25 Most Intriguing College Football Coaches for 2024

Lest we get bored or forget how it used to be done by habit or request, Oklahoma college football’s most intriguing lists are back. Starting with the 25 most intriguing coaches for 2024.

1. Kalen DeBoer, Alabama Crimson Tide offensive coordinator

It’s kind of comical when the man that is replacing The Man in Tuscaloosa has a better career college winning percentage than Nick Saban, . 897 to . 804. But accumulating victories in NAIA ball is not the same as piling them in the Southeastern Conference, which is the challenge now. DeBoer achieved the most at Washington by leading the Huskies to the Championship Game in the 2023 College Football Playoff. Now, he only has to do even better work than he had been doing at Alabama to meet the requirements of the post.

2. Update: Part of Sunday story has changed, now it looks like this: Ryan Day, Ohio State Buckeyes

Current price:If a man who is 56-8 for his career can be in desperation mode, this is it. Of those eight losses three have come to the team the Buckeyes must beat on a regular basis, Michigan. And they’ve come in a row. But the Wolverines have been the last season’s national champions. Add those facts to that $20 million NIL for want of a better term that Ohio State put in retaining and attracting players due to the Harbaugh vacuum in Ann Arbor and the willingness to win the big one in Columbus cannot be any higher.

3. Sherrone Moore, Michigan Wolverines

As for the Harbaugh vacuum, Moore gets the chance to replace one of the biggest athletic heroes in school history. He’s also got a new NCAA alleged violations release on his desk any day now, with a draft of a notice of allegations which state that Moore committed a Level Two violation by deleting text messages with former Michigan staffer Connor Stalions after Stalions became nationally known last fall for spying on opponents to steal their signals. Moore could end up facing a suspension and, even more, repeat-violator status, let alone an attempt to maintain the Wolverines in the tops of the Big Ten.

4. Mario Cristobal, Miami Hurricanes

Current price:After two years of rather dramatically showing that he does not have a team capable of delivering what was expected from it and an $8 million annual salary, Cristobal finally has a breakthrough team. Of course, Miami coveted elite transfers to boost the TE and other position in the offense backfield, and to the defensive front, plus internal player maturity that might pay off. The schedule is beneficial too, Florida State Seminoles at home, and no game against the Clemson Tigers. The transition of Miami from getting blown out a lot in 2022 to losing hard fought games (take a knee Mario) is now ready for a giant leap of recovering Cristobal’s ‘savior’.

5. Deion Sanders, Colorado Buffaloes

It’s impossible to have a most intriguing list without having Coach Prime. It would simply be sufficient to say that no one has ever managed a large programme the way Sanders is doing. It created a lot of noise for some modest progress over the previous despair in Sanders’ first season and, unfortunately, the final record was 4–8, which is far from spectacular. Since then there has been even more volition among players and employees, conflict with local press and other strange (mostly anonymous) accusations connected with parties’ improper behavior off the field. In other words, no one has any idea what the on-field product will be in Year 2. This is probably the last chance for the FCS team led by Shedeur Sanders (Deion’s son) and two-way player Travis Hunter to claim a bowl game and prove that Sanders is ready to invest in the team in the long term.

6. Lane Kiffin, Mississippi Rebels

The question for Kiffin is, how to go from this status of the current Kelly’s sidekick, smart-aleck to champion. This Ole Miss team seems to offer a similar opportunity – but last year’s team also did – and it was very entertaining to go 11-2, and beat the Penn State Nittany Lions in a bowl game – but getting dominated by Alabama and the Georgia Bulldogs by a combined 49 points still told a story. Could some of that be closed in 2024 particularly on the lines? First of all, there is no shortage of talent either in the players retained from the previous years, or in the fresh faces invited by the Portal King. Still, having Georgia instead of Alabama is close enough: Alabama is off the schedule and Georgia comes to Oxford, so dare to dream.

