Only three active college football coaches have won a national championship. Each member of that championship trio is ranked within the top three of our USA TODAY rankings of the nation's top 25 coaches.
The rest of the top 10 is filled with coaches who could conceivably capture a national championship one day, based on their track record of winning and their presence at a program with enough clout to thrive.
The Big Ten leads all conferences with eight coaches ranked in our top 25, followed by the SEC's seven. Those two conferences account for nine of the coaches ranked within our top 10.
These rankings reflect an aggregate of the ballots of five USA TODAY sportswriters who each voted for their top 25.
Here's our USA TODAY top 25 college football coaches:
If you want to know how good a coach is, consider what constitutes his down season. Smart's 11-3 record last season year, complete with an SEC championship and a College Football Playoff berth, counts as his version of a down season. He raised Georgia's bar to annual expectations of a national championship. Smart remains an elite recruiter and developer, on top of being an excellent motivator. He's built Georgia to last.
While he has come under fire for the Buckeyes losing four in a row against Michigan, Day enters his seventh year as the full-time coach with an overall record of 70-10 and a 46-5 mark in Big Ten play. One of those wins, against Notre Dame in January for the national title, has helped launch Day into the elite tier of college coaches. If he maintains this pace through his 10th year, Day's winning percentage of 87.5% would rank second all-time among FBS coaches, trailing Notre Dame's Knute Rockne.
COACHES RANKINGS: SEC | Big Ten | Big 12 | ACC
LOOKING AHEAD: Big Ten leads too-early Top 25 after spring
Swinney will not go quietly from his perch atop the ACC. Just when you think he might be slipping in this evolved college football world, he rebounds with another ACC championship. And his roster this season is in better shape. Swinney's aversion to transfers will be a hurdle to his winning a third national championship, but his sign, develop and retain mantra keeps Clemson as the ACC's most consistent force.
Texas is back. No more jokes about that subject. It's true. That's a credit to Sarkisian. He's the rare coach who rivals Smart's recruiting chops, and he's an excellent quarterback developer. Sarkisian's best pivot for Texas, though, was re-instilling the beef and toughness at the line of scrimmage the Longhorns lacked for too many years. Sarkisian has instituted the ingredients necessary for Texas to hunt national titles.
A national championship ring continues to escape Franklin and the Nittany Lions, though last year's team did notch a pair of playoff wins to reach the semifinals. While detractors will focus on what he isn't, Franklin has brought Penn State back to national prominence and crafted a Hall of Fame-worthy résumé. As with Day, a title would force a drastic reevaluation of Franklin's career.
While he's only three seasons into his career as a head coach, the 39-year-old former Georgia assistant has transformed the Ducks back into one of the elite programs in the FBS. After reaching the Fiesta Bowl in the 2023 campaign, last year's team went unbeaten in the regular season and earned the top seed in the playoff bracket before losing in a rematch against the Buckeyes. Lanning is one of the biggest names among the next wave of coaches.
Freeman seems to have cracked the code at Notre Dame after a bit of an uneven start to his time as head coach, though early growing pains were expected after the school promoted the then-35-year-old defensive coordinator late in the 2021 season. After the Irish suffered some head-scratching losses in 2022 and 2023, last year's team lost just once in the regular season before topping Indiana, Georgia and Penn State in the playoff. Freeman's program stands poised to annually compete for the playoff and the national title.
DeBoer's Alabama tenure endured a bumpy debut, but didn't we all expect that replacing Saban would be a unique challenge? DeBoer proved himself a winner at one coaching stop after another, particularly once Year 2 arrives. Pencil him in for at least nine wins annually. He's recruiting well, albeit not at Saban levels. To curry favor from Alabama fans, his team must play with more discipline and consistency.
Kiffin once envied the coaches' statues at Alabama. Now, he says, he's less consumed by the idea of a statue. The twist is, if Kiffin keeps winning like he has been at Ole Miss, he might get that statue after all. Once an unpredictable renegade, Kiffin evolved into a presence of consistency and stability. He's the Rebels' best coach since Johnny Vaught. He keeps crushing the transfer portal and developing good quarterbacks. That's a good formula.
Kelly quietly turned LSU into Quarterback U, with Garrett Nussmeier following Heisman Trophy winner Jayden Daniels. On the downside, he hasn't found the right formula for LSU's defense. Kelly showed a warmer embrace to transfers this offseason That might fix the defense. Kelly remains an indefatigable force for posting at least nine wins. That consistency worked for Notre Dame. LSU will expect more of him, eventually.
It easy to forget where Iowa State was when it hired Campbell. They had three consecutive seasons of at least nine losses and had a history of just one finish in the coaches poll since the 1991 season. In his nine seasons, Campbell has turned the Cyclones from an afterthought to a team that has seven bowl trips in eight seasons. He's the winningest coach in school history with 64 victories and led the school to its first double-digit win total last year. Campbell has been mentioned as a candidate at larger programs, but he stayed made this one of the country's biggest overachievers.
It's was hard to envision the Utes rising to a premier program before Whittingham took the baton from Urban Meyer before the team's 2004 bowl game. Across 20 full seasons, he positioned a program with limited history into a perennial contender for conference titles behind a consistently stingy defense. The highlights include 167 games in Whittingham's tenure with 16 bowl bowl appearances and Pac-12 titles in Utah's final two seasons the league. Whittingham is expected to step down in the coming seasons with assistant Morgan Scalley due to take over the job.
All Cignetti does is win, even at Indiana. Last year's team was the feel-good story of the Power Four after losing just once in the regular season and booking a playoff berth. Whether or not that's sustainable is moot: Cignetti has worked wonders at every stop along the way in a head coaching career that began on the Division II level. He's 130-37 overall across four college stops.
The longest-tenured coach in the FBS and the dean of the Big Ten coaching community continues to stack winning seasons. Iowa has won at least eight games in every non-COVID season since 2015 and has posted a losing record just once since 2006. While his preferred style of play has its detractors, you can't argue with the Hawkeyes' consistent success punching above their weight and annual push for a major bowl.
A old-school approach has helped Klieman led his to teams to a winning record every season but one since he started at North Dakota State in 2014. With Kansas State, the Wildcats are 48-28 in his six seasons with the 2020 campaign impacted by COVID-19 the only year they missed a bowl game. Kansas State still won at least nine games the past three years, including a Big 12 title in 2022.
Brohm makes programs better, whether that's Western Kentucky, Purdue or now Louisville. He'll make sure you're punching at or above your weight. His offenses persistently thrive. Brohm's career arc reflects a gradual, steady upward march. Now that the Louisville native is home coaching the Cardinals, he should settle in for a consistent run of ACC relevance.
If Tennessee didn't hit rock bottom after firing Jeremy Pruitt, amid an NCAA investigation, it at least could reach down and touch the bottom. Then Josh Heupel arrived and pulled the Vols out of peril. He's beaten Alabama twice. He jolted Tennessee's offense to life with his warp-speed system.