College Football Coaches Ranked--The Sporting News
B1G coaches:
4. BEST COACH IN THE B1G BY A MILE
5. GI-Joe Beard
8. The Waterboy
13. Frames
19. Captain Puntvious. I shit you not.
21. Fleck. (He really doesn't bug me, so he's just Fleck).
33. Bert
46. Rhule (He has a year to earn being shit on in here)
48. Robin of Locksley
49. LLLLLLoL
50. Poor Damn Fitzgerald
58. IU coach--his name isn't important
66. Rutger
70. Whoever coaches Purdue now
Others of particular interest:
6. Southern Man Brian Kelly
17. 'Duz (Always hated it when Sparty fans referred to him as this)
30. Marcus Freeman, ND
43. Matt Campbell, somehow ranked 43 spots too low.
59. Former MLB outfielder D. Sanders
74. Good shit, Jed
79. I am aware of my ranking but not fully aware
100. Chris Creighton, who is one of the 100 best college football coaches in the country
110. Jim "Yes, I'm still coaching!" McElwain
111. Former WVU coach Rich Rodriguez...not sure where he went after that.
118. Scott Loeffler still has a job.
124. Solve your problems with aggression (and a mustache); create your problems with zero adjustments (and a mustache).
132. Now why don't you make like a tree and get outta here!
133. Not as good as 132.
Wow, this is a high effort post.
You mean a Long Form post.
Bored tonight, plus I really, really like college football. I start to get the shakes this time of year due to withdrawal symptoms. The USXFL isn't feeding the addiction.
Agreed! More entertaining post than the article itself!
#59 should have been I Ain't Hard 2 Find!
Crazy how many head coaches that are affiliated with Michigan.
- Biff Poggi
- Jedd Fisch
- Don Brown
- Scott Loeffler
- Rich Rodriquez
- Jim McElwain
- Brady Hoke
- Mo Linguist
Yes, but most if not all on that list have failed or would fail as Michigan head coaches.
Biff is going to do/be pretty good. Doesn't deserve to be so low. Lot's of NR that are higher; he should be too.
Did Linguist even get moved into his office at Michigan before leaving for Buffalo?
fitz belongs in the teens. nobody does more with less (in alternating years) than fitz, and he runs a clean program.
narduzzi? no. kelly? overrated.
smart should be above saban.
fickell could earn is rating, but he hasn't yet.
mack brown has had some success, but he is not in the top 12 of coaches now. not close.
Tom Herman at 95--how fast one can fall.
Goes to show how reactionary these lists are. Guarantee you can find a preseason one of these lists for 2017 when he was just hired at Texas where people are throwing him into the top 10-15 coaches in the country
For my money Ryan Walters is going to do the job at Purdue. The job he did with the Illinois defense was excellent. Better coach than number 71. But he does have to prove it.
Fitz is ........ fine. But top 20, no way (IMO).
I view the "alternating seasons" thing as a negative (why exactly can't he sustain any sort of success year-over-year???), and his Wildcats are also a combined 3-5 the last 7 years against MAC and FCS schools (!!!).
That last stat ---- I mean, that's borderline inexcusable. If an MSU coach racked up that same 3-5 record versus the MAC and FCS, it would be an endless talking point here (and many other places).
NF, with true respect it is r-e-a-l-l-y hard to recruit to northwestern. i had a brother who played there decades ago. they are my second favorite B10 school by a mile. one of my sons was recruited by them. the grade point average and test score requirements are real. MSU? entrance test: what's your 40 and can you fog a mirror? PSU (and, candidly, some of michigan's kids) probably not much tougher.
I agree, it's hard to recruit there.
But let's take Duke --- I think Duke and NU football have the same sort of challenges. Comparing Duke and NU over the last 10 years:
- Fitzgerald and NU is 2-4 against Duke (0-4 from 2017-2022).
- Duke has won more games overall (65-60), admittedly in a weaker overall conference.
- NU went to 2 conference title games, Duke went to 1.
