Who is college football’s best coach with Nick Saban gone? Ranking coaches in tiers

The role of a college football coach seems to change by the month as the sport wrestles with the age of name, image and likeness freedoms, unlimited transfers and, soon, revenue sharing.

Adding to the turnover that defines this new era: Nick Saban, arguably the greatest coach in the sport’s history, retired in January. Jim Harbaugh won a national championship and left for the NFL. Even Jeff Hafley left Boston College for an NFL assistant job and Chip Kelly left UCLA to be Ohio State’s offensive coordinator.

For the third consecutive year, The Athletic is ranking the Football Bowl Subdivision’s head coaches into eight tiers. We weighed everything from measurable success (including championships) to resources to length of track record and more.

Which coaches have sustained success? Have they done it at multiple schools? What kind of situation did they inherit? This is about the complete body of work, but recent results are weighed more heavily. This is not about projecting a coach’s future. This also isn’t a list of coaches we would hire right now in this order. It’s an evaluation of relative accomplishments.

Coaches entering their first year as an FBS head coach are not included, with little data by which to fairly evaluate them. Coaches entering their second year make their debut in this list. In addition to the names above, gone are coaches like Jimbo Fisher and Pat Fitzgerald. In are second-year coaches like Colorado’s Deion Sanders and UAB’s Trent Dilfer. Our evaluation is solely based on a person’s work as a head coach, not as an assistant. Any success at lower levels comes into play once a coach has spent at least one year running an FBS program.

Just three active coaches have won FBS national championships, with the departures of Saban and Harbaugh and Jimbo Fisher’s expensive firing. That elite group starts our ranking at the top. (Each tier is in alphabetical order.)

Tier 1

Chris Vannini: No more 1A and 1B with Saban’s retirement. Kirby Smart and Dabo Swinney are the only active FBS head coaches with multiple national titles, leaving them alone at the top. Even if you question whether Clemson can get back to the heights it reached in the 2010s, you can’t deny what Swinney has accomplished, with 12 consecutive 10-win seasons before last year’s 9-4 record. Clemson had six consecutive top-four finishes from 2015 to 2020, including its most impressive feat: two national championship wins against Saban’s Alabama.

Smart and Georgia were one SEC championship game win away from competing for a third consecutive national championship. The Bulldogs have finished ranked in the top seven for the past seven years, dating back to Smart’s second season in charge. They’re the preseason No. 1 again, and if anyone is poised to take the mantle as the new dynasty in place of Saban, it could be Smart and Georgia.

Bruce Feldman: I’m sure Stewart Mandel will wince seeing Dabo’s name here, but he’s won two national titles. Has the program backslid since the portal era began, resisting the new ways to upgrade a roster utilized by everyone else? No doubt, but you can’t dismiss what Swinney did not too long ago. As Chris said, his run of high-level success, especially against college football’s G.O.A.T., is truly elite.

Tier 2

Vannini: This group is largely made up of the coaches who have made the four-team CFP but not won a national title, plus coaches who have come very close to the CFP, like Kyle Whittingham. Kalen DeBoer moves up into this tier after reaching last year’s national championship game. Mike Norvell moves up after an undefeated regular season at FSU, only to be spurned by the committee. I still believe FSU should’ve made the field. The Seminoles’ Week 0 upset loss to Georgia Tech in Ireland leaves Norvell with work to do to keep his 2024 group in the hunt.

Ryan Day, Brian Kelly and Lincoln Riley all have multiple CFP appearances, while Luke Fickell took Cincinnati into the four-team field and reached another New Year’s Six bowl at Cincinnati. Day took over a very good situation, and Riley slipped this past year at USC, but both remain in Tier 2. Lance Leipold’s turnaround at Kansas is remarkable, and while his accomplishments at the Power 5 level don’t match the others, he also won six Division III national titles at Wisconsin-Whitewater and rebuilt Buffalo into a two-time MAC division champion.

Feldman: I’m glad we’re bumping up Leipold, DeBoer and Norvell (all Tier 3 in 2023). I think Bama just made a great hire. DeBoer took over a Washington roster that had just gone 4-8, added in his old quarterback from Indiana Michael Penix Jr. and then went 25-3 and a staggering 10-1 against Top 25 teams. DeBoer is 12-2 all-time against ranked opponents. Leipold is working miracles at Kansas. The Jayhawks were abysmal before he arrived and then reached the Top 25 for the first time in 13 years during his second season. Last year, Kansas finished ranked for the first time in 16 seasons. I think you could make a compelling case for him to be in with Kirby and Dabo. Norvell has as strong of a claim to the Portal King crown as anyone, based on how he’s mined the transfer market to turn the Noles back into a powerhouse.

