilege of serving as the head football coach. The end of the season marked my final game, and closing this chapter with a win is something I will carry with me forever.”
On December 13, Penn filled its vacancy with the announcement that Rick Santos had been named the program’s next head coach. Santos arrives from the University of New Hampshire, which he guided to three NCAA FCS playoffs appearances in five seasons in charge. He previously served as an assistant coach and was a star quarterback at UNH, where in 2006 he won the Walter Payton Award, given to the nation’s top FCS offensive player. After graduating in 2008, he played four seasons in the Canadian Football League. He also had a brief stint as the quarterbacks coach at Columbia from 2016 to 2018 under former Penn head coach Al Bagnoli.
Priore first arrived at Penn in 1987 as an assistant linebackers coach and rose up the ranks to become the team’s defensive coordinator from 1999 to 2014, helping the Quakers capture 10 Ivy League titles in his 28 overall years as a defensive assistant. He served under three different head coaches and emerged as Bagnoli’s top deputy and handpicked successor when Bagnoli left the program following the 2014 season.
Priore had enormous success in his first two seasons, winning a share of the Ivy championship in 2015 and 2016 and leading Penn to a big upset over fourth-ranked Villanova in just his second game in charge (the program’s first win over Villanova in more than 100 years). Another signature road win later that season snapped Harvard’s 22-game winning streak. Those teams were fueled by future NFL draft pick and Super Bowl winner Justin Watson W’18, one of 10 All-Americans during Priore’s tenure as head coach.
But the Quakers have not won a conference title since, usually finishing in the middle of the Ivy standings.
This year Penn finished 4–3 in the Ivies, suffering 22-point defeats to Cornell on Homecoming and to eventual joint champion Yale, as well as a wild 45–43 loss at Harvard, the league’s other cochampion, in which the teams traded go-ahead field goals in the final 22 seconds.
Priore’s overall record as head coach was 58–42 and 37–32 in Ivy play.
Before the season, in an interview with the Gazette, Priore discussed some of the newer challenges of the transfer portal and NIL money [“Sports,” Sep|Oct 2025], and expressed dismay over friends and longtime fellow coaches Steve Donahue and Mike Murphy GEd’04 losing their jobs running Penn’s men’s basketball and men’s lacrosse teams, respectively. “You have to deal with these issues that come through,” Priore said at the time. “That’s our profession.”
Off the field, Priore partnered with the Friends of Jaclyn Foundation to welcome a young cancer patient named Vhito DeCapria as the Penn football team’s honorary captain in 2015. DeCapria and his family remained close with the program over the past decade before DeCapria sadly passed away in September at the age of 14.
“In my tenure, I found the greatest joy in connecting with others and making a meaningful difference in their lives, and I look forward to continuing to pursue this passion, while also dedicating more time to my family,” Priore said. “At this time, I leave with a full heart and immense gratitude for what we
accomplished together.”—DZ
