Meet the most elite club in college coaching.
Two head coaches in this year’s College Football Playoff, Georgia's Kirby Smart and Ohio State's Ryan Day, have combined for three national championships, and a third has reached the championship game in Alabama’s Kalen DeBoer.
Two more previously made the playoff in Indiana’s Curt Cignetti and Oregon’s Dan Lanning. Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire has delivered the best regular season in program history and Texas A&M coach Mike Elko led the Aggies to their most success in the regular season in decades.
And that’s not to mention Miami’s Mario Cristobal, Oklahoma’s Brent Venables and two Group of Five prodigies soon set for the Power Four in James Madison’s Bob Chesney and Tulane’s Jon Sumrall.
The long list of accomplishments found among this group can make ranking the playoff coaches a fool’s errand. But let’s give it a shot, helped by the fact we can slot a coaching neophyte into last place:
