We assumed there wouldn’t be much disagreement on who is the best coach in college football when we asked our reporters to rate the top ten in the sportand there wasn’t. Our ten voters all agreed that Kirby Smart of Georgia, whose Bulldogs have gone 42-2 in the last three seasons, should win.
However, there was hardly any agreement after that.
The only other coach to appear on every ballot was Kalen DeBoer, the new head coach of Alabama, whose ranks varied from second to tenth.
Two coaches were listed on nine ballots: Mike Norvell of Florida State and Kyle Whittingham of Utah, whose rankings included two second places and two ninth places, and three second places and two ninth places, respectively.
Next is Dabo Swinney of Clemson, who was absent from four votes overall and garnered four votes in second place.
Here are the full standings, with points allocated based on our reporters’ votes (10 points for first place, nine for second place, and so on down to one point for 10th place).
Now that Nick Saban has retired, Smart is without a doubt the best college football coach. In 2021 and 2022, he led Georgia, his alma mater, to consecutive national titles. In 2017, he competed for a third national title. Before falling to Alabama in the SEC title game of the previous season, the Bulldogs had won 29 straight games, a record in the SEC. Smart has established a formidable system for identifying, attracting, and nurturing exceptional players during his eight years at Georgia. He has generated fifteen first-round selections out of 55 NFL draft picks, and he may have ten more players taken in the next draft.
Over the last five seasons, Smart has not lost to any active head coach; his only defeats have come at the hands of Saban (3), Dan Mullen at Florida, Ed Orgeron at LSU, and Will Muschamp at South Carolina. What distinguishes him is his consistency. Georgia is the only team in the nation to finish in the top 7 in the final AP poll each year after the Bulldogs finished 8-5 in his first season (2016). In six of those seven seasons, Smart’s Bulldogs have competed for and/or won a national championship or an SEC championship. — Chris Low
Following a five-year tenure as an assistant at his alma mater, tiny Sioux Falls, DeBoer led the NAIA Cougars to three national titles and a 67-3 record. After that, DeBoer started his ascent through the ranks of assistant coaches, leading each institution he worked at to almost unprecedented levels of success, until he was appointed head coach at Fresno State. After a modest 12-6 season, he was hired by Washington, where he turned around a club that had won four games in 2021 into one that went 25-3 in the following two seasons, earning a spot in the national championship game this past season.DeBoer only achieves victory. And he is now succeeding the late great Nick Saban, who had high expectations for himself and others. — Bonagura Kyle
Since Whittingham joined the team in 1994 as the defensive line coach, Utah has been his only home. After Urban Meyer left shortly before the 2004 season ended, he was promoted to head coach and defensive coordinator the following year.
Ever since Utah moved from the Mountain West to the Pac-12, Whittingham has been a model of consistency, ending with only two losing seasons in 19 years. In 2008, he led the Utes to an undefeated season, two Pac-12 championships, and eight top-25 AP poll rankings—six of which came in the last ten years. all at a school without the facilities and programs of the other coaches on this list. — Bonagura
