A straightforward question, but one that generated a wide range of opinions.
In asking our reporters for their top 10, we left the parameters open, allowing them to weigh the factors they thought were important — from past accomplishments to potential future success — however they saw fit.
No matter how you slice it, Kirby Smart of Georgia is the current standard-bearer. No surprise there. But after that, things got interesting.
With points assigned based on our reporters’ votes (10 points for first place, nine for second place and down to one point for 10th place), here are the complete rankings.
1. Kirby Smart, Georgia (100 points) 2. Kalen DeBoer, Alabama (62) 3. Kyle Whittingham, Utah (56) 4. Dabo Swinney, Clemson (50) 5. Mike Norvell, Florida State (49) 6. Dan Lanning, Oregon (37) 7. Steve Sarkisian, Texas (35) 8. Lane Kiffin, Ole Miss (29) 9. Lance Leipold, Kansas (28) 10. Ryan Day, Ohio State (27)
Also receiving votes: Brian Kelly, LSU (23); Lincoln Riley, USC (20); Kirk Ferentz, Iowa (7); Luke Fickell, Wisconsin (7); Eliah Drinkwitz, Missouri (6); Mack Brown, North Carolina (3); Mike Gundy, Oklahoma State (3); Jonathan Smith, Michigan State (3); Deion Sanders, Colorado (2); Curt Cignetti, Indiana (1); Chris Kleiman, Kansas State (1); Jon Sumrall, Tulane (1)
Is DeBoer, with just two years at a power conference school, worthy of being No. 2? Is Swinney, who has a stellar track record at Clemson but has slipped the past few years, still among the top four coaches in the country? Ohio State’s Day, with a 56-8 career record, is No. 10? LSU’s Kelly and USC’s Riley don’t even crack the top 10?
We needed answers, so we asked some of our voters about which result surprised them the most, and to defend some of their selections that differed from those of their colleagues.
What ranking surprised you the most?
Chris Low: Ryan Day might not be an obvious top-five selection, but he’s at least somewhere in the vicinity. To see him barely slide into these rankings at No. 10 was extremely surprising. Yes, he has lost to rival Michigan three straight years, but he’s not the first elite coach to have a rough stretch against a rival. Remember, Smart was 1-5 against Nick Saban.
Day held things together for Ohio State in 2018 as acting head coach when Urban Meyer was suspended. Since being promoted to replace Meyer in 2019, Day has won two Big Ten championships and posted 11-plus victories every year except the 2020 COVID season. His Buckeyes lost a heartbreaker to eventual national champion Georgia in the 2022 playoff. There are multiple coaches ranked ahead of Day who haven’t accomplished nearly what he has or matched his consistency in five seasons as Ohio State’s coach.
Adam Rittenberg: People might not like Brian Kelly personally, but the facts overwhelmingly show that he’s a top 10 coach. He twice took Notre Dame to the four-team College Football Playoff, went 34-6 at Cincinnati with an undefeated season, won the SEC West in his first year at LSU, has 13 finishes in the AP top 20 and owns two Division II national titles. I like some of the young coaches in this top 10, but they haven’t accomplished a fraction of what BK has in his career.
David Hale: Dan Lanning seems like a fine coach. He commanded an elite defense en route to a national title as Georgia’s defensive coordinator in 2021 and has been an exceptional 22-5 in two seasons as Oregon’s head man. What’s to argue with? Well, two years and no conference titles is a bit of a thin résumé for the No. 6 coach in the country, isn’t it? His team was torched by Georgia in 2022, lost a rivalry game to Oregon State that same year, and has been unable to topple Washington in conference. The Ducks’ most impressive win outside the Pac-12 was a 1-point win over a shorthanded North Carolina in the 2022 bowl game.
Indeed, here’s the list of Lanning’s wins over teams that ended the year ranked in the AP top 25: 2022 Utah (by 3), 2022 UCLA and 2023 Liberty. Again, no knock on Lanning, who would been an upgrade at nearly every program in the country. But No. 6? I need to see a bit more before we start putting him into the same conversations with Swinney, Whittingham and Norvell.
