Last year’s Top 25 college football coach rankings, published after Nick Saban’s retirement and Jim Harbaugh’s NFL exit, included a lot of big jumps that I had to course-correct a year later — including dropping last year’s No. 4 coach, Florida State’s Mike Norvell, all the way out.

But I feel pretty darn good about my top 10 this year. It’s the rest that’s the hard part.

Note: These are not career achievement rankings. I heavily weigh the past three to five seasons. This year, to align with The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman’s version, I am following his requirement that a coach must have three seasons of head-coaching experience.

Read Feldman’s Top 25 coach rankings here.

1. Kirby Smart, Georgia (2024: No. 1)

The two-time national champion became my undisputed No. 1 choice last year following Saban’s retirement, and I see no reason to drop him. Even in a “down” year, Georgia won 11 games and captured its third SEC championship under Smart, who has gone 53-5 with two national titles since 2021.

2. Ryan Day, Ohio State (2024: No. 7)

Had I put out this list the day after last year’s Michigan-Ohio State game, he would have fallen out of my top 10. But the Buckeyes beat four consecutive top-10 opponents to earn Day’s first national championship, making him one of just three active coaches with a ring. That four-game losing streak to Michigan remains an eyesore, but he’s 70-10 overall.

3. Steve Sarkisian, Texas (2024: No. 13)

Sark’s Washington and USC eras are a distant memory. Already a renowned offensive play caller, he’s now taken a Texas program that spent 15 years stuck in the mud to back-to-back College Football Playoff semifinals. Last season’s team reached the SEC Championship Game in its first year in the conference.

4. Kalen DeBoer, Alabama (2024: No. 3)

Granted, his first year at Alabama after succeeding Saban did not go well (9-4 and no CFP berth), but it was always going to be difficult for whoever got that job. Rather than overreacting, I’m choosing to remain awed by his broader resume, most notably taking Washington to its first national championship game just a year earlier.

5. Dan Lanning, Oregon (2024: No. 25)

We now have three seasons’ worth of data to conclude that Lanning, who is thus far 35-6, is a pretty darn good coach. Building on a 12-2 campaign in Year 2, the 2024 Ducks went 13-1 and won the Big Ten in their first season in the conference, albeit with a Rose Bowl beatdown by Ohio State as a bitter ending.

6. Dabo Swinney, Clemson (2024: No. 8)

After several slipping years, Clemson showed signs of a resurgence in 2024 by winning the ACC and earning the last Playoff berth. However, it also marked the second consecutive season that Dabo’s once-dominant program lost four games. I gave him a slight bump and am eager to see if the Tigers can still contend for a national title.

7. Lance Leipold, Kansas (2024: No. 2)

OK, OK, I went overboard with that No. 2 ranking last year. The Jayhawks promptly fell from 9-4 to 5-7. But Leipold has still engineered an all-time turnaround in Lawrence, Kan., to the point where 5-7 is now a disappointment. Kansas did not even get to five wins in the 11 seasons before his 2021 arrival.

8. James Franklin, Penn State (2024: No. 15)

He remains one of the toughest coaches to rank, with his 1-15 record against top-five teams. But it’s hard to argue he’s not a top-flight coach after leading Penn State to a 13-3 record and CFP semifinal. That gave Franklin three double-digit winning seasons in a row and six in the past nine years.

9. Matt Campbell, Iowa State (2024: No. 21)

One of the biggest overachievers in college football, last year Campbell led Iowa State to the first 11-win season in school history (it had never reached 10). This is after producing its first top-10 season in 2020. In doing so, Campbell became the school’s all-time wins leader (64) and currently holds its highest winning percentage (.557) since 1919.

10. Marcus Freeman, Notre Dame (2024: NR)

Though he only has a three-year body of work as a head coach, he’s one of just eight active coaches who’s coached in a national championship game. To get there required winning 14 games, capped by beating SEC champion Georgia and top-five foe Penn State in the Playoff.

11. Curt Cignetti, Indiana (2024: NR)

Cignetti was in my “just missed the cut” tier last year coming off his 52-9 run at James Madison. All he did in his first year in the Power 4 was lead Indiana to its first 11-win season in school history, earn a CFP berth and secure the program’s first top-10 finish in 57 years. He wins. Google it.

12. Brian Kelly, LSU (2024: No. 6)

America’s most polarizing coach has regressed the past two years, but it’s not yet a Lincoln Riley-level disaster: LSU’s disappointing 9-4 season marked the first time since 2016 that a Kelly team didn’t reach 10 wins. Still, I had to drop him out of my top 10 for the first time since 2018.

13. Lane Kiffin, Ole Miss (2024: No. 11)

Kiffin’s Ole Miss teams won 11 and 10 games, respectively, the past two seasons, but they haven’t quite cracked the sport’s upper tier. (The Rebels arguably underachieved last season.) But three 10-win seasons in four years is pretty impressive, especially at Ole Miss, which hadn’t pulled that off since 1959-62.

