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Nick Saban, Kirby Smart and Jim Harbaugh: Breaking down PFF's top head coach rankings

clayton-sayfieby:Clayton Sayfie•04/17/23•

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Jim Harbaugh
(Photo by Lon Horwedel / TheWolverine.com)

Michigan Wolverines football head coach Jim Harbaugh ranks No. 3 on PFF’s ranking of the top 25 college head men, behind Alabama’s Nick Saban and Georgia’s Kirby Smart. Harbaugh is ahead of Clemson’s Dabo Swinney and USC’s Lincoln Riley, who round out the top five.

Anyone would be hard pressed to find a top college head coaches ranking without Saban at the top. He’s won a record seven national championships and finished in the top 10 of the AP poll every season since 2008.

Smart is newer to the conversation, but he took Georgia to another level when hired in 2016. He’s a three-time SEC Coach of the Year who recruits at a football-factory level, just like Saban, under whom he coached at Alabama from 2008-15. The Bulldogs have won the last two national championships and are looking to become the first program to win three straight since Minnesota from 1934-36.

And then there’s Harbaugh. He was sliding further and further down preseason rankings like these from 2018-21, until Michigan reached an inflection point and became the class of the Big Ten and among the nation’s elite. The Wolverines have won two straight Big Ten titles, and join Georgia as the only other team in the last two College Football Playoffs.

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PFF’s Max Chadwick explained why Harbaugh is so high on the list.

“Harbaugh has led Michigan to back-to-back Big Ten championships and College Football Playoff appearances,” the analyst wrote. “Perhaps more importantly to Wolverines fans, they’ve also beaten arch-rival Ohio State twice in a row. Before that, the last time Michigan won the Big Ten was in 2004 and the last time the Wolverines beat the Buckeyes was in 2011.”

Then came an opinion that’s beginning to become more popular in national media circles: that Michigan is a strong contender to win the national championship. The Wolverines bring back most of their 13-1 team from last season and have fewer question marks than most other contenders.

“The next step for Harbaugh is to bring home a national championship to his alma mater,” Chadwick continued. “With one of the best rosters in the country next year, there’s a good chance he’ll do so.”

Harbaugh’s background stretches beyond just what he’s done at Michigan. He’s the only current college coach to take an NFL team to a Super Bowl, having won 49 games in four years with the San Francisco 49ers from 2011-14. He also conducted one of the greatest turnaround jobs in recent memory when at Stanford, taking over a team that went 1-11 the pervious season and leading it to a 12-win season and Orange Bowl victory by Year 4.

Harbaugh ranks above two head coaches who have won national championships — Swinney and Texas A&M’s Jimbo Fisher. That speaks to the belief Chadwick has in the job the Michigan coach has done and the Wolverines’ chances to win college football’s ultimate prize in the near future.

Harbaugh is one of four Big Ten coaches in the top 10 of Chadwick’s rankings, but he’s the clear No. 1 among them. The others are Ohio State’s Ryan Day (No. 7), Wisconsin’s Luke Fickell (No. 9) and Penn State’s James Franklin (No. 10). No other Big Ten coach made the top 25, but it’s important to note Riley and USC will join the conference in 2024, as will UCLA head man Chip Kelly, who slots No. 21.

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