The real top 25 college football coaches in 2025

This list likely will make you mad for its inclusions and for the placement of those inclusions, but I’d like to address one exclusion right off the top.

I don’t have Bill Belichick in my top 25 college football coaches. My co-host Ari Wasserman ranked Belichick No. 21 on his list earlier this week. We’ll be arguing about our lists on our show Thursday at 9:30 a.m. ET on YouTube.

So how can I leave off the man who might be the greatest football — no adjective required — coach? Because I have no idea how good he’ll be as a college football coach. 

Yes, the NIL/open transfer era has made talent acquisition in college more like talent acquisition in the NFL. That’s part of what drew Belichick to the North Carolina job. But one offseason probably isn’t enough for Belichick and general manager Michael Lombardi to suddenly build an ACC title contender.

Perhaps Belichick will coach circles around college lifers. After all, this isn’t Charlie Weis coming into college talking about a decided schematic advantage. This is the guy who let Weis borrow his decided schematic advantage to get the Notre Dame job. But it’s also possible the millionaires who have been coaching the college game for decades also know how to draw up a game plan. 

This could be tougher for Belichick than everyone believes. And until we see him coaching in the college game, it’s impossible to judge him against the people who have coached in college.

1. Kirby Smart, Georgia

The Bulldogs slipped from the dominant perch they occupied following an undefeated national title run in the 2022 season, but only a little. Georgia might have won the 2023 title had there been a 12-team College Football Playoff. The Bulldogs had flaws in 2024, but they still won the SEC despite playing one of the league’s toughest schedules. Smart needs to show his program can produce a dominant offense without Todd Monken (or Brock Bowers or Ladd McConkey), but Smart keeps bringing in elite recruits and plugging holes with quality transfer portal additions. He consistently gives his team the best chance to compete for titles, which probably is the best anyone can hope for in the post-Nick Saban era.

2. Ryan Day, Ohio State

Now that Day has won a national title, can we weigh the Michigan thing a little less? Smart has an Alabama thing, but that seems far less important now that he has two national titles (one did come by beating Alabama). Day is 70-10, and he consistently reloads his roster to keep it one of the most talented in the country. He has to replace both coordinators this offseason, but he has made coordinator changes before. He still needs to get over the Michigan hump, but if he keeps his team competing for national titles most seasons, he’ll stay this high on the list.

3. Dabo Swinney, Clemson

Swinney kept telling us his reluctance to use the transfer portal had less to do with a philosophical opposition than a financial issue. Clemson recruits and develops well, and it was tough for Clemson to afford players in the portal who could actually help the Tigers and whose NIL deals wouldn’t upset the payscale of the players Clemson retained. Now that revenue sharing is on the horizon, the budget is bigger. And lo and behold, Clemson is using the portal some. That gives me confidence that Swinney hasn’t completely forgotten how to be the guy who won two national titles and had no qualms about going toe-to-toe with Nick Saban. I had worried Swinney had allowed the program to become to insular, but the decision to fire defensive coordinator Wes Goodwin and bring in Tom Allen — who isn’t from anywhere near Swinney’s tree — means Swinney isn’t afraid of some new ideas. This feels like the setup for a big comeback.

4. Steve Sarkisian, Texas

I like to incorporate degree-of-difficulty into these rankings, and I’m not sure how many appreciate the difficulty of what Sarkisian has done the past few years. It’s easy to look at the Longhorns’ finances and assume anyone can win in Austin, but recent history tells us it’s quite difficult to win consistently there. Sark has won at a high level and reinvigorated Texas a factory for future NFL players. That simply wasn’t happening in the decade-plus prior to his arrival.

5. Marcus Freeman, Notre Dame

Freeman has accomplished a lot in a short time. He took a program that Brian Kelly had winning consistently and improved roster depth while keeping the always-productive offensive line factory humming even after the departure of position coach Harry Heistand. Earning the chance to coach four College Football Playoff games only deepened Freeman’s experience level. He’s only been a head coach for three seasons. Imagine what he’ll be after 10.

6. Dan Lanning, Oregon

Lanning is building Oregon exactly how a national title program should be built. Like his former boss Kirby Smart at the end of the last decade, Lanning just needs to break through. He overcame the in-season boogeyman in 2024 when he beat Ohio State. He won a conference title game. Now he needs to overcome the final hurdle of having his team ready for the CFP. It should be there fairly frequently, so he’ll get reps.