7. Lincoln Riley, USC Trojans

The man, who set the massive coaching carousel in motion late in 2021, could certainly use a return to form big. Lured away from Oklahoma Sooners in perhaps the biggest upset of the coaching carousel, Riley posted 11 wins in his first season with USC; reached the Pac-12 championship game; and produced a Heisman Trophy winner in Caleb Williams. However, there were defensive liabilities that season and they are quite conspicuous in the 8–5 debacle of ’23. Next up comes a monumental shift geographically and in the conference landscape and this comes with life after Caleb. The schedule is spicy: Still, they bring in LSU in Las Vegas; at Michigan; vs. Penn State; vs. Notre Dame; potential rebound teams Wisconsin and Nebraska. Can Riley take his program to that grind?

8. Brent Venables, Oklahoma Sooners

The basic feeling out there is that Texas is fully prepared for its SEC moment, while its opposing Oklahoma Sooners opponent is still something that needs to be answered for. The team went into the season ranked 7th by the preseason media poll; this is a place that the program is not used to. Venables went from a bust of a first year to a pretty good second year head coach, but there is still much work to be done. Against even stiffer challenge he is attempting to establish himself as a worthy successor to National champions such as Wilkinson, Switzer and Bob Stoops not to speak of a CFP coach like Riley For comparison Underdog vs.

9. Dan Lanning, Oregon Ducks

The 38-year-old has shown exactly every sign of a budding star in the horizon of coaching—successful recruiter, strategist and motivational speaker to boot whose win-loss record stands at 22-5. Now come the next challenges: , recruiting the Ducks into the Big Ten as a program capable of walking in and winning the title on day one; and dialing back some of the in-game tantrum that has contributed to his 4-4 record in one-score games, 0-3 against their in-state foe Washington. Lanning picks up another super-senior experienced quarterback through the portal (Dillon Gabriel for the departing Bo Nix) and the team is fully built. Of all the realigning programs that might appear primed for the new reality, Oregon ought to be it.

10. Eliah Drinkwitz, Missouri Tigers

Drinkwitz has kind of been Lane Lite, from the hat to the jokes to the victories but not championships. An SEC championship could still be out of the question for a Mizzou team that needs to shore up on defense, but it certainly doesn’t seem out of the question to think about making the play offs. Drinkwitz is an excellent recruiter, and the man has also done well in building some players throughout his first four years at Columbia. The schedule provides a clear trail to a certain degree of playoff hopeful as five ranked teams are not scheduled – Georgia, Texas, Ole Miss, LSU and Tennessee. If the Tigers do run the table to suddenly find themselves bowl eligible, the next question becomes, does Drinkwitz want to stick around and continue to build on what he has created in Springfield, or does he shop his services to other schools?

11. Marcus Freeman, Notre Dame Fighting Irish

Indeed, after being celebrated as the unexpected successor to Brian Kelly, Freeman opened himself to difficult categorisation. He’s not even close to being a disappointment when you consider his 19–8 over that time span; then again, he has lost more games in that period than Kelly lost in the previous four seasons. Well, then, he is not exactly even a home run hire at this stage, is he? Such victories have been succeeded by defeat and such a defeat has been followed by victory. Some extra definition this season may be provided by a current and nicely calibrated 12 team playoff in which the Irish would seem to be capable of crashing if they can just get there. If they aren’t, Freeman’s seat could start to heat up at some point in the future, and there is certainly no telling how seriously all of it is being taken within a year or even a month.

12. Dabo Swinney, Clemson Tigers

He just continues to do things his own way and that is 2018 style. That has caused some offense in a fan base that, come on, is fully aware that it’s ’24 and things have changed dramatically. Having registered their four most losses in ’11, the Tigers have been handed the 14th position in the coach’s poll, the lowest preseason ranking the ball club has scored in 10 years. But when Swinney has been doubted, he has delivered some brilliant performance; the last season saw him winning five consecutive games after Tyler from Spartanburg criticized him over the radio. Should Cade Klubnik arrive at QB and Garrett Riley manage to give a new life to the offense, Dabo may get a chance to boast of ‘Little Ol’ Clemson’ once again.