Tier 3

Vannini: This next group is very good more often than not, and most have at least one breakthrough season. One big mover here is Eli Drinkwitz (Tier 5 in 2023), who took Missouri to an impressive 11-2 season with wins against Ohio State, Tennessee and Kansas State and a second consecutive close call with Georgia. It was Drinkwitz’s second big season in five years as an FBS head coach after a 12-1 debut at Appalachian State in 2019, and this year’s Mizzou team could make the CFP.

Oregon’s Dan Lanning also moves up two tiers after a 12-2 season and a Fiesta Bowl win. He’s 22-1 against teams that aren’t Georgia (0-1) or Washington (0-3), and he just signed the nation’s No. 3 recruiting class. He took over a good situation but has put the Ducks back in the national championship picture. The same goes for Steve Sarkisian, who accomplished the difficult goal of getting Texas to live up to its potential, with a CFP berth last year. He’s steadily rebuilt this program into one of the nation’s best. Although he didn’t win more than eight games in five years at Washington, remember that he inherited an 0-12 program and posted four winning seasons.

Chris Klieman was close to moving up to Tier 2 alongside Leipold, but he sticks here, having inherited some better situations at North Dakota State and Kansas State. Bronco Mendenhall debuts on this list after returning to college football. He won at least eight games nine times at BYU and took Virginia to an Orange Bowl. New Mexico hiring him was a huge get. Rich Rodriguez (Tier 4 in 2023) took Jacksonville State to a nine-win season in its first FBS year. Other than a rough run at Michigan, he has won everywhere else, taking West Virginia to two BCS bowls, Arizona to a Fiesta Bowl and now improving Jax State. Mack Brown, by the way, is the third active FBS head coach with a national championship.

Tier 4

Vannini: This is the Very Solid group. They’re not on the hot seat, and they’ll rarely have a terrible season. It’s also a group that sees a lot of movement. West Virginia coach Neal Brown moves up two spots after taking a team picked last in the Big 12 to a 9-4 season and Top 25 finish, on top of his 31-8 run at Troy. Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman has two top-20 finishes, but the CFP is the expectation this year if he wants to meet the standard Brian Kelly set before him.

Bill O’Brien debuts on this list after taking the Boston College job. He really can’t be credited enough for saving the Penn State program when it was on the verge of falling apart after the Jerry Sandusky scandal in 2012. To post an 8-4 and 7-5 season amid that drama and NCAA penalties was remarkable. Matt Rhule drops into this group after a 5-7 opening season at Nebraska. The defense improved greatly, the Huskers signed Dylan Raiola, and I have high expectations for 2024, but a 5-7 year with a bunch of one-score losses looked a lot like Scott Frost’s run.

Tulane landing Jon Sumrall to replace Willie Fritz was a coup. Sumrall went 23-4 in two seasons at Troy after taking over a 5-7 program, winning two Sun Belt championships. I also love Indiana’s hire of Curt Cignetti, who has won everywhere (as he likes to tell you). He went 52-9 at James Madison, including 19-4 after the move up to the FBS. Indiana will certainly be a challenge, but the Hoosiers got a winner.

Jedd Fisch (Tier 6 in 2023) was our biggest clash. I absolutely buy the trajectory, I’m just not ready to put him in Tier 3 yet with only one winning season, as improved as Arizona was last fall.

Feldman: Fisch belongs in Tier 3. Don’t be fooled by his 15-21 record. Arizona was a program left for dead and on a 12-game losing streak when he took it over. They had nothing going, and no players wanted to go there. In his third season, they went 10-3 and finished No. 11 in the country, going 5-2 against Top 25 opponents, winning four of those in dominant fashion. Fisch landed the best wideout in the country in Tetairoa McMillan and a bunch of other underrated gems for a roster that could win the Big 12 this year.

Sumrall was a fantastic hire by Troy and for Tulane. Within two years, he’ll probably go up another level in the tiers. Brown definitely deserved to go up. He did an outstanding job building West Virginia back, which was even harder in the face of all the hot seat chatter. I’ve been really impressed by what Mike Elko did at Duke and will be fascinated to see whether he can make Texas A&M a consistent top-15 program. Jeff Traylor’s a stud. UTSA is fortunate to still have him there.

I think Rhule will get things going at Nebraska now that he has a big-time QB; that position really hurt them last year. Rhule had rough debut seasons at his two previous college stops only to make bowls in his second year and elevate from there. At Temple, he went 2-10 in Year 1 and won 10 games two years later. He went 1-11 in Year 1 at Baylor. Two years later: 11-3.

Tom Herman got off to a really fast start as a head coach, but things have just been so inconsistent with him and his teams. He also just went 4-8, FAU’s worst record since 2016.

Tier 5

Vannini: This is a group of coaches largely on the way up. Brent Venables in particular seems to have found his footing in Norman and is taking Oklahoma back in the right direction after a bit of a rebuild post-Lincoln Riley. I’d be surprised if he doesn’t move up again next year.