7. James Franklin, Penn State

It’s incredibly difficult to keep a program as consistently good as Franklin has kept Penn State these past 10 years. But the frustration — more from his own fan base — is that the line has been fairly flat. To move up this list, Franklin needs to beat the teams coached by the guys above him on the list.

8. Brian Kelly, LSU

Kelly will either move up this list next year or draw the ire of LSU fans. This is less a commentary on Kelly than on the expectations of the job. When the last three people who had it won national titles, the expectation is to win a national title at some point. Kelly’s history keeps him high on this list. He has been good but not spectacular at LSU. He’s won 10, 10 and nine games, which is excellent at most places. But LSU demands at least occasional truly special seasons. And the fear is that Kelly may already have missed one in 2023 when he wasted a Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback (Jayden Daniels) and two first-round receivers (Malik Nabors and Brian Thomas Jr.) by fielding perhaps the worst defense in LSU history. Kelly attacked the transfer portal with more gusto this offseason, so perhaps this is the year he gets the Tigers to the CFP.

9. Kalen DeBoer, Alabama

DeBoer underperformed in year one at Alabama, but the rest of his resume is pretty sterling. The hope is a reunion with offensive coordinator Brian Grubb — who spent 2024 with the Seattle Seahawks — returns DeBoer to the level he reached at Washington, where he always seemed to have the correct answer no matter what the game threw at him. It’s possible the job may be too big for him, but one season is too small a sample size to determine that.

10. Lane Kiffin, Ole Miss

Last season landed with a thud when the Rebels lost a shocker at Florida and missed the CFP, but Kiffin has raised the floor of the program in a way that seemed impossible 15 years ago. He has navigated the new world of college sports as well as anyone, and he has earned the confidence that he can handle the roster rebuild that comes after an excellent group of veterans moves on to the NFL.

11. Josh Heupel, Tennessee

Heupel has done so well in Knoxville that it’s easy to forget the situation he inherited. Players were pouring into the portal following the firing of Jeremy Pruitt. We thought 2024 or 2025 might be a reasonable time to expect Tennessee to be back to respectability. Instead, Heupel led the Volunteers to 11 wins in year two and a CFP berth in year four. After more than a decade of wandering, Tennessee’s (reasonable) expectation is to be among the best teams in the sport. That’s because of Heupel. 

12. Curt Cignetti, Indiana

Google him. He wins. Cignetti knew he’d be an excellent head coach even when no one else did. So he went from Division II Indiana University of Pennsylvania to FCS Elon to FCS-then-FBS James Madison before landing in the Big Ten at Indiana. Is it fair to expect another 11-win season right away? Probably not. Should we expect the Hoosiers to stay good with Cignetti there? Absolutely.

13. Bret Bielema, Illinois

I wondered before last season how Bielema would adjust to the end of the Big Ten West. Would a style built to compete in a meh division translate to a league no longer divided? It worked just fine, and now Bielema brings back most of his best players from last year. The build took longer at Illinois because Bielema didn’t get a clean handoff like he did from Barry Alvarez at Wisconsin, but the Illini look capable of being very similar to Bielema’s Wisconsin teams. The question is whether they can have that kind of success in a much more competitive Big Ten.

14. Kyle Whittingham, Utah

No coach navigated a move from a Group of 5 conference to a power league like Whittingham. Utah was one of the best Mountain West programs. Then it took a few years, but Whittingham made the Utes one of the best Pac-12 programs. The Utes were bad last year thanks to some terrible quarterback injury luck, but history says they’ll bounce back and be competitive in year two in the Big 12. 

15. Matt Campbell, Iowa State

I wasn’t being hyperbolic when I wrote that Campbell is the type of college coach NFL teams SHOULD consider. He’s operated his entire tenure in Ames with a talent deficit and still managed to go 64-51. Simply surpassing .500 in a season at Iowa State was considered a massive achievement before, and Campbell has done it seven of his nine seasons.  After going 11-3 in 2024, the Cyclones look capable of competing for the Big 12 title again in 2025. 

16. Lance Leipold, Kansas

Leipold already was one of the nation’s great coaches because of his Division III dominance at Wisconsin-Whitewater, but what he did at Kansas is nothing short of a miracle. He took the absolute worst program in the power conferences — in a situation where he was hired on the final day of spring practice in 2021 — and made it competitive. Did the Jayhawks have the season they wanted last year? No. But only because they lost close games early. The days of having a vastly inferior roster and getting blown out are over. Kansas isn’t a punchline anymore, and that’s because of an incredible coaching job.