- Both schools won 4 Bowl games (NU went to 6 Bowls, Duke went to 5).
- Duke had 1 one case where their wins year-over-year went down by 4+. NU has had 3 such cases - they're more year-over-year inconsistent.
Not that much of a difference there, and perhaps the now retired David Cutcliffe (Duke coach through 2021) was under-appreciated in his time there.
But I just don't see the above as Top 20 material. Solid coach - yes, I agree with that though.
AFAIK, duke does not have the same restrictions on football admissions. big, big difference.
It intuitively feels like Duke would be a lot closer to NU than the 13 other B1G schools as regards football admissions, but fair enough.
But even with having "less material to do things with", NU didn't hit double digits in 6 of their 9 B1G games last year, and they didn't score over 21 in any of their B1G games the year before. That's a bit "Chris-Ash-era-Rutgers-esque." A top coach should be doing better than that.
agree re: duke closer to NW, but vandy is the closest i can think of in terms of power 5 football.
NU plays in a way tougher league and they certainly have had their troubles scoring, but a lot of that was they were down something like 3 QB's. kind of like us running out o'korn, and then he gets hurt and we go to #4. would be tough on any program.
XM - I’m not sure you have it quite right.
NU has phenomenal facilities and should compete with at least Stanford in terms of recruiting and admissions.
Northwestern cant accept quite as many low academic kids as other Big Ten schools but there are still plenty of kids on the football team (and most other varsity teams there) who wouldn’t stand a prayer of getting accepted to NU without the athletic scholarship. They also accept transfers, including Juco transfers, even in minor sports, that I know Michigan wouldn’t take.
They don’t offer Phys. Ed or any of those ridiculous classes that Iowa and OSU have but they still have places to hide kids academically and get them through.
I like Fitz a lot but admissions probably isn’t as much of a limiting factor as budget/program size. I don’t think Fitz has the analysts and support people/infrastructure that most other programs have (let alone Harbaugh and Day). I also am not sure if Fitz is a really good coach or not. I don’t feel qualified to assess his schemes or acumen. But Walker and Barnett had down years too before him and they all have won shares of conference/division titles too.
Northwestern plays in the B1G. Duke plays in the ACC. How much more needs to be said?
there is a nuance that didn't come through in electrons and blogging. we all know that many/most athletes would not get into michigan or NW but for the fact of their athletic excellence. you hear the stories here about regular kids with astronomical GPA's and SAT/ACT's and rejected by the school. what i was saying though was that even accepting that, NW still requires a 3.3 or better GPA and (IIRC) a 1200 SAT as of a few years ago when they wanted one of my sons to play. and in that way they can't simply recruit the same kids that can fog a mirror and get into MSU, for instance.
Just wait. Could happen in the next couple of years.
smart should be above saban.
hmmm. I don't know.
I think Saban has earned being #1 until retirement.
I don't like it, but:
That is a pretty insane track record of success.
Kirby Smart might be the better coach....but I think he needs to prove it over a decade or so before putting him above Saban on an active coaches ranking.
and i appreciate what saban did - first and best cheater of our era, but smart has passed him by. smart might not hold onto that, but at least for now smart is #1 - national championships matter and he's won 2 in a row, right?
National Championships do matter, Saban has the lead, 7-2.
Ultimately I guess are we ranking the best active coaches, or the coaches we think are going to do the best in 2023? Best active has to take in to account the full body of work and at that point Saban has everyone beat.
I will say, I didn't realize Kirby has been at Georgia since 2016. What he has done in that time has him firmly #2 on my list. I'd probably even agree to a #1B to Saban #1A
It feels gross arguing in favor of Nick Saban, so I'm probably done here.
