Texas State is planning to hire G.J. Kinne as its next head football coach, sources tell Dave Campbell’s Texas Football.

Kinne, who is the head coach at Incarnate Word, is a Texas native that played his senior year at Gilmer High School for current UTSA head coach Jeff Traylor. He is 10-1 as a college head coach at UIW in his first year leading the Cardinals, who play Furman on Saturday in the second-round of the FCS playoffs.

Contract details are not yet finalized, but all signs point to the two parties agreeing to terms over the next 24 hours with a press conference to follow after everything is signed. 

Washington State offensive coordinator Eric Morris and Sam Houston head coach K.C. Keeler were also in the mix. Texas State fired former head coach Jake Spavital following a 4-8 finish in 2022 and 2021. He was 13-35 in four seasons at the helm. The Bobcats moved up to the FBS level in 2012 and haven’t yet reached a bowl game. The only years that the program finished at .500 or better since moving up were in 2013 and 2014 when Dennis Franchione was in charge. 

Kinne was a three-star recruit who spent his first year of college at Texas before transferring to Tulsa. He sat out the 2008 season due to the transfer rules before becoming the starter in 2009. Kinne finished his college career with 9,472 yards and 91 touchdowns. His first five years after college were spent in the professional ranks, including stints in the NFL with the Giants and the Eagles, as well as stops in the Canadian Football League. 

He returned to Texas as an assistant under Chad Morris at SMU in 2017. Kinne followed Morris to Arkansas the next year as an offensive analyst before jumping to the Philadelphia Eagles as an assistant coach for the 2019 season. He returned to college in 2020 as the offensive coordinator at Hawaii before moving to UCF as the co-offensive coordinator in 2021. 

Kinne, 33, was hired as head coach at UIW in December of 2021 following Morris’ departure to Washington State. The Cardinals won the Southland Conference and are the seven-seed in the FCS Playoffs. The offense, led by quarterback Lindsey Scott, averaged 53.1 points per game during the regular season.