Let’s embark on a scavenger hunt to find the next college football coach who will win his first national championship. Kirby Smart, Dabo Swinney and Ryan Day account for the only active championship coaches.
Who’s next?
Reflecting on past winners and adhering to some guiding principles will help identify top candidates.
Sixteen coaches won their first national championship during either the Bowl Championship Series or College Football Playoff era that started in 1998.
We’ll use that group of coaches as our guide, as we try to winnow the list:
∎ Each of the 16 first-time championship coaches from the BCS and CFP eras coached a school that’s now in the Power Four ranks. So, we’ll confine our search for the next champion to the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC, plus Notre Dame.
∎ Miami’s Larry Coker was the only coach from our control group of 16 who won a national championship in his first season. Coker inherited a team that went 11-1 the prior season. He stepped into a ready-made winner. No current first-year coach enjoys a situation so nice, so let’s eliminate the Power Four’s six coaches who are entering Year 1. Sorry, Bill Belichick, that includes you.
Second-year coaches like Michigan’s Sherrone Moore remain in the mix. Bob Stoops, Jim Tressel, Urban Meyer and Gene Chizik won a national championship in their second season, making Year 2 a time to shine. Looking at you, Kalen DeBoer.
∎ Programs rarely go from the outhouse to the penthouse overnight. The 16 coaches who won their first national title during the CFP or BCS eras coached teams that finished 7-5 or better the season before the championship. The majority of first-timers won at least 10 games in the season preceding their first title. Let’s eliminate coaches whose teams didn’t achieve at least a .583 winning percentage last season. That cuts 29 more coaches from our list, leaving 30 coaches still alive.
Eliminated coaches include Southern California’s Lincoln Riley, Utah’s Kyle Whittingham and Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy. They built accomplished careers before losing the plot last year.
∎ Each of the 16 first-time championship coaches from the BCS and playoff eras steered teams that were ranked in the preseason Top 25. So, let’s consult the preseason US LBM Coaches Poll, and trim from our list nine more coaches, whose teams are unranked. We’re down to 21 contenders.
∎ Most first-time championship coaches were winners before they won it all. The 16 new champions from the BCS and CFP eras compiled a combined .684 winning percentage before ever winning a national title. This excludes records compiled coaching in the Championship Subdivision.
Auburn’s Gene Chizik became notable exception. Before Cam Newton spurred Chizik to brief glory, Chizik’s career winning percentage had been .351 across stints at Iowa State and Auburn. Not surprisingly, Chizik didn’t last long after Newton departed. LSU’s Ed Orgeron had a .532 career winning percentage before Joe Burrow propelled the Tigers to an undefeated national championship.
Acknowledging outliers exist to our .684 guideline winning percentage, let’s create a buffer and eliminate any coaches that do not have at least a .650 career winning percentage coaching in the FBS.
Also, trim any coaches who aren’t above-.500 at their current school. Each of the past 16 first-time championship coaches were above .500 at their school entering their breakthrough season, except for Coker, who won his title in his first season.
Applying the winning percentage parameters trims 12 more coaches and leaves nine coaches standing: They are Kalen DeBoer (Alabama), Brian Kelly (LSU), Lane Kiffin (Mississippi), Josh Heupel (Tennessee), Dan Lanning (Oregon), James Franklin (Penn State), Curt Cignetti (Indiana), Marcus Freeman (Notre Dame) and Rhett Lashlee (SMU).
That’s a strong list, with a couple of notable omissions. More on the omissions in a bit. First, let’s examine the nine names to whom our scavenger hunt guided us.
DeBoer, Kelly, Lanning, Franklin and Freeman are obvious contenders. DeBoer, Kelly and Freeman previously coached a team to a national runner-up finish. Each of these five coaches have teams ranked in the preseason top 10.
The list also includes four wild cards. Kiffin, Heupel, Cignetti and Lashlee coach teams with longshot national championship odds, but the stock of each coach is on the rise, and it’s no guarantee the next championship coach will emerge this season. Day, Smart or Swinney could win another ring and prolong this exercise. It’s not unthinkable that Heupel or Kiffin would win a title from his current job – just perhaps not this season.
Also, this next coaching carousel projects to be more active than the last, especially if Brent Venables doesn’t ignite Oklahoma. Any of four wild-card names our scavenger hunt surfaced could nicely suit the Sooners.
As for notable omissions, Texas coach Steve Sarkisian stands most prominently. His .618 career winning percentage resulted in his name being trimmed, but he’s coming off the best two seasons of his career. His Longhorns rank No. 1 in the preseason, after back-to-back playoff semifinal appearances.
In February, I picked Sarkisian as the best-positioned coach to win his first national championship. He’d need to become another exception to the career winning percentage trend. His winning percentage is superior to what Orgeron had amassed before Burrow led LSU to glory. Might Texas’ Arch Manning produce a Burrow effect?
Our scavenger hunt also nixed Michigan’s Moore. Officially, his career winning percentage is .643, resulting in his cut, but that clip does not include his three victories in 2023 while he served as acting coach during Jim Harbaugh’s Big Ten suspension. Moore is entering his second season as Harbaugh’s replacement. He, too, could be an exception to the career winning percentage rule, like Stoops was when he won a national title in his second season at Oklahoma, after a 7-5 debut.
Michigan’s roster features freshman quarterback Bryce Underwood, the nation’s No. 1-ranked recruit. If Day, Smart or Swinney wins another title and prolongs the runway for the next championship coach, Moore could look like a stronger contender in 2026.
If we could combine some common sense with the results of our scanvenger hunt, I’d insert Sarkisian and Moore onto the list in place of Cignetti and Lashlee, for a nine-name collection of DeBoer, Kelly, Kiffin, Heupel, Freeman, Lanning, Franklin, Sarkisian and Moore.
Or, perhaps, this scavenger hunt serves as little more than a wild-goose chase, and the real exercise in this NIL era should be to follow the money to Texas, where the Longhorns’ handsomely paid roster seems capable of making a champion out of Sarkisian, just as the pricy Buckeyes did for Day.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.