13. Jedd Fisch, Washington Huskies

Marcel,” Fisch told me, “and after seven years at stops as varied as DCT and deposed SEC power Tennessee, Fisch found himself at a program as moribund as the desert it inhabited. He lost 11 games his first year and won 10 in his third, which got him the Washington gig in the Saban domino reaction. Fisch has a rich fantasy mind for offense; he again ought to be able to walk into Seattle with proper job expectations after the Huskies shed all their coaches and athletes who they tried to run with the big dogs to the Big Ten after getting to the College Football Playoff title game.

14. Jim Franklin, Penn State Nittany Lions

That is a big ‘if’ but if any high level coach should be get a positive out of the new reality of the sport it should be Franklin. Realignment has liberated him from the agony of competing against Ohio State and Michigan every year (although only Ohio state this year in State College). Playoff expansion is also good for a program that would have been a perennial playoff entrant in a 12-team field had there been one the last eight seasons. The warm welcomes that the mildly unsatisfactory winning seasons might receive today could help arrest the Franklin fatigue sign that is evident in some of the Penn State fans.

15. Steve Sarkisian, Texas Longhorns

Having earned a playoff spot for the first time in his coaching career last year, Sark should once again field a championship contender, even if he’s inheriting an upgrade from the Big XII to the SEC. He has this thing swinging now to the point where saying “Texas is back” isn’t just bullshit. The conference schedule the SEC has provided the Longhorns is a lovely welcome gift, and it is essentially devoid of any real road games until October 26th at Vanderbilt. Yes, Georgia comes to Austin and the Horns must go to College Station to renew the hate fest with Texas A&M, but the planets (and collective donors) are aligned for Sark and Texas to be in contention for the national title for the second straight year.

16. DeShaun Foster, UCLA Bruins

Deciding that it is a good idea to hire a coach who has no previous experience being a head coach or a coordinator for a mid-tier program to take on a brutal new conference is, you know, a thing – and we’ll see how that is going to work for athletic director Martin Jarmond. Pundits like to knock Foster for being a neophyte, and his introduction when he addressed the Big Ten media seemed to certifying this fact, yet as every great coach will tell you, winning the press conference is hardly tantamount to winning on the field. Foster is/was a great player and I think we will find out just how much a head-coach has to learn. Since there is little pressure on the Bruins, this season should not add a lot of pressure on Foster — but there’s no such thing as no pressure at the power-conference level.

17. Kirby Smart, Georgia Bulldogs

Although Smart remain in a league with Saban, he now stands as the lone alpha male of the SEC. He and Swinney also are the only active head coaches in the SEC with more than two national championships—and the wise (guys) put their money on Kirby to surpass Swinney in getting to three titles. It may well occur as early as this season, with CLB standing as the preseason No. 1 choice in the poll of the coaches. But it is the unending stream of off-field issues that have made Smart a punching bag and thrown doubts as to whether or not the lack of discipline may be well on the way to ain’t Hội của một giai đoạn thống trị.

18. Billy Napier, Florida Gators

After consecutive losing seasons for Napier, he just has to pull out some wins this year, period. Too bad for him, he has drawn an absolute meat-grinder schedule with eight foes out of the coaches’ preseason Top 25 in a season and each of the five last years. Napier will at least be armed with a more experienced team than he met in his first and second. Taking some lumps with a young defence, that part of the field should be much stronger. Napier also must correct the habit of committing special-teams mistakes that has beset his teams in Gainesville. For the Cincy’s head coach Jobe, and the Miami’s head coach Golden, the encounter is a credibility match pity the one who loses.

19. Bill O’Brien, Boston College Eagles

What if BC, of all places, actually turned out to be the star of the current hiring season? It seems possible. O’Brien did some good work in a very bad area at Penn State, assuming the task after the caliber of Jerry Sandusky brought down the program, then claimed the NFL’s AFC South four times in a few years to be coach of the Houston Texans. You’ll also see that O’Brien did the Saban rebound assistant thing for a couple of seasons, which just gives him another level of awareness in his process. Thomas Castellanos is a skilled dual-threat quarterback, and O’Brien has another nice chip to build around for Year 1.

