Link: College football coaching tiers: From Hall of Fame resumes to murky futures

I agree. Oklahoma or Texas should win the Big 12 every year because they are light years ahead of every one else there in recruiting. Yet. Stoops lets TCU, Baylor and Okie lite upstage him on a regular basis. I would drop Stoops from that tier to the next one.

Did not see Kirby Smart's name in any of the tiers. IMO he would be in the jury's still out tier.

RollTide_HTTR said:

College football is a players' sport. Recruiting matters, especially when it comes to competing for a playoff run.
But that doesn't mean coaching isn't important.
Coaches can turn entire programs around (hello, Bill Snyder) and bring home rare national titles (hello, Dabo Swinney). It's the coaches who bring the Jimmy's and Joe's to campus and develop them. On the flip side, a bad coaching hire -- or, heaven forbid, two bad coaching hires -- can set a program back for years.
It's with these things in mind that we present our 2017 college football coaching tiers, from the future Hall of Famers to ones fighting for their jobs. The guideline for inclusion was at least three full seasons unless the coach was a more established name at a new school. In that vein, career totality -- not just last season's results -- was factored in. Link

IMO Stoops is overrated here as is Harbaugh simply for being mentioned as "close" to the 2nd tier despite winning nothing in college.

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That would be a fair assessment if he coached Alabama or Texas.

He started at Division I-AA San Diego. His second and third years he won the Pioneer League, so he HAS won something at the level he was coaching.


At Stanford, he took over a team coming off a 1-11 season preceded by a 5-6 year, a team that hadn't had a winning record since 2001. His first year there - with the other guy's players at a tough to recruit school with high academic standards......he upset USC (back when they were a powerhouse) and went 4-8. He improved each year and his last year there, 2010, they went 12-1 (losing only to national title game participant Oregon), won the Orange Bowl and finished number four.

He then went to the NFL. In his first three years he was in the NFC title game ALL THREE years and was one play away from winning the Super Bowl.

At Michigan, he took over a team coming off a 5-7 season and two consecutive botched coaching hires and his first year won ten games and the Citrus Bowl in a rout.

Given what he had to work with, he's done pretty damned good so far. He barely lost to a team expected to contend for this year's national title in the Orange Bowl last year. He lost three games by a total of FIVE points.

That ain't bad at all.

RollTide_HTTR said:

College football is a players' sport. Recruiting matters, especially when it comes to competing for a playoff run.
But that doesn't mean coaching isn't important.
Coaches can turn entire programs around (hello, Bill Snyder) and bring home rare national titles (hello, Dabo Swinney). It's the coaches who bring the Jimmy's and Joe's to campus and develop them. On the flip side, a bad coaching hire -- or, heaven forbid, two bad coaching hires -- can set a program back for years.
It's with these things in mind that we present our 2017 college football coaching tiers, from the future Hall of Famers to ones fighting for their jobs. The guideline for inclusion was at least three full seasons unless the coach was a more established name at a new school. In that vein, career totality -- not just last season's results -- was factored in. Link

IMO Stoops is overrated here as is Harbaugh simply for being mentioned as "close" to the 2nd tier despite winning nothing in college.

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Lots of SEC coaches in the last level...the jury is still out.

The main thing I learned in this article is that Terry Bowden is still coaching.

Kirby is out because criteria is min 3 years. I agree, Stoops is too high. Also, as stated, classifying is not the same as ranking. Harbaugh may rank high as an able coach, but he hasn't done anything significant yet at the college level. I put him in the program builders level. That is where Freeze belongs. He has him at the bottom because of the impending sanctions, but as a coach, he's better than that.

RollTide_HTTR said:

Not at all saying he's a bad coach. But you have to win at some point. He hasn't done that yet.

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Win what?

Games? He's done that.
Bowl games? He's done that.
Conference championships? He did win the NFC title in 2012
He won his league at San Diego twice.

What does he have to win?

Btw - I agree with you on this point sort of...Harbaugh is lot like Darryl Strawberry was. He LOOKS like an underachiever. When Straw hit 30 homers, folks thought it should have been forty, he sorta looked lazy. Harbaugh wins a lot, but he seems to lose just enough of the important games to suggest he's....not quite as good as his record.

selmaborntidefan said:

Win what?

Games? He's done that.
Bowl games? He's done that.
Conference championships? He did win the NFC title in 2012
He won his league at San Diego twice.

What does he have to win?

Btw - I agree with you on this point sort of...Harbaugh is lot like Darryl Strawberry was. He LOOKS like an underachiever. When Straw hit 30 homers, folks thought it should have been forty, he sorta looked lazy. Harbaugh wins a lot, but he seems to lose just enough of the important games to suggest he's....not quite as good as his record.

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I believe one reason people get annoyed with the media's hype of Harbaugh comes from them acting like he's in Saban and Meyer's tier of coaching when he's not even done better than third in his own division in B1G.


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Malzahn is in the wrong tier.

Harbz is very mature.




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He starts out saying it's a players sport but makes the case it really is a coaches sport. The barn coach is rated too high and Bill Snyder too low. Nobody else is good enough yet to be in the same level as Saban and Meyer. Hairball has yet to prove anything at the college level except he can stir controversy.

selmaborntidefan said:

That would be a fair assessment if he coached Alabama or Texas.