Harry Lyles Jr.: Dabo Swinney at No. 4 feels high to me, given his unwillingness to adjust to today’s game. I think he’s a great coach, and what he has done at Clemson is legendary work. They need to build a big statue of him on that campus at some point. But if you aren’t willing to do all the necessary things to compete at the highest level of the game, you can’t be top five. There’s a great argument you can’t be top 10 either, especially when one considers what those below Swinney have done and are doing.
Bill Connelly: Honestly, Kalen DeBoer at No. 2 is neither surprising nor undeserved. He has been great at basically every football job he has ever had. But it’s pretty funny to think about the second-best coach in college football inheriting a job in which he has almost no chance of matching his predecessor’s accomplishments. The weight of expectation will make DeBoer’s tenure in Tuscaloosa absolutely fascinating to follow.
Kyle Bonagura: The criteria for selection was up for interpretation, but I’m having a hard time imagining how Deion Sanders received any votes unless it was a light-hearted troll attempt with the protection of anonymity. In Sanders’ debut season, Colorado went 1-8 in the Pac-12 and finished in last place.
Defend your vote
Kyle Whittingham at No. 2
How’s this for sustained excellence? Whittingham earned national coach of the year honors in 2008 (13-0; beat Alabama in the Sugar Bowl) and 2019 (11-3; in CFP contention until the Pac-12 title game). He has guided the Utes to top-20 finishes in three decades and built a program that was the Pac-12’s most consistent over the past six years. To have that level of success at a place without the resources of the programs in the sport’s upper echelon is beyond impressive. It’s fair to wonder what heights he might have reached if he was blessed with some of the advantages of the blue-blood schools. — Bonagura
Dan Lanning at No. 3
When I made my list, I didn’t just look at what coaches had done in the past. I considered who I would want coaching my team in the modern landscape, and everything that comes along with it. That’s why my No. 3 coach was Lanning, who had one of the most fun teams to watch last year.
I think Lanning’s path to being a head coach is significant. He has seen how two of the best coaches — Nick Saban and Kirby Smart — do it, and he was the coordinator for some of the best defenses we’ve ever seen at Georgia. Now, he has Oregon in great position to win the Big Ten in its first year in the conference. Just as important, it seems as if he’s made Eugene a premiere destination not just for recruits, but for transfers as well. We’re also talking about someone who may have been Alabama’s first choice to replace Saban. I think Lanning would have ranked higher had he taken that job, based on how high we have Kalen DeBoer (whose ranking is fine by me). — Lyles
Brian Kelly at No. 3
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Maybe it’s just me, but winning — and doing so at every level over three decades — counts for something. Kelly won two Division II national championships at Grand Valley State, won two Big East titles at Cincinnati, and took Notre Dame to a BCS national championship game and two more CFP appearances. Most recently, he guided LSU to the 2022 SEC championship game in his first season in Baton Rouge.
Kelly has also proven he can turn around downtrodden programs quickly. (See Central Michigan and Cincinnati.) Even Notre Dame had not won more than seven games in the three seasons prior to Kelly’s arrival in 2010. So anybody who didn’t have Kelly in their top 10 either hasn’t been paying attention, doesn’t particularly like him or is too young to appreciate the difficulty of coaching at a high level over a long period of time. I’ll take proven substance over flash every time. — Low
Lincoln Riley at No. 5
Riley has underwhelmed a bit at USC, and it’s fair to question whether he will figure out the defensive piece of a championship equation. But if we’re putting several offense-centric coaches in the top 10 — DeBoer, Norvell, Lanning, Sarkisian, Kiffin — why leave off the guy with three Heisman Trophy-winning quarterbacks and a runner-up in Jalen Hurts? Oklahoma led the FBS in scoring (43.7 PPG) and offense (533 YPG) during Riley’s time as coach and offensive coordinator. USC is tied for the national lead in scoring average (41.6 PPG) and ranks second in passing offense (334.3 YPG) during Riley’s tenure. How is he not in the top 10 again? — Rittenberg
Dabo Swinney at No. 3
Well, the shine’s off Swinney, it would seem. After two national titles and six straight playoff appearances, Clemson has reversed course and, in the process, sullied Swinney’s reputation as a miracle worker. Indeed, it’s been a dismal three years in which Clemson is — checks notes — 30-10 with an ACC title and the eighth-best record among power conference programs in that span.