We can agree that Harbaugh is infinitely more like-able/easier to root for than either of these two guys, yes?
another nuance that doesn't come through on the internet. on total body of work complete agreement that saban >> smart. my comment is meant for the 'right now', kind of like miggy was the best hitter in baseball for a while, a no-doubt HOF member, but there are others better than him right now.
as to harbaugh, his kids love him. i still have that vision of him at a press conference toward the end of the year (after ohio? B10 CG?) and a couple of players coming up to him in the middle of it and giving him a bro-hug and saying words to the effect of 'love you coach' and of course he responded in kind. i can't imagine that ever happening with saban anywhere in the multiverse.
Chris Creighton is also criminally underrated. Him being #100 is an actual crime. He's at least top 50. Does so much with so little.
fitz in top 20? no way. he is ok, and tbh, they are getting worse.
as much as I hate him, Bert is a way better coach than fitz.
This is an odd list. Two stand out to me as egregiously bad: Mike Norvell and Greg Schiano.
Also, Sun Belt Billy. Dude has no clue how to coach 🤡
No way is mel a better coach than Fitzgerald.
Hoping mel can win just enough to hang on to his job for the entire 10 years. Keep choppin’.
Even if Mel gets Sparty to bowl eligibility the next couple years, if he loses to Michigan the next two years for 3 straight overall loses he will be gone.
I would bet a significant amount of money that that would not happen.
Freeman at 30? Wow what a difference one season makes
He moved up five spots.
There's not 49 coaches in the country better than Pat Fitzgerald. Sure, they had a shit season.
But what he's done at Northwestern is insane. 19 is probably fair for Kirk at his age. Chris Creighton is easily top 35.
I like Fitz but both of his predecessors won Big Ten championships. Randy Walker (51-49 game and a share of the BTC with M and Purdue that year) and Gary Barnett (back to back Rose Bowls). Granted Barnett cheated a lot more. Fitz has been there probably twice as long as those two but his average up and down seasons probably aren’t any different than theirs.
I have to point out that Fitzgerald has a better winning percentage at Northwestern than both Barnett and Walker, and he's the only one above .500 (at .521).
Barnett should get a lot of credit for getting them out of the hole that Northwestern football had been in, but he had exactly two good seasons out of seven. They were on a downward trend when he left (5-7 and 3-9 in his last two years).
Other than 2000 (when they finished 8-4), Northwestern under Walker was at best a marginal bowl team (6-7, 6-6 and 7-5 in his last three years). They generally had awful defenses, and that 2000 team was no exception. They were (deep, heavy sigh) able to generate enough offense to win 8 games that year, but a number of them were shootouts and they were absolutely nuked by Nebraska in the Alama Bowl (66-17).
Fitzgerald has really done better at Northwestern than both of his predecessors. The one thing he hasn't been able to do is win a conference championship, and frankly Barnett and Walker had a lot of luck on their side (i.e., Barnett didn't have to play a good Ohio State team in 1995 and everybody in the Big Ten had at least two losses in conference play in 2000).
Fitz had the benefit of building off what Barnett and Walker had accomplished though. The program-builder often has a worse winning percentage than the guy who succeeds him, as he had the tougher task.
Which is Barnett. I admit I'm not as impressed with Barnett as I once was after his time at Colorado, where he was just okay and had a huge amount of off-the-field problems.
I think, though, that Barnett and Northwestern benefited greatly from the reduction of the scholarship limit to 85 which happened in the early nineties. That freed a pool of talent which Northwestern was able to take advantage of in a way they were completely incapable of in the seventies and eighties.
Despite the two-game losing streak, it's a good bet Ohio State will be favored when they head to Michigan Stadium on Nov. 25.
So?
I don’t see Osu being favored in that game. I expect Michigan to win that game and am fairly confident they will. It’s been awhile since I have been able to say that
Also, why? I've seen a number of these "OSU > Michigan" prognostications lately and there doesn't seem to be super strong logic behind them.
If we're 11-0 or 10-1, I see no reason at all why OSU would be favored over us.
Ridiculous that Biff Poggi is not top 8.
Right? He's never lost a game as HC!
If adjusted for talent available Kyle Whittingham should be top 3.