Stewart Mandel ranks his top 25 CFB coaches: Where are Day, Sark? (2024)

This year’s coach rankings exercise presented a challenge unlike any before it. Between Nick Saban’s retirement, Jim Harbaugh’s NFL exit, Dabo Swinney and Lincoln Riley’s backslides and Ryan Day’s Michigan problem, I’m left with an obvious No. 1 (Kirby Smart), followed by a gaping void. And as always, there’s the difficulty of comparing coaches from schools with vastly different expectations.

The result is an unprecedented level of upheaval a year earlier, including eight new entrants.

Finally, I can’t emphasize this enough: These are not career achievement rankings. These are my Top 25 coaches right now. A coach’s career resume is important, but recent performance carries more weight in my evaluations.

See how this year’s ranking compares to last year’s here.

(Click here for Bruce Feldman’s rankings.)

1. Kirby Smart, Georgia (2023: No. 1b)

Following Nick Saban’s retirement, Smart is now the unquestioned king of college football, with two recent national championships (2021 and ’22), a 42-2 record over the past three seasons and a remarkable 27 consecutive SEC regular-season wins. His juggernaut shows no signs of slowing.

2. Lance Leipold, Kansas (2023: No. 11)

Kansas was the nation’s worst Power 5 program for more than a decade. Then Leipold arrived. He got the Jayhawks to a bowl by Year 2 and to nine wins and a Top 25 finish by Year 3. It’s one of the sport’s all-time great rebuilding jobs, by a man who previously led Buffalo to the only 10-win season in school history. He won six Division III national titles before that.

3. Kalen DeBoer, Alabama (2023: NR)

A top-3 debut for DeBoer may prove premature, but thus far he’s won three NAIA championships, produced a 9-3 season at Fresno State and a 25-3 run at Washington in which the Huskies reached the 2023 national championship game. There’s no replacing Saban, but the Tide going from having the No. 1 coach to the No. 3 coach is something.

4. Mike Norvell, Florida State (2023: NR)

Since taking Memphis to a New Year’s Six bowl in 2019, Norvell has led quite the renaissance in Tallahassee, Fla., climbing from 3-6 to 5-7 to 10-3 to last season’s 13-0 regular season, which ended in College Football Playoff committee-induced heartbreak. Norvell has proven particularly adept at manning the portal, which produced many of the stars from last year’s breakout team.

5. Kyle Whittingham, Utah (2023: No. 8)

I give last year’s disappointing 8-5 campaign an asterisk due to the Utes’ staggering number of injuries. Whittingham has achieved remarkable consistency at a non-obvious school. Utah won back-to-back Pac-12 Championships in 2021 and ’22 and has fielded six Top 25 teams in the last decade. The Utes are well-positioned to win in the Big 12.

6. Brian Kelly, LSU (2022: No. 4)

Kelly is polarizing and easy to nitpick. He just shook up his LSU staff after fielding a woeful defense last season. But zoom out: He’s notched seven consecutive 10-win seasons dating back to Notre Dame; reached a BCS championship game; and made two Playoff fields. He’s off to a 12-4 start in SEC play. There frankly aren’t many active coaches with that quality of resume.

7. Ryan Day, Ohio State (2023: No. 7)

Normally a guy who’s taken his team to the CFP in three of his five seasons and is a staggering 39-3 in Big Ten play would be the no-brainer No. 2 guy on this list. But because those three losses have come the last three seasons to Michigan, the most important game on his team’s schedule, I can’t justify a top-5 ranking, even with his .875 winnning percentage.

8. Dabo Swinney, Clemson (2023: No. 3)

In defense of Swinney, he’s only a year removed from his eighth ACC championship and 12th consecutive double-digit win season. His two national title rings weren’t that long ago, either. But his program has been trending in the wrong direction for several years, and in 2023 he had his worst season (9-4 overall, 4-4 ACC) in 13 years. He had to drop.

9. Mike Gundy, Oklahoma State (2023: No. 14)

Gundy’s program was showing cracks early last season. A year after going 7-6, the Cowboys started 2-2, with a bizarre blowout loss to South Alabama. But by year’s end, they’d secured Gundy’s eighth double-digit win season since 2010, reached their second Big 12 title game in three years and finished in the Top 25 for the third time in four years.

10. Jamey Chadwell, Liberty (2023: NR)

After winning two conference titles at FCS Charleston Southern (2015 and ’16), then leading Coastal Carolina to consecutive 11-win seasons (2021 and ’22), Chadwell left for Liberty and notched a 13-0 regular season and Fiesta Bowl berth in Year 1. Behind a unique spread-option scheme, his offenses have ranked in the top five two of the last three years.

11. Lane Kiffin, Ole Miss (2023: No. 19)

What a roller-coaster for Kiffin in these rankings: From No. 24 to No. 11, down to No. 19, back to No. 11. But the man is doing unprecedented things at Ole Miss. In 2021, he produced the school’s first 10-win regular season. Last season brought the first 11-win season in school history, capped with a New Year’s Six bowl win over a top-10 foe.

12. Luke Fickell, Wisconsin (2023: No. 9)

Fickell had a rough 7-6 first season in Madison, but a bumpy transition from the Paul Chryst era was not entirely surprising. This is still the same coach who went 53-10 in his last five seasons at Cincinnati, becoming the first coach to take a Group of 5 program to the Playoff while developing 16 NFL draft picks in his last three years.

