Ranking The Top Five Active Head Coaches In College Football After Nick Saban's Retirement (2024)

Justin's ranking of the top five active coaches in college football. Which head coach will top the list of the sport's best head coaches going into 2024?

Nick Saban retired earlier in January, clearing the way for someone else to claim the title of the best coach in college football. Saban was arguably the greatest college coach of all time, winning seven national championships across his time at LSU and Alabama.

With Saban gone, it's time for a new name to top the list, though. Who will it be?

Below are the top five current head coaches in college football. Do you agree or disagree with our list? Let us know over on Twitter/X: @RotoBaller

5. Lincoln Riley - USC

Lincoln Riley's stock dropped a bit this year as he had his worst season as a college head coach. USC was ranked sixth in the AP preseason poll and started the season 6-0, but things just fell apart after that, with the team going 2-5 the rest of the way.

It's also a testament to Riley's coaching skill that his worst season ever was an 8-5 campaign. His overall college coaching record currently stands at 74-18 across seven seasons at Oklahoma and USC.

Riley's done a great job developing quarterbacks over his time in the college ranks, coaching Baker Mayfield, Kyler Murray, Jalen Hurts, and Caleb Williams. He was the 2018 Big 12 Coach of the Year. While 2023 was a downturn for Riley, the future's still bright for one of college football's top coaches.

4. Brian Kelly - LSU

Brian Kelly left Notre Dame after an 11-1 season in 2021 to take the LSU job. At the time, LSU was coming off a 6-7 season, the program's first year under .500 since 1999. Kelly leaving the Fighting Irish for the Tigers was an interesting move.

If there's one thing Brian Kelly can do, it's win football games. LSU improved to 10-4 in Kelly's first season, then went 10-3 in his second campaign with the Tigers. The wins extended his streak of 10-plus win seasons to seven. After a poor 2016 campaign that saw the Irish go 4-8, Kelly righted the ship in South Bend.

Overall, Kelly got a 186-69 record over his 20 seasons at Central Michigan, Cincinnati, Notre Dame, and LSU. Curiously, the worst of those stops for him was the smallest school, CMU, where he went 19-16 over three seasons.

3. Dabo Swinney - Clemson

It's hard to really get a sense of what Dabo Swinney's stock is right now, but some middling recent performance doesn't take away from the fact that he built Clemson into a winning program.

Swinney took over Clemson in 2008. After three so-so seasons, he struck gold in 2011, leading the Tigers to 10 wins. From there, he led them on a streak of double-digit win seasons that didn't end until 2023, when the Tigers went 9-4.

Before Swinney took over Clemson, the program hadn't won double-digit games since 1990. It wasn't a bad program under coaches like Tommy West and Tommy Bowden, but it wasn't a program that could contend for national titles. With Swinney at the helm, Clemson became that, winning a pair of College Football Playoffs, the program's first national titles since 1981.

Swinney has coached 12 consensus All-Americans at Clemson and ranks 18th all-time in career win percentage, winning 79.8% of his games. He ranks sixth in career bowl wins with 12.

2. Kirby Smart - Georgia

Maybe putting Kirby Smart second on this list is a hot take. On paper, he seems like the natural successor to Nick Saban as the top head coach in the college game. In eight seasons at Georgia, Smart's won two national titles and has lost just 16 games. Five of those came in his first season with the Bulldogs.

Over the last seven seasons, Smart's worst season was an 11-3 campaign in 2018 that ended with a Sugar Bowl loss, which also happens to be the only bowl game that Smart has lost outside of the 2017 CPF final loss to Alabama. He's coached 10 consensus All-Americans and has been named SEC Coach of the Year three times, most recently in 2022.

Smart's got a great argument for the top spot here, but there's one thing that gives me pause: he hasn't really done this anywhere but Georgia. He spent a large chunk of his career as an assistant before finally getting this first head coaching job. I'm sure he'd be successful with fewer resources somewhere else, but in a battle that's so close here, it's worth mentioning. Saban did it in multiple places. Could Smart?

1. Jim Harbaugh - Michigan

Call it recency bias if you want, but Jim Harbaugh delivering a championship to the Michigan Wolverines has given him the top spot on this list.

Harbaugh's coaching tenure got off to a rocky start at Stanford in 2007, but by 2011 he had the Cardinal going 12-1 and winning the Orange Bowl. That kind of success at Stanford was fairly unprecedented at the time. While David Shaw maintained that strong run after Harbaugh left, the Cardinal hadn't won double-digit games before Harbaugh since 1992. He turned a flailing program around before heading to the NFL to coach the 49ers.

Not that NFL success necessarily matters when ranking college coaches, but in four years with the Niners, Harbaugh won 11 or more games three times and took the team to the Super Bowl once. Then, he was back to college, taking over Michigan in 2015.

While Harbaugh struggled in bowl games since taking over the Wolverines, he's led the team to three straight double-digit win seasons and has made beating Ohio State the expected result after years of Michigan playing little brother to the Buckeyes. He capped it all off with a national title in 2023, the first title for Michigan since 1997.

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