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Brant's Big Ten head coach rankings for 2026. His top 18 coaches ranked from worst to first, including Curt Cignetti, Ryan Day, Dan Lanning, and more.
We are now coming off of three straight seasons where a Big Ten coach brought home his first-ever national title. Jim Harbaugh and Michigan won in 2023, Ryan Day and the Buckeyes brought home the title in 2024, and Curt Cignetti delivered Indiana its first-ever national title in 2025.
Cignetti and Day are the only national title-winning coaches currently in the conference, but the Big Ten is stacked with incredible program builders perusing the sidelines. The five new hires in the conference will bring different levels of experience, and mixing the new names in with the old creates a star-studded cast of coaches.
Here, I rank the Big Ten coaches from worst to first in terms of past success in their current role, with the four newcomers placed based on their past success in previous roles, coupled with projected success in their new role.
18. Luke Fickell, Wisconsin
2025 Record: 4-8 (2-7)
One of the most shocking developments in college football this past season was Wisconsin retaining and extending Luke Fickell. Fickell’s three-year reign at Wisconsin has been an absolute disaster. While he did go 7-6 in year one, his win total has decreased each season, and the Badgers were not a remotely competitive team last season, finishing 4-8.
Fickell has not had luck on his side with quarterback injuries, and Old Dominion transfer Colton Joseph has a huge ask this upcoming season to step in and get the fanbase back on Fickell’s side. Improvement in Madison is imminent, or else Fickell could be out of a job before the end of the season.
17. Mike Locksley, Maryland
2025 Record: 4-8 (1-8)
Mike Locksley is sitting at 37-49 as Maryland’s head coach, a position he has held since 2019. While he did enjoy a solid stretch from 2021 to 2023, where he made and won three bowl games, he has gone 4-8 in each of the last two seasons. Locksley’s seat is very hot entering 2026, and he will need sophomore quarterback Malik Washington to help him keep his job.
16. Barry Odom, Purdue
2025 Record: 2-10 (0-9)
Barry Odom’s first year at Purdue went just as the previous few seasons had gone for the Boilermakers. While he did win his first two games as Purdue’s head coach, they quickly skidded on a 10-game losing streak. Odom will need to win a few Big Ten games this season in order to avoid the hot seat just two seasons into his tenure in West Lafayette.
15. Bob Chesney, UCLA
2025 Record (James Madison): 12-2 (0-1 vs Big Ten)
Bob Chesney is a winner. The new UCLA head coach has an all-time head coaching record of 132-52, albeit at low-level programs. Chesney inherited Curt Cignetti’s James Madison program in 2024, and had enough success over two seasons that he followed Cignetti into the Big Ten. It remains to be seen how the 48-year-old will perform as the head man of the Bruins, but fans should be excited for a new era in 2026.
14. David Braun, Northwestern
2025 Record: 7-6 (4-5)
David Braun has done an excellent job since taking over at Northwestern in 2023 as the interim head coach. Braun has gone 19-19, outperforming expectations in both 2023 and 2025. Northwestern is not an easy place to win at, but he has stepped right in and kept the program that Pat Fitzgerald built humming along. Now with Chip Kelly in town to run the offense and Aidan Chiles transferring in from Michigan State, the sky’s the limit for what Braun can do in 2026.
13. P.J. Fleck, Minnesota
2025 Record: 8-5 (5-4)
One of the longer tenured coaches in the Big Ten, P.J. Fleck is 66-44 as the head coach at Minnesota. He is the epitome of consistency, as the Golden Gophers have made a bowl game every single year outside of his first season and 2020. Not only have they made all these bowl games, but Fleck is 7-0 in bowl games.
Despite consistently getting to seven or eight wins, Fleck has only won double-digit games once in his tenure. It does feel like there is a cap to his success, but is that a bad thing if you are Minnesota?
P.J. Fleck crowd surfed in the locker room after @GopherFootball's upset vs. No. 4 Penn State 🌊 pic.twitter.com/ZR5u4W9zc6
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) November 9, 2019
12. Greg Schiano, Rutgers
2025 Record: 5-7 (2-7)
Ever since joining the Big Ten in 2014, Rutgers has been a bottom-feeder. Their only bowl berth was in 2014, the year they joined the Big Ten, until Greg Schiano got them back to a bowl game in 2021.
The Scarlet Knights will never recruit with the top of the league and therefore will never compete with the top of the league, but what Schiano has done in turning them around from a perennial one or two-win team into a middle-of-the-pack team in the conference cannot go unnoticed. Only through great coaching is what he has done in Piscataway possible.
11. Matt Rhule, Nebraska
2025 Record: 7-6 (4-5)
Matt Rhule has been touted as a program builder at every stop he has made. At Temple and Baylor, year three was always his breakthrough season. Cornhuskers fans were expecting a big jump in 2025, but they finished at 7-6 again while struggling to win big games. Rhule is 19-19 at Nebraska, going just 10-17 in Big Ten play.
While simply making a bowl game in 2024 was a huge feat for Nebraska fans, they are now left wanting more, and it remains to be seen if Rhule will get them there.
10. Jedd Fisch, Washington
2025 Record: 9-4 (5-4)
Jedd Fisch has not been a head coach for long, but has had some success in his time at the helm. He took over as the head coach at Arizona in 2021, and in just his third season, finished 10-3 as the eleventh-ranked team in the nation. After that successful season, he took over at Washington after the departure of Kalen DeBoer to Alabama.