Ryan Silverfield and Chuck Martin had breakthrough seasons with double-digit wins last year. Both are conference favorites in 2024. Billy Napier dropped down into this group after a second consecutive losing season. Napier’s 40-12 run at Louisiana was good, but the Gators have now had three consecutive losing seasons as a program for the first time since 1945-47.

Feldman: Barry Odom did a great job last year at UNLV and seems like he’s really grown and learned a lot since his first stint as a head coach. I think Silverfield, Alex Golesh and GJ Kinne will move up a spot this time next year.

Tier 6

Vannini: This group includes a few names getting more removed from the success early in their head coaching career: Butch Jones at Central Michigan/Cincinnati (though Arkansas State appears to finally be on the upswing), Mike MacIntyre at San Jose State/Colorado, Jim McElwain at Colorado State/Florida, Jim Mora at UCLA and Scott Satterfield at Appalachian State. Dave Aranda posted a 12-2 season at Baylor with a Big 12 title in 2022, so it was really hard to place him here, but that’s his only winning season in four years, and he’s on the hot seat after going 3-9 last season.

I was actually a bit impressed with Tim Beck’s first season at Coastal Carolina. Quarterback Grayson McCall only played seven games due to injury, and Coastal beat Marshall and Texas State without him. David Braun’s one-year turnaround at Northwestern was remarkable, going from 1-11 to 8-5 as the interim head coach. Brent Key deserves some more respect for turning Georgia Tech from a mess into a respectable opponent again very quickly, even before the Jackets’ Week 0 win against Florida State. He’s now 5-0 against ranked teams. Same goes for Jake Dickert keeping Washington State in a stable place given the Nick Rolovich drama and the dissolution of the Pac-12.

Deion Sanders was really tough to place. Colorado improved from one win to four in his first year, and Sanders deserves credit for putting together one of the most talented FCS teams at Jackson State and winning two SWAC championships. I just wasn’t ready to put him up at Tier 5 without a winning FBS season. I do think Colorado will make a bowl this year, and if Sanders sticks around after that, he’ll move up in the tiers.

Feldman: Deion was a huge hire for Jackson State and for Colorado. Given how horrible the Buffs were right before he showed up, he could be a tier higher. Colorado was getting annihilated every week under Karl Dorrell. I’ve been impressed with the job Key has done at his alma mater since being named the interim. He might be primed to move up a spot after this year.

Dickert has had to manage a lot of adversity that most FBS coaches don’t, and he deserves credit for how competitive Washington State has been through it all. The Cougars beat two top-20 teams last year before their idle week, at which point the reality of life no longer being a power-conference school apparently sunk in for the players and the season started to get sideways, some staffers told me. Wazzu still almost knocked off Washington in Seattle at the end of the year.

Tier 7

Vannini: This tier is largely made up of coaches who had a rough debut season or are doing just enough to hang on. That first part of the group includes second-year coaches and Tiers first-timers in Trent Dilfer (4-8), Kenny Dillingham (3-9), Eric Morris (5-7), Brian Newberry (5-7), Lance Taylor (4-8), Troy Taylor (3-9), and Ryan Walters (4-8). The jury’s still out on how their tenures will go.

Also here are four coaches who moved out of the bottom tier: Mike Bloomgren, Timmy Chang, Scot Loeffler and Brent Pry. Rice, Bowling Green and Virginia Tech made bowl games, while Hawaii improved from 3-10 to 5-8 and looks primed to reach a bowl this year. Virginia Tech could also take a big step and see Pry move up from here next year.

Feldman: I think Justin Wilcox is a good coach with a really rough job. Everything is such an uphill climb at Cal. I think if he was the head coach at Boise, he’d probably be a Tier 3 guy. My hunch is Pry will be moving up two spots this time next year.

Tier 8

Vannini: This is the Hot Seat group, plus other coaches who have yet to have a good season. But it’s not the end — only two Tier 8 coaches were fired last year, while four moved up to Tier 7. Still, these are jobs where it’s tough to win, especially in modern college football. New Mexico State won 10 games last year, but Tony Sanchez takes over for Jerry Kill and inherits a program that lost several of its best players. Sanchez went 20-40 in five years as UNLV head coach, without a bowl appearance.

Will Hall seemed to be turning the corner at Southern Miss with a 7-6 season in 2022, but he fell back to 3-9 this past year. He’s still recruiting well, but the Golden Eagles want to get back to bowl games. Kent State’s Kenni Burns debuts on the list after a 1-11 season at Kent State, a tough start after all of the team’s best players transferred out when Sean Lewis left to become Colorado’s offensive coordinator.

All is not lost for this group, but they’d best start heading in a better direction.

(Top illustration photos: Nelson Chenault, Mark J. Rebilas / USA Today)