13. Steve Sarkisian, Texas (2023: NR)

I was skeptical of Sark prior to 2023, as he’d yet to top 9-4 in eight seasons as a head coach. But last year, he and the Longhorns finally arrived, reaching the Playoff and winning 12 games for the first time since 2009. He’s built Texas into a physical program capable of competing in the SEC while continuing to show off his creativity as an offensive mind.

14. Lincoln Riley, USC (2023: No. 5)

Riley went a remarkable 66-13 in his first six seasons, but his inability to field a decent defense finally did him in last year. The Trojans finished the regular season 7-5 despite having Caleb Williams at quarterback, because Riley’s defense finished in the 100s yet again. Some will suggest I should drop him even more, but he was in the Pac-12 title game just a year earlier.

15. James Franklin, Penn State (2023: No. 10)

It seems harsh to drop a coach five spots coming off of a 10-3 season (and 11-2 before that), but Franklin’s program is underachieving. Despite impressive recruiting classes, Penn State has lost seven years in a row to Ohio State, and Franklin is 3-7 against Michigan. He’s a top-15 coach based on his record, but the Nittany Lions have been mostly holding serve.

16. Chris Klieman, Kansas State (2023: 15)

Like Leipold and DeBoer, Kliemam’s lower-level success (four FCS championships at North Dakota State) has translated at the highest level, where K-State followed up its 2022 Big 12 title with a 9-4 campaign and another top-20 finish. The Wildcats have won at least eight games in four of his five seasons.

17. Dave Clawson, Wake Forest (2023: 13)

Wake fell to 4-8 last season, its first season without a bowl trip since Clawson’s second year in 2015. Before that, the Deacons had won at least eight games in four of their previous six seasons, including a remarkable 11-3 mark and ACC division title in 2021. Clawson’s .527 winning percentage is the highest of any Wake Forest coach since 1950.

18. Jeff Brohm, Louisville (2023: NR)

I’m puzzled why I didn’t have Brohm on the list at all last year after winning a division title in his last season at Purdue. In his debut season back at his alma mater, the Cardinals won 10 games for the first time in a decade and reached their first ACC Championship Game. Going back to Purdue, Brohm has gone 19-7 in conference play in his last three seasons.

19. Willie Fritz, Houston (2023: NR)

Fritz has won big in Juco (Blinn), Division II (Central Missouri), FCS (Sam Houston State), the Sun Belt (Georgia Southern) and most recently the AAC, where his Tulane teams went 23-4 in his last two seasons, upsetting USC in the 2022 Cotton Bowl. He reached as many bowls in a six-year span — five — as Tulane had earned in the nearly three decades prior.

20. Jonathan Smith, Michigan State (2023: No. 24)

Michigan State got a good one. Smith took over a dire Oregon State program in 2018, and by the time he left, had produced three consecutive winning records in Pac-12 play, highlighted by a 10-win season in 2022. Smith proved adept at producing powerful rushing attacks and stingy defenses at a developmental program lacking for blue-chippers.

21. Matt Campbell, Iowa State (2023: No. 25)

Iowa State rebounded from a 4-8 mark in 2022 to go 7-6, including 6-3 record in Big 12 play, despite losing several key players prior to the season due to a gambling investigation. It moved Campbell’s conference record to 38-34, making him the first Iowa State coach above .500 since…1925!

22. Mark Stoops, Kentucky (2023: No. 20)

The Wildcats have peeled back somewhat since their 10-3 season in 2021, finishing 7-6 in each of the last two seasons. But it speaks to how much Stoops has lifted expectations in Lexington that those campaigns are seen as disappointments. He’s now led Kentucky to eight consecutive bowl seasons. This at a program that ranks 90th in all-time win percentage (.502).

23. Jedd Fisch, Washington (2023: NR)

Fisch took over an Arizona program at rock bottom and, over three seasons, led the Wildcats from 1-11 to 5-7 to 10-3 and a No. 11 AP ranking. He’s proven adept at recruiting and has a history of developing quarterbacks. I could see him soaring up this list over the next few years, but for now, it’s the best I could justify following his first winning season.

24. Josh Heupel, Tennessee (2023: No. 18)

The Vols slipped back a bit from their breakout 11-2 campaign in Heupel’s second season but still finished 9-4 and a top 20 ranking. Heupel has produced four Top 25 teams in six seasons as a head coach (three at UCF, three at Tennessee). For some perspective: He is a modest 14-10 in SEC play during his time in Knoxville.

25. Dan Lanning, Oregon (2023: NR)

I’m a bit leery of ranking a coach who’s only been in the head role for two seasons, but my guess is Lanning will be in the top 10 before long. A list of his achievements in two season: A 22-5 start; a Pac-12 Championship Game appearance last season; recruiting at the highest level in school history; and, with a little bit of name, image and likeness help, doing as well in the portal as any coach in the country.

Just missed: UTSA’s Jeff Traylor, Indiana’s Curt Cignetti, Texas A&M’s Mike Elko, Army’s Jeff Monken, NC State’s Dave Doeren, TCU’s Sonny Dykes, Missouri’s Eli Drinkwitz.

A note about Dykes: Yes, he reached the national championship game in 2022, but after TCU regressed to 5-7, it’s hard to justify someone who’s averaged 6.3 wins in his other 11 seasons as a head coach.

Requisite note about Kirk Ferentz: I once again disqualified Iowa’s coach for negligently bringing back his son as offensive coordinator last season. He’ll be out of jail this time next year.

(Top photos of Steve Sarkisian, left, Lance Leipold and Jeff Brohm: Nick Tre. Smith, Zac BonDurant and Andy Lyons / Getty Images)