There's no one in charge of college football. For years, that seemed like a fun quirk of this wacky sport, nowadays it's increasingly evidence of a fatal flaw. Many people believe Nick Saban should fill that role -- which, sign me up. Saban's standing as the one man to theoretically fill that hypothetical job obscures an all-too-real fact: after a decade and a half as college football's most influential active coach, he's not one anymore.
On a 1-to-10 scale, Saban hit a perfect 10 on all three facets of what I'll call a PEW rating:
-- Proximity. This one is self-explanatory. Saban earned influence and credibility because his teams won. Alabama became the sun that the CFB Universe orbited, and so anything he said on a universal issue mattered, and so Bama and Saban were always central to whatever the college football conversation happened to be, oftentimes starting the conversation themselves. No offense to Eastern Michigan, but EMU could employ a coach who spoke with the power of Julius Ceasar and Martin Luther King, Jr., and he still wouldn't have the influence of a coach at an SEC or Big Ten power.
-- Eloquence. Simply put, how good of a public speaker are you? Do you speak clearly enough that a mass audience will understand your point, and are you compelling enough to spark discussion or, better yet, action?
-- Willingness. A coach has to be comfortable enough in his skin to put on a politician's hat and risk polarizing those who disagree with him.
With Saban no longer coaching, Jim Harbaugh won the right to be his successor. He held that proverbial scepter for all of 12 days before abdicating his throne by taking the LA Chargers job.
Saban will still wield great influence as a panelist on the GameDay desk, but but that's beside the point here. If the coaching profession has to send one of its own to speak on their behalf, who's stepping up to the mic?
I came up with a dozen candidates.
12. Matt Rhule, Nebraska. It takes all of five seconds listening to Rhule speak to understand he has the gift of a gab. The son of a pastor, Rhule has public speaking skills in his DNA. However, he'll have to reach a bowl game or three before he moves to the proverbial center stage.
11. Mack Brown, North Carolina. There was undoubtedly a time when Mack had as much or more power to move mountains from behind a podium than anyone in the game. However, that time ended around 15 years ago. Don't get me wrong, he's still a valued voice in the game, but if one were to build a Presidential administration out of active college football head coaches (wouldn't that be a fun thought?), Mack's place would be as a cabinet secretary or a key ally in the Senate rather than behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office.
10. Kalen DeBoer, Alabama. "Power is a lot like real estate. It's all about location, location, location," Frank Underwood says in the pilot episode of House of Cards. "The closer you are to the source, the higher your property value." DeBoer is in the right spot, but most of the college football universe is still getting to know him. Give it time.
9. Steve Sarkisian, Texas. Fresh off a Playoff run, with the SEC move oncoming and a Manning on the roster, lots of eyeballs will be on Texas this season. But Sark needs more than one top-5 season to burnish his national credibility, and he's also far more interested in building up his own place than trying to wield greater influence on the game. “I came here to win a championship," he said earlier this month. "If I can get one, I want to get two. I’m borderline obsessed with it at this point."
8. Ryan Day, Ohio State. Placing such outsized influence on one game a year is a double-edged sword. Day is 56-8 with five top-10 finishes in five seasons and two Playoff trips; at age 44 and in arguably the sport's most visible job, in another light, the narrative around him is "He'll clear 250 career wins easily, three or four are bound to be in the national title game." Instead, thanks to that 3-game losing skid to That Team Up North, he's expected to spend every waking moment of the next nine months trying like hell to avoid becoming the first coach in any sport with an .875 winning percentage to be fired for performance. tl;dr: A year from now, he could win a title and move to No. 1, or go 11-2 and be out of college football altogether.
7. James Franklin, Penn State. An incredibly sharp thinker and a dynamic speaker, Franklin is the best quote I've heard in more than a decade of attending the AFCA graduate assistant career forum. He tells it like it is in a way that few do. Alas, he's also in David Duval/Phil Mickelson territory of his career. After 88 wins in 10 seasons at Penn State, he's the most accomplished head coach yet to reach the College Football Playoff.
