Ohio State coach Ryan Day spent the weekend celebrating the program’s ninth national championship, a crowning achievement for a group that had operated like one of the best teams in the country all year and then played some of its best football in the biggest moments with a challenging run through the College Football Playoff. The Buckeyes are a worthy champion to represent both the season as a whole and the first-ever 12-team format, but it was also a huge piece of affirmation for Day as one of the sport’s best coaches in this moment.
Already boasting one of the most gaudy winning percentages, Day was experiencing a huge disconnect between his record (now 70-10 overall and 46-5 against Big Ten opponents) and the discussions around his job performance. The goals at Ohio State are to beat Michigan, win Big Ten championships and compete for national championships. With a losing streak to the Wolverines that extended to four games in November, the pressure was on for the playoff run. Our greatest competitors show their strength in moments of adversity, and Day won over those doubters with the work done to get the Buckeyes ready for a redemption run in the postseason.
Because there are so few active coaches with national championships, winning your first carries more weight than ever when we are ranking or debating the top coaches in college football. Day had the on-paper resume worthy of more respect than he probably got, facing the “handicap” of leading a program with more talent and resources than most everyone else in the country. Now, with the title run, he’s a made man in Ohio.
For a while, the national championship-winning coach being a first-time winner was not a regular occurrence. The success of Nick Saban, Urban Meyer and Dabo Swinney left us with just four first-time winners between 2008-2020 (Gene Chizik, Jimbo Fisher, Dabo Swinney, Ed Orgeron). Kirby Smart’s first title in 2021 ushered in a run of three first-time winners in four years with Smart’s back-to-back win in 2022 as the only repeat. Now, with so many ring-holding coaches out of the game, the odds are actually in favor of getting more first-time winners in the future.
There are several coaches at varying stages of their career that, like Ryan Day, have a strong reputation but are just lacking the game’s biggest prize in order to solidify their position as one of the top names in the sport. With an eye on the outlook for 2025 and beyond, as well respect for the work that’s already been done, here are five names we’ve circled as the next coaches poised to win their first title.
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Steve Sarkisian, Texas
Two years in a row, Texas had made it to the College Football Playoff semifinals. In each of those games, the Longhorns have been knocking at the door of a game-tying or game-winning score in the final moments. We don’t even play the games about Texas being “back” because, under Sarkisian’s guidance, the program returned to the desired status of competing for championships on an annual basis. He built the roster up to prepare them for the move to the SEC and showed their readiness with an appearance in the SEC Championship Game in Year 1. Given the recruiting success, there’s not much of a reason to think Texas will be outside of that top tier of contenders to win the league anytime soon.
Then there’s the obvious, immediate future of Texas football and the possibilities that could come from the Arch Manning era. Through two years we have seen flashes of his athleticism and play-making but rarely the full offense being placed in his hands. A former five-star prospect with all the expectations of joining his relatives in the NFL one day, Manning will be the biggest star of 2025 and Texas will be a national title contender. To zoom out and view Sarkisian’s tenure in Austin is to realize that this has actually been a healthy build with a steady trajectory. The win total has improved every single season, and even when the team’s depth has been tested by injuries and NFL Draft exits, they have not slipped from this new standard. Sarkisian built the team from the lines of scrimmage out, and now that rock-solid foundation supports a superstar quarterback. Texas might not win it all in 2025, but the expectation is that Sarkisian will (or should) win a ring soon.
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James Franklin, Penn State
One of the most consistent coaches without a College Football Playoff appearance finally broke through, and Franklin did not just make the CFP but came a couple plays short of getting a shot at the national championship. The 27-24 loss to Notre Dame in the semifinals stings, but it has spurred a commitment to 2025 that makes the Nittany Lions as much of a national title contender as they have been since Franklin arrived prior to 2014. Quarterback Drew Allar, the stud running back duo of Nick Singleton and Kaytron Allen and many more of the key contributors for 2024’s success have committed to returning to Happy Valley and are challenged to take the next step after a breakthrough season.
Franklin’s on-paper body of work at Penn State is not as overwhelming as Day’s seemingly outlier winning percentage, but among coaches from this era, he is undeniably one of the most consistent. Since the start of 2016, there have been just two seasons at Penn State that did not include nine or more regular-season wins — and one of those was the COVID-shortened 2020 campaign. That nine-year run has included five top-10 finishes in the AP Top 25 poll, four seasons with 11 or more wins, a Big Ten title in 2016 and a Big Ten runner-up finish in 2024. If you want to argue that Sarkisian has Texas knocking on the door thanks to the last two years, Franklin’s argument is that he has been consistently knocking on the door of national title contention for a decade and in 2025 will return key pieces from a group that got closer than any other to winning it all.
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Marcus Freeman, Notre Dame
Recruiting efforts and player acquisition in general is the No. 1 building block for a national champion; no title winner in the modern era has gotten to the top of the mountain with stacking year-over-year success on the recruiting trail. And while we think of the top-end talent as being the real difference maker, winning a national championship in the modern era requires competitive depth like never before. Coaches can’t just lock down stars at all the starting positions, they need to be able to rotate players through the regular season and trust the reserves enough so that injuries don’t derail the title aspirations of any given season.
What Marcus Freeman and his staff have been able to do in terms of evaluation, recruiting and development allowed Notre Dame to endure waves of seemingly season-changing injures during the 2024 campaign and still make all the way to the national championship game. Inside the cliche of the “next man up” mentality was a real trust and belief in the young players forced into action because of injuries, and the way those players performed (and improved) throughout the season highlighted a strong operation on the sideline and behind the scenes. Freeman’s recruiting impact was first seen during his arrival as a defensive coordinator and has continued as a head coach, and though his body of work is limited, a 33-10 overall record with three top-20 finishes in three years points to him being in that position of knocking on the door every year.