What? Yeah, that’s how great Swinney has been. The standard is so unbelievably high that even a stretch in which only a small handful of teams have been better is considered a failure. Yes, Swinney has kept some of the most recent shifts in the sport’s landscape at arm’s length, but despite the criticism and, yes, the missed playoffs, he has still churned out NFL talent, won a bunch of games and positioned Clemson, once again, to win the ACC and return to the new, expanded postseason. — Hale
Swinney out of the top 10
It all depends on the statute of limitations, right? If we’re judging coaches by their résumés, Swinney should be second on the list at worst. It’s hard to beat two national titles and seven ACC championships. But while he remains a very good head coach, it’s extremely difficult to make the case that he has been anywhere close to one of college football’s 10 best over the past three years. Clemson has finished 14th, 13th and 20th in the past three final AP polls and has retreated from national title contention to one conference title in three seasons and wins in the Cheez-It and Gator Bowls.
Swinney’s refusal to adapt to the evolution in roster management, and his insistence on continuing to build through high school recruiting, is endearing in a way, but it has made Clemson far less nimble than other top programs when it comes to plugging holes from year to year. And right now, it appears that Clemson is merely a top-15 or top-20 program. Most still aspire to that, but it’s an unquestionable letdown for a program that once made six straight CFP appearances. Make no mistake: If we had ranked 15 coaches, I would have had Swinney on the list. But it has been a minute since he was a top-10 coach. — Connelly
Ryan Day out of the top 10
Considering my top 10 included Lance Leipold, Kyle Whittingham and Curt Cignetti, it’s pretty clear I have a thing for the coaches who create big things from harder jobs. Day might have thrived at Kansas, Utah or James Madison too, but all we know is that he inherited a team that had averaged 11.3 wins per year over the previous 12 seasons (and 12.2 over the previous six) and has, in four full seasons, averaged 11.5.
Not just anyone could do that, and Day is clearly a very good head coach. But simply winning a lot of games at Ohio State doesn’t make you one of the 10 best. — Connelly
Kalen DeBoer at No. 10
Perhaps I’m a pessimist. Or, at least, someone who’s seen too many can’t-miss hires miss spectacularly (Jimbo Fisher, Scott Frost, Chip Kelly, Tom Herman, etc., etc.). Yes, DeBoer is a tremendous coach who has won everywhere he’s been at nearly every level of college football. He had Washington a few plays away from a national title last year. He’s great. But … he has coached two years at a power conference school, and now he’s moving to a program where the standard is, shall we say, a tad lofty.
He has never had to recruit in the SEC. He has never been under the microscope that comes with being the Alabama head coach. He has never had to showcase his offense against the type of physically dominant opposition he’ll see nearly weekly in 2024. And, of course, he has never had to follow a legend, and that alone is an incredibly tall task. Should we be surprised if it all works out? Of course not! Again, DeBoer is very good. But the names I have ahead of him — Smart, Swinney, Whittingham, Norvell, Kiffin — have done it longer, are in more stable positions and have enjoyed great success in their own rights. — Hale
WASHINGTON — Alex Ovechkin scored on a laser of a shot off a faceoff, Logan Thompson made some spectacular saves among his 28, and the Washington Capitals beat the Montreal Canadiens 4-1 in Game 5 of their first-round series Wednesday night to advance in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
It’s the Capitals’ first series win since capturing the Stanley Cup in 2018, and they clinched at home for the first time since 2015. They face the Carolina Hurricanes in the second round with a spot in the Eastern Conference finals at stake.
Ovechkin led the way with his power-play goal 11 minutes in, setting off chants of “Ovi! Ovi!” from the juiced-up crowd. Pierre-Luc Dubois delivered a perfect pass to Jakob Chychrun, who beat Jakub Dobes just over two minutes later. Tom Wilson provided a valuable insurance goal late in the second period.
Fans expressed their appreciation for Thompson with chants of “LT! LT!” when he turned aside Kaiden Guhle on a 3-on-1 rush and with under two minutes left when he flashed his glove to rob Nick Suzuki with Dobes pulled for an extra attacker. Brandon Duhaime sealed it with an empty-netter with 25.6 seconds left.