He started at Division I-AA San Diego. His second and third years he won the Pioneer League, so he HAS won something at the level he was coaching.


At Stanford, he took over a team coming off a 1-11 season preceded by a 5-6 year, a team that hadn't had a winning record since 2001. His first year there - with the other guy's players at a tough to recruit school with high academic standards......he upset USC (back when they were a powerhouse) and went 4-8. He improved each year and his last year there, 2010, they went 12-1 (losing only to national title game participant Oregon), won the Orange Bowl and finished number four.

He then went to the NFL. In his first three years he was in the NFC title game ALL THREE years and was one play away from winning the Super Bowl.

At Michigan, he took over a team coming off a 5-7 season and two consecutive botched coaching hires and his first year won ten games and the Citrus Bowl in a rout.

Given what he had to work with, he's done pretty damned good so far. He barely lost to a team expected to contend for this year's national title in the Orange Bowl last year. He lost three games by a total of FIVE points.

That ain't bad at all.

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Shaw did more with less at Stanford than Harbaugh. Harbaugh has benefited mostly on his brand as a bad boy coach. I think if he loses to tosu again this year things will get real interesting at Michigan.

There's a big difference between being noticed and being relevant. He's got being noticed down pat. He's attempting to swim the gulf between Ohio state and the rest of that pretend conference. We will see if he gets close enough to the pier to grab on and pull himself up.


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81usaf92 said:

Shaw did more with less at Stanford than Harbaugh.

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I'm sorry, but....just, no.

Shaw had a great record when he inherited what was in place - that Harbaugh put there. When it became his own recruits, he had a downward bump, but it's to his credit he has kept it going. Remember - Shaw inherited Andrew Luck.

And would Christian McCaffrey be at Stanford if his Daddy hadn't been there? Shaw lucked into that one, too.

81usaf92 said:

Harbaugh has benefited mostly on his brand as a bad boy coach. I think if he loses to tosu again this year things will get real interesting at Michigan.

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In each place he's gone, he was better than what they had - certainly before him and so far at the 49ers AFTER him, too. (I think an interesting discussion/argument could be had about Shaw/Harbaugh, but I think both are good coaches). But I also agree with your larger point here - Harbaugh seems to be a sort of Lane Kiffin-like character in his insistence on being stupid when he could just be silent. I actually "get" his rudeness to Pete Carroll as a new idiotic coach trying to be a bit of an intimidator. But he's at UM now, his alma mater, and his tough talking act will only be tolerated for so long. He wasn't hired to lose to Ohio State.

I'd say Harbaugh right now is sort of where Mack Brown was around 2002-2004 at Texas, a guy at a big program who has done pretty good (but not stellar) at his other jobs and is now perched at the precipice of going the next step. Just mho.

CullmanTide said:

He starts out saying it's a players sport but makes the case it really is a coaches sport. The barn coach is rated too high and Bill Snyder too low. Nobody else is good enough yet to be in the same level as Saban and Meyer. Hairball has yet to prove anything at the college level except he can stir controversy.

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I agree with you. What Bill Snyder has done where he has done it is nothing short of amazing.

RTR91 said:

I believe one reason people get annoyed with the media's hype of Harbaugh comes from them acting like he's in Saban and Meyer's tier of coaching when he's not even done better than third in his own division in B1G.


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Well, this is two different conversations then. The article linked cites him in the "success at Power 5 level," which given what he began with at Stanford I'd have to agree. (His accomplishments there so far are more impressive than his Michigan tenure).

But yeah, there is a press narrative that places Harbaugh up there with those two. I assume it's because he made 3 NFC title games and went to a Super Bowl...which has nothing at all to do with college.

Not to pick on Auburn but...Gus Malzahn is in the same tier of coach as Harbaugh or - more relevant here - Chris Petersen?


Look at something that will blow your minds:
Gene Chizik, four years, 33-19, one SEC title, one national title, one unbeaten season
Malzahn, four years, 35-18, one SEC title, one national title game appearance.
Terry Bowden, 5 1/2, 47-17, one SEC West title, one unbeaten season (in Bowden's last 4 1/2 years, he was still
36-17, which is one game better than Malzahn - and remember that six of those 17 losses came in his last
eight games as coach)

In his last four years:
Tommy Tuberville, 34-16, nothing (but had an unbeaten season in 2004, right before his last four years)


I mean, how does this somehow make Malzahn BETTER than his company here? And that first year had enough flukes to open up a parasitology lab, most notably the Georgia and Alabama miracles. His record is a game behind Terry Bowden and only 1 1/2 ahead of Chizik.

Does any sane person think Gene Chizik is in the Barry Alvarez tier?

Malzahn's SEC record since the infamous Kick Six game is 12-13. That's not Barry Alvarez tier, that's Houston Nutt SEC coaching right there.

He's lost to every team in the SEC West at least once, and it only took him three years.

We're talking about Harbaugh hype but THIS one......I mean, the guy is an 8-4 regular season coach. Nothing wrong with that at Auburn but......he's gotten a lot of mileage out of two plays for Pete's sake.