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With Notre Dame’s returning talent for 2025 and the outlook for the future, the Fighting Irish will be expected to be playoff contention every year and once they get there Freeman has shown — again, in a very small sample size — to be one of the best at managing and preparing his team for ups and downs and playoff football at the college level.
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Dan Lanning, Oregon
While Ohio State spent the weekend celebrating its national championship, the Big Ten champions of 2024 are hard at work arranging the pieces to make sure they remain at the top of the sport for years to come. Lanning is starting to build a Ryan Day-like profile in terms of having an eye-popping record (35-6 overall, 24-3 against conference opponents), overwhelming talent and no real “bad” losses, but as each season concludes, the hunger for a national title in Eugene will become even more intense. Of Lanning’s six losses, all of them were to ranked teams and four came against a team that would go on to play for or win the national championship later that season.
The Big Ten championship win against Penn State marks a huge step forward for a program that had fallen just short of winning the Pac-12 in their final two years in the league. Now it’s time for Lanning to build on this year’s success and reload for another run in 2025. As long as Oregon continues to accumulate talent at a level that rivals the best programs in the country they will start every season being considered a College Football Playoff contender. The next step for Lanning, like it was for Day, is getting your team over the hump in the postseason and across the finish line for a title that would affirm his status as one of the top coaches in the country.
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Sherrone Moore, Michigan
There are dozens of coaches with more head-coaching experience who have gotten closer to winning a national championship as a head coach, but Moore has Michigan much closer to getting back to the top than some may realize. As schools and programs modernize their operation for the NIL era, we have seen a huge boost in recruiting success from some traditional powers that have long had spending power potential but not always directed those funds as explicitly towards player acquisition. Flipping five-star quarterback Bryce Underwood from LSU is the headline that will power the positivity heading into 2025, but I think the roster quality on display at the end of the season that shows a group that really was a decent offense away from remaining in the Big Ten title race.
Michigan finished the year without some of its key playmakers on defense yet also finished the year with wins against Ohio State and Alabama, breaking the Buckeyes’ hearts in Columbus and then stifling Jalen Milroe and the Crimson Tide in the bowl game. The Wolverines lost 13 NFL Draft picks off last year’s title team and were dealing with injury issues throughout the season, yet the defense still held five of their final six opponents under 21 points including those 13-10 and 19-13 wins against Ohio State and Alabama, respectively, at the end of the season.
What we’re saying is there is reason to believe the foundation of this roster is still solid, and the need for an offensive spark may be addressed by the arrival of a quarterback talent who has program-changing potential. That’s a team that should not be overlooked for playoff contention in the next couple of years, and a coach who could very well win his first title (as a head coach at least) even before some coaches with more experience on the resume.
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Brian Kelly, LSU
We discussed this topic on the Cover 3 Podcast, and Bud Elliott mentioned that Kelly might have just seen a title window pass. Jayden Daniels’ two years in Baton Rouge were not without successes, notably an SEC Championship Game appearance in 2022 and the quarterback’s Heisman Trophy run in 2023. And it looked like the pieces were in place for a run this year as highly touted quarterback Garrett Nussmeier took over with an offensive line bookended by a pair of NFL Draft tackles. After beating South Carolina and Ole Miss, the Tigers entered late October firmly in the SEC title and College Football Playoff race. Then a three-game losing streak derailed those title efforts, and now LSU has to reload on the offensive line and some key skill positions looking for a bounce back in 2025. Maybe some of the best teams — like the ones with all of the NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year finalists — were Kelly’s best shot to win a title, and losing Bryce Underwood to Michigan certainly changes the talking points for LSU’s future.
But then I remembered that LSU has won three national championships under three different coaches in the 21st century, and that’s not to say that anyone can win in Baton Rouge, but there is certainly enough institutional momentum to make sure that whoever is in charge has what they need to win. Kelly has been in BCS National Championship Games and made College Football Playoff appearances already, and while he’s yet to do so at LSU, the odds are good he will have a team talented enough to make the CFP most years.
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Kalen DeBoer, Alabama
DeBoer already coached in the national championship game once, and with his management of the team during Washington’s memorable 2023 run he showed he can push the right buttons in pressure situations with a contender. He’s also got the advantages that come with being at Alabama, which is why there was so much optimism heading into the season as one of the winningest coaches around takes over a program with more resources than any other stop in his career. There were some major disappointments at the end of the season, like missing out on the College Football Playoff and falling short against Michigan in the bowl game, but this was still a Crimson Tide team that was No. 7 in the country on the morning of Nov. 23 with a realistic path to the SEC Championship Game. Why the Crimson Tide couldn’t finish the job is one of many concerns for the coach and team heading into 2025, but in the big picture, everything is set up for Alabama to continually field a playoff contender.
The key for DeBoer will be whether he can continue the delicate balance of putting his imprint on Alabama football without losing what made Alabama football great under Nick Saban. Because before Saban, there was a decade of Alabama football with just one SEC championship (1999) and lots of middle-of-the-pack finishes in the SEC. It is not easy for the modern mind to consider a world where Alabama is not among the most important and successful football programs in the country, but it has existed. Luckily for DeBoer it was before most of today’s players were born, so selling success on the recruiting trail might not be a problem. As long as DeBoer keeps the talent acquisition portion up to the standard set by his predecessor, he’s got the coaching chops to help guide a deep playoff run.