Thompson was at his best at the start, when the Canadiens came out with the desperation expected from a team facing elimination, and in the third period, when they pressed and tilted the ice toward him. Much like the final minutes of Game 2, Washington’s No. 1 goaltender kept the puck out of the net in crucial situations to pave the way to a victory — sometimes getting his masked head in the way of shots.
The Capitals asserted their dominance in the East’s 1 versus 8 series a year after getting swept as the underdog in it by the New York Rangers. Banged up and without top goalie Sam Montembeault and scoring winger Patrik Laine, the Canadiens got a goal from Emil Heineman but ultimately ran out of steam after going on a tear down the stretch late in the regular season to be the last team to qualify for the playoffs.
Carolina and Washington will meet in the playoffs for the first time since 2019. The Hurricanes won that series in seven games on a goal in double overtime.
TAMPA, Fla. — Eetu Luostarinen had a goal and three assists to lead the Panthers to a 6-3 Game 5 victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning as Florida moved into the second round of the Eastern Conference playoffs.
The Panthers will play the winner of the Maple Leafs–Senators series, which Toronto currently leads 3-2.
Nick Paul, Gage Goncalves and Jake Guentzel scored for Tampa Bay. Andrei Vasilevskiy finished with 25 saves. Since advancing to three consecutive Stanley Cup Final appearances from 2020-22, the Lightning have lost in the first round for the past three seasons. Tampa Bay fell to 1-9 in the past 10 home playoff games.
Bennett scored with 4:47 left in the second period just six seconds after he came out of the penalty box, finishing off a 2-on-1 chance and beating Vasilevskiy to the far post on the stick side to lift the Panthers to a 4-3 lead. The Panthers have now won 22 straight playoff games when leading after two periods.
Tampa Bay scored the opening goal for the first time in the series when Goncalves scored 2:33 into the game. But Florida answered with a power-play goal from Verhaeghe at 5:21 and Lundell redirected a Brad Marchand pass at 10:06.
Paul pulled the Lightning even at 12:16 of the first with his second goal of the series.
Barkov tipped a Gustav Forsling shot 52 seconds into the second to put Florida back in front before Guentzel snapped an 0-for-16 power play slump for Tampa Bay at 9:57.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
PITTSBURGH — An unidentified male fan fell from the 21-foot Clemente Wall in right field at PNC Park during Wednesday night’s game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and Chicago Cubs.
Right after Andrew McCutchen hit a two-run double in the seventh inning to put the Pirates ahead 4-3, players began waving frantically for medical personnel and pointing to the man, who had fallen onto the warning track.
The fan was tended to for approximately five minutes by members of both the Pirates’ and Cubs’ training staffs as well as PNC personnel before being removed from the field on a cart.
The team issued a statement shortly after the game ended, saying the man was transported to Allegheny General Hospital. No further details were given.
Pirates manager Derek Shelton and Cubs manager Craig Counsell both alerted the umpire crew of the situation immediately after the play.
“Even though it’s 350 feet away or whatever it is, I mean the fact of how it went down and then laying motionless while the play is going on, I mean Craig saw it, I saw it. We both got out there,” Shelton said. “I think the umpires saw it because of the way it kicked. It’s extremely unfortunate. That’s an understatement.”
Players from both teams could be seen praying, and McCutchen held a cross that hung from his neck while the fan was taken off the field. The game was paused for several minutes while the man was tended to but there was no official stoppage in play.
Fans have died from steep falls at baseball stadiums.
In 2015, Atlanta Braves season-ticket holder Gregory K. Murrey flipped over guard rails from the upper deck at Turner Field. That was four years after Shannon Stone, a firefighter attending a game with his 6-year-old son, fell about 20 feet after reaching out for a foul ball tossed into the stands at the Texas Rangers‘ former stadium.
Both incidents prompted scrutiny over the height of guard rails at stadiums. The Rangers raised theirs, and the Braves settled a lawsuit with Murrey’s family.
A spectator at a 2022 NFL game at Pittsburgh’s Acrisure Stadium died after a fall on an escalator.
