- Kirby Smart boasts a sterling record and two national titles within the past four seasons. Steve Sarkisian is the SEC’s only coach to make the College Football Playoff each of the past two seasons.
- Brian Kelly and Kalen DeBoer each coached in a national championship game at their previous school, but LSU and Alabama are waiting to see it in the SEC.
- Lane Kiffin made Ole Miss nationally relevant, not an easy task. Josh Heupel ended Tennessee’s years of disarray.
When ranking the Southeastern Conference football coaches, anointing the man at No. 1 isn’t a difficult proposition. He’s the guy with the 53-5 record the past four seasons.
Selecting an SEC runner-up comes naturally, too. He’s the guy who revived an underperforming program and took his team to back-to-back College Football Playoff semifinal appearances the past two seasons.
Then comes the challenge: Making sense of the logjam of four coaches behind top dogs Kirby Smart and Steve Sarkisian. Wading through the conference’s bottom few coaches teases the brain, too.
Here’s how it shakes out when listing the SEC coaches from No. 1 to No. 16:
1. Kirby Smart (Georgia)
Georgia’s 11-3 record with an SEC championship and exit in the College Football Playoff quarterfinals counts as a down season. That’s a credit to Smart. He raised Georgia’s bar to the extent that the annual expectations are now what they used to be for Nick Saban’s Alabama. The free agency market and NIL dealmaking create a more difficult space for Smart to stockpile the top talent, but his formula of ace recruiting, elite development and smart defensive coaching remains a good one.
2. Steve Sarkisian (Texas)
Sarkisian is the top threat to Smart’s SEC throne. Texas’ questionable toss sweep in the fourth quarter of the College Football Playoff semifinals notwithstanding, Sark is a superb play-caller. More importantly, he rivals Smart as a tremendous recruiter, and he’s an excellent quarterback developer. Texas arms him with an enviable war chest. While he shows a deft hand with quarterbacks, Sarkisian also instilled the line-of-scrimmage toughness the program needed. If Sarkisian stays at Texas for the long haul, then it’s a matter of when, not if, he delivers a national title.
3. Brian Kelly (LSU)
LSU needed more rocket fuel, so Kelly opened his wallet. His personal donation sparked NIL fundraising after last season. Kelly also opened his mind to more fully embracing transfers. The cash influx and mindset pivot resulted in Kelly compiling one of the nation’s best transfer hauls. What does he do with it? His LSU tenure has been marked with good quarterbacks and insufficient defense. Kelly’s been good, not great, at a program that expects greatness. Fixing the defense remains the bridge to greatness. The transfers should help.
4. Kalen DeBoer (Alabama)
DeBoer’s first season wasn’t a total bust – he beat LSU and Auburn – but it cannot be hailed a success. He lost to Vanderbilt and previously listless Oklahoma. We knew replacing the irreplaceable wouldn’t be easy. On the other hand, it must get better – and quickly. DeBoer’s teams accelerated in Year 2 at previous stops. His career .876 winning percentage says he can do this, but Alabama fans need to see him do it in the SEC. Hiring longtime wingman Ryan Grubb to run the offense was a wise redirect. The pairing helped take Washington to the national title game in 2023.
5. Lane Kiffin (Mississippi)
Kiffin became a face of stability and consistency. What a twist, eh? He’s the SEC’s third-longest-tenured active coach and the program’s best coach since Johnny Vaught. Armed with his best team last season, though, the Rebels wilted in tight moments. Is there a higher level for Kiffin at Ole Miss? It’s a fair question, but a question that shouldn’t overshadow his achievements. The Rebels are now a top-20 program, and they command a spot in the college football zeitgeist. Much of that is a credit to Kiffin.
6. Josh Heupel (Tennessee)
Heupel delivered Tennessee’s first playoff appearance last season, and that doesn’t even rank as his best accomplishment. He beat rival Alabama twice in four years. Heupel’s up-tempo offense puts opponents in conflict. That system, combined with his composure, proved just what Tennessee needed after the mess predecessor Jeremy Pruitt made. While it’s reasonable to wonder whether Heupel’s hit his ceiling, that ceiling exceeds what the Vols sniffed for two decades.