Fisch is 15-11 as the head coach of the Huskies, and took a big step from year one (6-7) to year two (9-4). With quarterback Demond Williams Jr. back for 2026, Fisch has high hopes for the upcoming season.
Jedd Fisch’s opening comments after winning the @LABowlGame. @Dawgman247 pic.twitter.com/q0plsvMECz
— Chris Fetters (@Chris_Fetters) December 14, 2025
9. Pat Fitzgerald, Michigan State
2025: Volunteer at Iowa
The Big Ten West excuse can be brought up again and again, but Northwestern made two Big Ten Championship games under Fitzgerald’s reign from 2006-2022. Fitzgerald finished his tenure at 110-101, an incredibly respectable record at a program that struggles to get talent in the door compared to the rest of the conference.
Fitzgerald may not have been incredibly consistent, but who is at Northwestern? His good seasons were very good, and that is something that Spartan fans have been searching for for years in East Lansing. Fitzgerald is a great hire to reset the tone for Michigan State football.
8. Matt Campbell, Penn State
2025 Record (Iowa State): 8-4 (1-0 vs Big Ten)
Freshly hired at Penn State to replace James Franklin, Matt Campbell is set to make his Big Ten debut after a 10-year tenure at Iowa State. Campbell built the Cyclones into a perennial Big 12 contender after they were historically one of the worst programs in power conference football, but they struggled to take the next step and ever become a national contender. Campbell’s best season at Iowa State was in 2024, which culminated in an 11-3 record and a Pop-Tarts Bowl victory.
That type of season is a disappointment at Penn State. Campbell has stepped into a role where the expectations are at a level he has never reached. He’s proven to be a good program builder, but how far can he take a Nittany Lion fanbase that is yearning for big wins post-Franklin?
7. Lincoln Riley, USC
2025 Record: 9-4 (7-2)
Lincoln Riley was considered the savior of USC football when he infamously left Oklahoma to coach in Southern California in 2022. Fast forward four seasons, and the results have not been as anticipated when Riley took over. He has gone 35-18, with USC finishing in the AP top 25 in just two of the four seasons. The first year in the Big Ten was rough for the Trojans and while they did perform a little better last season, 2026 will be pivotal for Riley’s tenure at USC.
6. Bret Bielema, Illinois
2025 Record: 9-4 (5-4)
Illinois was a program that was long searching for some stability when they brought in Bret Bielema in 2021. The Illini were 34-72 from 2012-2020. That timeframe included just two bowl appearances and zero winning seasons. Bielema has gone 37-26 with three bowl appearances, going 2-1. He has built Illinois football into a perennially respectable program, something that they were far away from when he took over just five seasons ago.
#Illini Bret Bielema told a story about getting back to his hotel room after winning a Super Bowl with the Patriots, with him and his pregnant wife riding in a rickshaw 😂
"I think he was doing pretty good until that last stretch was up the hill." pic.twitter.com/BsVQV66KIn
— Tristan Thomas (@TristanThomasTV) February 5, 2026
5. Kyle Whittingham, Michigan
2025 Record (Utah): 11-2 (2-0 vs Big Ten)
Michigan hopes to somewhat follow the Curt Cignetti formula with its latest hire. Kyle Whittingham has been around the block, being brought in at age 66. He has coached at Utah since 1994, being the head coach since 2005. Whittingham has never coached away from the west coast, so this will be a new challenge for the veteran coach. That being said, he has had sustained success as the Utes’ head man and is the perfect hire for a program desperately needing a man of culture at the helm.
4. Kirk Ferentz, Iowa
2025 Record: 9-4 (6-3)
Some people may think that Kirk Ferentz is high on this list, but he consistently does more with less. The Hawkeyes never have national-level recruiting classes. They never land blue-chip transfers. Yet they develop NFL draft picks as good as any program, and they consistently win football games. Ferentz has now coached at Iowa for 27 seasons, an incredibly impressive run that has him sitting at 213-128. As of last season, he is the winningest coach in Big Ten history. That means something.
3. Dan Lanning, Oregon
2025 Record: 13-2 (8-2)
In their first season in the Big Ten, Dan Lanning delivered a conference title to the Oregon Ducks. While both the 2024 and 2025 seasons ended in blowout losses, Lanning has consistently had Oregon in the national title contender conversation. The Ducks have yet to miss out on a 12-team playoff, and hold a 25-2 home record under Lanning. He does a lot of winning.
2. Ryan Day, Ohio State
2025 Record: 12-2 (9-1)
Just two seasons ago, Ryan Day was heavily scrutinized by his own fanbase. That tide has changed as he brought a national title to Columbus in 2024 and finally beat Michigan for the first time since 2019 in 2025. Some of the previous issues that had popped up under Day seemed to relapse over the last two games of the season for the Buckeyes in 2025, and 2026 will be a big year in seeing if he can recreate some of the magical 2024 run with a grueling schedule lying ahead.
1. Curt Cignetti, Indiana
2025 Record: 16-0 (11-0)
Just two seasons into his tenure at Indiana, historically the worst power conference program in the entire nation, Cignetti has done the impossible and won a National Championship. Not only that, but he led the first 16-0 team in FBS history, won a Big Ten title, landed Indiana’s first-ever Heisman winner, and led the school to its first-ever national title.
He just had the perfect season that any fanbase dreams of, and it happened at a school where even winning the conference was considered impossible. There is just no way that you could rank any other coach, not only in the Big Ten, but also in the nation, ahead of Cignetti after what he has done at Indiana in such a short timeframe in Bloomington. He will keep the momentum rolling in year three after bringing in yet another impressive transfer class.