14. Kyle Whittingham, Utah (2024: No. 5)

I dropped Whittingham after his first losing season in a decade, but he’s only a couple of years removed from back-to-back Pac-12 titles and 10-win seasons. Also: That 2024 team was not as bad as its 5-7 record. It lost to two 11-win teams, BYU and Iowa State, and both games came down to a last-second field-goal attempt.

15. Josh Heupel, Tennessee (2024: No. 24)

Heupel proved that his breakout 2022 season was not a one-off. The Vols went 10-3, reached the Playoff and finished in the top 10 for the second time in three seasons — something Tennessee hadn’t accomplished since 1999-2001. The offensive guru showed he could win with defense: the Vols finished No. 5 nationally (4.56 yards per play allowed).

16. Kirk Ferentz, Iowa (2024: NR)

Ferentz is officially out of my Top 25 penalty box now that he no longer employs his son as offensive coordinator. He finally did the right thing and brought in Tim Lester, who improved the Hawkeyes’ offense considerably. Unfortunately, their record dropped from 10-4 to 8-5, but Ferentz is still an impressive 37-16 in Big Ten play since 2019.

17. Jamey Chadwell, Liberty (2024: No. 10)

The Flames slipped to 8-4 last season, but Chadwell had a remarkable 44-13 run from 2020-23, beginning with his breakout top-15 season at Coastal Carolina and ending with a 13-1 season and Fiesta Bowl berth in Year 1 at Liberty. And before that, he led Charleston Southern to two FCS playoff berths.

18. Chris Klieman, Kansas State (2024: No. 16)

Klieman keeps Kansas State in the upper quadrant of the Big 12, though last season the 9-4 Wildcats went 5-4 in conference play. Klieman, a four-time FCS national champion at North Dakota State, is 28-12 over the past three seasons and has won at least eight games in five of his six years at K-State.

19. Jeff Brohm, Louisville (2024: No. 18)

Brohm won big at Western Kentucky and took Purdue to a Big Ten title game. Now he’s off to a 19-8 start at his alma mater. Louisville slid a bit after winning 10 games and reaching the ACC championship in Year 1, but the Cardinals ended 2024 strong, routing rival Kentucky 41-14 to snap a five-game losing streak to the Wildcats.

20. Jeff Monken, Army (2024: NR)

I once had Monken fairly high in these rankings but dropped him out last year after Army missed a bowl for the second consecutive season. So, of course, his Black Knights came roaring back with a 12-win season and AAC championship in their first year in the league. His .590 win percentage is the highest of any Army coach since Red Blaik (1941-58).

21. Kalani Sitake, BYU (2024: NR)

BYU jumped from 5-7 to 11-2 in its second season in the Big 12, narrowly missing a spot in the conference title game before trouncing Colorado in the Alamo Bowl. It marked Sitake’s second 11-win season and third 10-win season since 2020. He’s 72-43 in nine seasons at his alma mater.

22. Rhett Lashlee, SMU (2024: NR)

Lashlee has only been a head coach for three seasons, but over the last two, he’s led long-struggling SMU to back-to-back 11-win seasons, reached last season’s ACC championship game and earned a Playoff berth. The Mustangs’ No. 12 finish in the final AP Poll was the program’s highest since 1984. Not bad for their first year in a Power 4 conference.

23. Willie Fritz, Houston (2024: No. 19)

Fritz walked into a steep rebuilding job at Houston and had an expectedly rough first season, going 4-8. But he’s the same man who led Tulane to 12-2 and 11-2 seasons in 2022 and 2023, respectively, and that 2022 season was capped by an upset win against Caleb Williams-led USC in the Cotton Bowl. And even last year’s Houston team managed to knock off 9-4 foes TCU and Kansas State.

24. Jonathan Smith, Michigan State (2024: No. 20)

Smith took over a struggling program in East Lansing and went 5-7 in his first season. But he earned this ranking for his six-year tenure at Oregon State, which was in even worse shape when he took over in 2018, only for Smith to lead the Beavers to a 10-3 season four years later.

25. Jon Sumrall, Tulane (2024: NR)

It would be hard to have a better start to one’s head-coaching career than going 12-2 and 11-2 at Troy, landing the Tulane job and promptly taking the Green Wave to the AAC championship game. Sumrall, mostly known as a defensive coach, had Tulane ranked second in its conference in offense (6.3 YPP).

Dropped out: Norvell (No. 4), Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy (No. 9), Wisconsin’s Luke Fickell (No. 12), USC’s Lincoln Riley (No. 14), Wake Forest’s Dave Clawson (No. 17, retired), Kentucky’s Mark Stoops (No. 22) and Washington’s Jedd Fisch (No. 23).