CBS ranks the best college football coaches: Did they get it right?

CBS ranked the best college football coaches and the top two are a no-brainer, but did they get the rest of the Top 10 right? Who is underrated? Overrated?

Earlier today, CBS Sports released their top 25 power five college football coaches heading into the 2019-2020 season. Unsurprisingly, Alabama’s Nick Saban sits at the top of the rankings. That’s certainly the right spot for the man who has dominated the sport for the past decade.

While Saban was ranked properly, do the rest of the coaches ranked in the top 10 make sense? Dabo Swinney at No. 2 makes sense and there’s plenty of arguments to support Chris Petersen at No. 3. After coaching a couple of Heisman winners and keeping Oklahoma dominant, Lincoln Riley probably deserves that No. 4 ranking. And Jimbo Fisher is doing an impressive job with Texas A&M so far.

But after that, there’s definitely room for debate about which coaches should be ranked where.

Top 10 college football coaches according to CBS

1. Nick Saban – Alabama
2. Dabo Swinney – Clemson
3. Chris Petersen – Washington
4. Lincoln Riley – Oklahoma
5. Jimbo Fisher – Texas A&M
6. Kirby Smart – Georgia
7. Brian Kelly – Notre Dame
8. Gary Patterson – TCU
9. David Shaw – Stanford
10. Dan Mullen – Florida

Who is overrated?

• Kirby Smart – After a breakout year in 2017, the Georgia Bulldogs took a slight step back in 2018. The Bulldogs were absolutely embarrassed by the LSU Tigers, losing by 20 points on the road. Then Georgia had a sizable lead over Alabama in the SEC Championship Game, but fell short and lost to the Crimson Tide’s backup quarterback yet again. And then at the end of the season, a Texas team that lost to Maryland came out and beat the Bulldogs in the Sugar Bowl. Smart is a great coach, but he’s probably not the 6th best coach in the country right now.

Who deserved more respect?

• Dan Mullen – After the season that he had, it’s fair to say that Dan Mullen should be ranked higher than No. 10. He was arguably the best coach in Mississippi State history, having built that program from an SEC cellar dweller into a team that regularly won nine games at the end of his tenure. During his first season back in Gainesville, Mullen took the Gators to the Peach Bowl and destroyed Michigan, ending the season at 10-3. That’s remarkable.
• David Shaw – Coaching at a school like Stanford is difficult, but David Shaw is certainly making things work. The Cardinal are a consistent and solid team each and every year. Shaw probably isn’t one of the five best coaches in the country, but the consistency that Stanford displays under his leadership does prove that Shaw should be ranked higher here.