7. Eliah Drinkwitz (Missouri)
How rare are Missouri’s consecutive double-digit win seasons? Well, Gary Pinkel is the only coach other than Drinkwitz to pull it off. Drinkwitz can toggle between coach and lobbyist – a useful skillset in this era. Missouri’s NIL laws assist Drinkwitz’s instate recruiting. More importantly, he’s made Missouri a player in the transfer sweepstakes. When Drinkwitz’s tenure faced an inflection point, he gave up play-calling and hired an offensive coordinator. He deserves credit for enacting needed change, instead of digging in his heels.
8. Shane Beamer (South Carolina)
Beamer beat Clemson twice in the past three years. That counts for a lot. He hypes his guys up for big games, and South Carolina attained more consistency last season than it previously showed with Beamer. He’s a solid recruiter and effectively picks spots to land a punch in the portal. South Carolina experienced some low floors – call them basements – under past coaches Brad Scott, Lou Holtz and Will Muschamp. Beamer raised the floor and brought South Carolina to the playoff’s doorstep.
9. Mike Elko (Texas A&M)
While we stumbled over ourselves to applaud Elko’s efforts during his first season, something interesting happened: His team lost four of its last five. Elko’s eight-win debut holds up as an acceptable start. When paired with his Duke success, it’s fair to be bullish about his future. The Aggies still must develop their pass game, a holdover theme from the Jimbo Fisher era. Texas A&M attracts enough talented players to accelerate, but can Elko develop a strong SEC quarterback? That question lingers.
10. Mark Stoops (Kentucky)
Kirk Ferentz couldn’t retire fast enough for Stoops, an Iowa alumnus. Once the toast of the SEC, Stoops’ cachet erodes bit by bit. He delivered some commendable seasons, but he’s become stale, and staleness is the enemy of the NIL era. He’s in a tough spot coaching at basketball-first school in a football-driven conference, where every dollar counts. Stoops should be regarded as Kentucky’s best coach since Bear Bryant. His legacy will shine more than his ending.
11. Brent Venables (Oklahoma)
File Oklahoma’s raise and contract extension for Venables before last season among the all-time most unnecessary business moves. One year later, Venables is a bad season away from hot seat terrain. This program expects to be among the elite. With Venables, it’s struggled to attain mediocrity. The midnight hour approaches. Now, want the upside? Oklahoma stands to be one of the conference’s most improved teams after some splashy transfer grabs. With Venables’ job on the line, he’ll return to calling the defense, his strong suit.
12. Hugh Freeze (Auburn)
Freeze is like Katy Perry. Both were good once, but their best work occurred more than a decade ago, and they’re starting to come off like hangers-on, clinging by their fingertips to a world that left them behind. Credit Freeze for recruiting well, but a lot of coaches would recruit well at Auburn. He needs to coach and develop better. There’s enough talent on offense to produce more in 2025. This becomes a pivotal season for his tenure.
13. Clark Lea (Vanderbilt)
Credit Lea for seeing the transfer portal as a weapon and not a hindrance for Vanderbilt. His heady additions, starting with quarterback Diego Pavia, breathed life into a program that had flatlined. Consider Vanderbilt’s state before Lea: winless in 2020, while a friends-and-family crowd cheered a women’s soccer player making an extra point. Lea made Vanderbilt relevant. That’s a chore. Instituting staying power will be harder.
14. Sam Pittman (Arkansas)
Pittman became an effective bridge for Arkansas. He pulled the Razorbacks out of a Chad Morris-inspired wasteland and invigorated the masses by beating Texas in 2021 and firing up the jukebox. His peak is behind him, and he’s struggled to maintain roster consistency in the transfer era. It’s nearly time for Pittman’s bridge to connect to someone else.
15. Billy Napier (Florida)
Florida opted for another lap with Napier rather than hitting the reset button. The emergence of quarterback DJ Lagway, and Lagway’s steadfast support for Napier, helped the coach save his job, and Florida finished the season playing better than it ever had previously in his tenure. Florida was remarkably quiet in the transfer portal, and it still seems as if Napier and the Gators are playing with an old deck of cards. Napier will go as far as Lagway takes him.
16. Jeff Lebby (Mississippi State)
Lebby inherited a tough situation as the third coach in three years at a school where winning seasons don’t come easily. He failed to improve the situation in his first season. The more time passes, the more we’ll deepen our respect for what Dan Mullen and Mike Leach achieved at Mississippi State. If this doesn’t work for Lebby, he can return to being a good offensive coordinator. If this doesn’t work out for MSU, cue round of flush and repeat.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com. Follow him on X @btoppmeyer.