6. Dan Lanning, Oregon. The third of (spoiler alert) five coaches with direct Saban ties on this list, and at 37 also the youngest. Lanning strikes me as the kind of guy who'd finish last in a mile race in junior high simply because he'd insist on sprinting the first 800 meters. He knows no speed but full speed. "They're fighting for clicks, we're fighting for wins," was one of the top quotes of the 2023 season
5. Brian Kelly, LSU. With 283 career victories and two Division II national championships, Kelly could retire tomorrow and join the College Football Hall of Fame by the end of the decade. He's also incredibly comfortable sliding on a politician's blazer when necessary. But if he retired tomorrow, the most memorable quote from his 40-plus year career was the time he tried out a Southern accent in front of a live audience. Right now, national audiences view Kelly through the same skeptical eye they viewed Saban when he first got to Alabama. Saban eventually won the nation into submission, and Kelly would have to do the same.
4. Dabo Swinney, Clemson. Let's start here: when the controversy around kneeling for the National Anthem was at its white hottest back in 2016, Dabo's comments on the issue -- "It's so easy to say we have a race problem, but we got a sin problem" -- took off in a way it's far-and-away the most-read article I've written in 12 years on this site. So, there's that. The man knows how to get his point across. If this was an election, Dabo might very well win. But, we're looking for a unity candidate here. The people who like Dabo really like him, and the people who dislike him really dislike him. Dabo is fine with that, but we're looking for unity here, not polarization.
And there's also this: after losing seven games in the six seasons from 2015-20, Dabo has dropped 10 games in his last three.
3. Deion Sanders, Colorado. I struggled with where to put Coach Prime. Deion is famous famous, and his words will travel faster and further than just about anyone in the sport. And though he is just 4-8 at the FBS level, that 4-8 season did surpass expectations. But now that the debut season of the Prime Show has come and gone, what does he have for an encore? Colorado will have to start winning or Coach Prime will be demoted from the main stage to a sideshow curiosity.
2. Lane Kiffin, Ole Miss. At one time college football's Irreverent Younger Brother, Kiffin is nearing his 50th birthday and preparing for his 10th season as a Power 4 head coach, with another decade as a key assistant for national title-contending teams. Kiffin has also threaded the needle as the transfer portal's worst critic and its most frequent shopper. "There's kind of your state of union on the situation of what all coaches are dealing with around the country -- really, a poor system that isn't getting better and now is going to get worse," Kiffin said in comments that made the rounds last year at SEC media days. In a sport that has been Incredibly Online since the invention of the Internet, Kiffin is also the Most Online coach: for reasons good, bad or incredibly silly, every move he makes has the potential to go viral.
1. Kirby Smart, Georgia. Sometimes, it really as as simple as elementary school economics. The best athlete was almost always the most popular kid in school, and the most popular girl was usually the best looking. We homo sapiens are very much kin to our ape cousins in that regard. In that vein, since 2021 Kirby has won back-to-back national championships; strung the sport's longest winning streak in 20 years; rebounded from their biannual loss by winning the Orange Bowl 63-3; and are a near-unanimous choice to start 2024 back at No. 1.
Kirby happens to be a skilled communicator. He has a more grounded and approachable demeanor than Saban, but wields his influence all the same. Last month, he even offered his own proposal for college football to get out of the Portal-and-NIL vortex that has so consumed the sport.
"I would be really comfortable if a kid just checked the box before he came to school and said, 'I'm going to be a student-athlete on scholarship, and I get to keep my scholarship for four or five years.' Or if a kid said, 'I want to come in and have NIL, but I also can lose that and be terminated.' Most kids would choose the NIL path, but 15-20 kids a year would take the scholarship and make a commitment to stay in 2-3 years."
But it almost doesn't matter how or when Kirby speaks. His name is at the top of the ticket whether he wants it to be or not.
If college football was an elementary-school playground, Kirby Smart would be the point guard, the quarterback, the pitcher. If college football was a Presidential administration, he'd be the nominee, representing the Winning Party.