17. Sherrone Moore, Michigan

I suspect Moore will be much higher on this list next year. I’ve made clear that I believe Michigan’s offensive struggles last year were due to the timing of Jim Harbaugh’s exit, but Moore was the previous offensive coordinator and the offense was pretty awful as the Wolverines lost five games. Still, the way Moore galvanized his team to beat Ohio State and then took a depleted roster to Tampa and beat a mostly intact Alabama suggests he can create a culture that will win big when it has the necessary personnel. Now that Moore has had a full recruiting cycle and winter portal cycle, he should have that.

18. Lincoln Riley, USC

Four years ago, I assumed Riley would sit atop these lists for a decade or more. He was so young and so dominant at Oklahoma. The questionable defenses were forgivable because he was pumping out Heisman Trophy contenders at quarterback. But USC has gotten worse each season since he got there. The hiring of D’Anton Lynn at defensive coordinator seems to have improved that side of the ball, but Riley still doesn’t seem capable of recruiting the way Smart or Day do, and that’s still required to win national titles. Most recently, he’s made moves to revamp USC’s player acquisition operation. So perhaps he’s learning. He’s still only 41, so I’m not ready to give up in him yet. Another 6-6 season might change that, though.

19. Chris Klieman, Kansas State

Klieman was dominant at North Dakota State, and he has proven to be the ideal successor to Bill Snyder for the current era of college football. He’s already won a Big 12 title (in 2022), and the Wildcats should be competitive in the league as long as he’s there.

20. Kenny Dillingham, Arizona State

Has the youngest coach on this list done enough to be here? Absolutely. Dillingham inherited an absolute mess from the wreckage of the Herm Edwards era and built a conference champ by year two. Dillingham understands what the advantages and disadvantages of his program are, and he knows how to lean into the former and minimize the latter. Arizona State isn’t an easy job, but Dillingham has made it look easy so far.

21. Deion Sanders, Colorado

I think Ari got a little too enthusiastic ranking Coach Prime in the top 10, but I also disagree with those who would say he only had success at Colorado because of son Shedeuer and Travis Hunter. Sanders had both those players in 2023, and the Buffaloes struggled. The growth of the team from 2023 to 2024 is one reason why Sanders is on this list. The other is that his ability to lure elite players to a place that hasn’t gotten many this century is the other. That’s not a crutch. That’s a superpower. And if Sanders can keep winning with a new set of players, then I may have him as high as Ari does in the coming years.

22. Mario Cristobal, Miami

Cristobal will always have a good offensive line, and that guarantees a pretty high floor for any program he coaches. Now he has to figure out how to move his teams into elite territory. Oregon and Miami have been willing during Cristobal’s tenures to provide the resources necessary to compete for national titles, and Cristobal’s teams have yet to truly get in the mix. His challenge is to take the next step.

23. Kirk Ferentz, Iowa

Ferentz probably should be higher on this list because he keeps turning in perennial overachievers at a place where it should be very difficult to win. He’s not higher because sometimes it feels he’s the reason for the ceiling instead of the circumstances. His stubborn refusal to accept that his son wasn’t a good offensive coordinator cost the program wins, and that didn’t get fixed until his athletic director made him fix it. Ferentz is a first-ballot hall of fame coach, but the tough part is he could have been even better if he hadn’t gotten in his own way.

24. Jeff Brohm, Louisville

The guy took Purdue to the Big Ten title game. That fact alone probably should guarantee Brohm placement on these lists as long as he works. He’s won 19 games in two seasons at Louisville. The Cardinals have the infrastructure to compete year-in and year-out in the ACC. Brohm should make them capable of doing that.

25. Eli Drinkwitz, Missouri

I spent about five years lamenting that we didn’t appreciate Gary Pinkel enough. Missouri isn’t an easy place to win — especially the SEC version of Missouri. But Drinkwitz has made the Tigers competitive in the same way Pinkel did. And he’s done it not just on the field. He’s worked pretty tirelessly to make sure Missouri has every edge it can get in the NIL space as well. 

Just missed (alphabetical): Spencer Danielson, Boise State; Mike Elko, Texas A&M; Mike Gundy, Oklahoma State; G.J. Kinne, Texas State; Jeff Monken, Army; Matt Rhule, Nebraska; Jon Sumrall, Tulane