20. Captain: Spencer Danielson, Boise State Broncos

The former defensive coordinator performed decent enough as the interim head coach of the broncos to clinch the full-time position and ended the regular season with victory in the two last games and soundly defeated the UNLV Rebels in the Mountain West championship game before going down to UCLA in the bowl game. In the personnel game, Daniels and the Boise State staff and boosters also came out on top; star running back Ashton Jeanty does not enter the NCAA transfer portal and USC transfer QB Malachi Nelson commits to Boise State. It appears that Boise State is in a good stead for the Group of 5 automatic bid to the playoff if the Broncos shall remain injury free in positions that matter—and if, indeed, Danielson is capable of handling the quarterback job fulltime.

21. Rhett Lashlee, SMU Mustangs

Be careful of Lashlee and his Mustangs. They could hit the ACC running if setting out coming off an 11–3 season and the largest jump in realignment, a move from Group of 5 to Power 4. SMU has a lot of experienced players on the roster and has a softish non-conference schedule that has a chance to win a lot of games, although Florida State is the only team in the preseason coaches’ poll. This is just third year head coaching experience for Lashlee and if the season is successful, he will have other suitors for his services—Still, SMU could keep him around with realignment and keeping kid’s home.

22. Mike Elko, Texas A& M Aggies

Out of all the recent coaches who received their first shot at head-coaching, Elko had the best first go-round with the Blue Devils; his 17 wins combined for two seasons bettered all of Durham’s work over the last decade. That, along with a booster revolt that nixed Mark Stoops’ hiring, brought Elko back to A&M, where he was defensive coordinator from ’18-’21. The return and SEC inclusion of Texas increases the pressure at A&M following the disaster that was the Jimbo Fisher hiring, but Elko should at least be able to produce a physically more formidable roster. We will con now see how long it will take to win a big amount of money there.

23. Matt Rhule, Nebraska Cornhuskers

Rhule’s increase in the second-year winning percentage is well traceable, from achieving mere two wins with Temple Owls to achieving six wins and progressing to one win with Baylor Bears to achieving seven. Then in the third year he gets ten-plus wins—but the Cornhuskers are not there yet. This is Rhule’s second year in Nebraska, and the assumption will be to take the Cornhuskers to a bowl game they haven’t been to since 2016, another dirge statistic in college football. Yes, the path is there with five of the first six games at home and all of them conceivably winnable. Besides enhancing the general product, Rhule has to keep up with the Dylan Raiola factor, in which the freshman quarterback might be in the running to play (and start) immediately.

24. Kyle Whittingham, Utah Utes

This is because, in the wake of Utah promoting its defensive coordinator Morgan Scalley as the coach-in-waiting, rumours are emerging that Whittingham may be away after the current season. Whittingham, 64, has produced 17 seasons with a winning record in 19 years, with the last 10 straight. Getting back its ancient quarterback Cam Rising for one final season, Utah is the preseason pick to win its new conference the Big 12. Whittingham could be witnessing a great last lap, or an incredible last dance so to speak, here; the driver has never quite got his due on the national stage.

25. Brent Brennan, Arizona Wildcats

West Coast lifer, born in in 1960, did something incredibly challenging; he made the San Jose State Spartans perennially competitive. For that work I was given the job in Tucson, where the program had been raised from the deck by Fisch. Brennan now has a chance to be immediately competitive in the Big 12 with the retention of one of the best pass-and-catch combinations in the country in QB Noah Fifita and wideout Tetairoa McMillan. So, why not the Wildcats – the players, the coaches, the fans – to be confounding all expectations?

Just missed the list: Sam Pittman of Arkansas; Brian Kelly of LSU; Jonathan Smith of Michigan State; Mike Norvell of Florida State; Curt Cignetti of Indiana; Mak Stoops of Kentucky; and Greg Schiano of Rutgers; Neal Brown of West Virginia; Jeff Lebby of Mississippi State; Dave Aranda of Baylor; Luke Fickell of Wisconsin; David Braun of Northwestern; Jon Sumrall of Tulane; Sean Lewis of San Diego State