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After Ryan Day broke through, let’s rank the 5 coaches most likely to become first-time national champs
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The club of national championship coaches was at 3 entering 2024, and it’s still at 3.
Wait, what? Didn’t Ryan Day just join the club as a first-time winner? Yes, but Mack Brown was fired at UNC, which means that Day, Dabo Swinney and Kirby Smart are the only active coaches with a title.
We’ve had consecutive first-time winners, though Jim Harbaugh bolted for the NFL after his breakthrough victory. Naturally, everyone wants to know who’s next.
Next coach to win first national championship
I ranked the 5 coaches that are knocking on the door of a title:
5. Kalen DeBoer, Alabama
Kalen DeBoer deserves to be on this list because while Alabama lost 4 games for the first time since Year 1 of the Nick Saban era, this is still someone who is 34-7 with a 13-2 record vs. AP Top 25 teams in his 3 seasons as a Power Conference head coach. Unlike coaches like James Franklin and Lane Kiffin, DeBoer already coached in a title game. That matters, as does the fact he’s 6-1 vs. AP Top 10 teams in those 3 seasons. Against Steve Sarkisian, Dan Lanning, Brian Kelly and Kirby Smart, DeBoer is a combined 7-0. That’s why even after a down year, Alabama has the 6th-best odds to win a national title at 14-to-1.
The biggest hurdle for DeBoer will be establishing his offensive identity the way that he did at Washington, and doing so in the shadow of the G.O.A.T. He has a much better shot of doing that after reuniting with Ryan Grubb, but ultimately, DeBoer’s tenure in Tuscaloosa will be defined by whether he can win a title. Unlike some of the others on this list, he might not have as long of a runway to do that.
4. Brian Kelly, LSU
Kelly has been in this camp for a decade-plus, and understandably so. He has more wins than any active coach, and until 2024, no coach had a longer active streak of 10-win seasons. That ended in 2024, but there’s no reason LSU should be anything less than a national title contender in 2025. Kelly has his elite returning starting quarterback, he has his $2.5 million defensive coordinator and a portal class that ranks among the best in the sport. I argued that even including Kelly’s time at Notre Dame, this is the most “no excuses” season of his career.
All 3 of Kelly’s LSU predecessors had a ring by the end of Year 4. That was always going to be the standard that he was judged by when he left Notre Dame. He now has all of his ducks in a row. Now all that Kelly needs is to beat an AP Top 5 team for the first time since the 2020 COVID season.
3. Marcus Freeman, Notre Dame
Yes, Notre Dame continues to operate in a unique world. A national title berth didn’t necessarily change that. But Freeman has changed the Irish’s ceiling. How do we know that if he can make as many national title appearances as Kelly in South Bend? Well, Freeman has more AP Top-5 wins (3) than Notre Dame had from 1999-2021 (2). One of those was against Georgia, which marked Notre Dame’s 7th win vs. an AP Top-25 team in 2024 alone. Freeman has 14 such wins in 3 years at Notre Dame, which is as many as Kelly had in his last 7 seasons on the job.
But this isn’t just about Freeman vs. Kelly. This is about Freeman winning 13 consecutive games to get to a national title, knowing that anything less than that and Notre Dame’s 2024 season would be remembered for the Northern Illinois loss. He’s made exceptional coordinator hires, and while he’s only credited with signing 1 5-star recruit from the high school level, Notre Dame still ranked No. 9 in the 247sports talent composite entering the year. Freeman will be 40 by the time that next year’s national championship rolls around, but don’t discount how close he came to being the first 30-something national title-winning coach since Danny Ford in 1981.
2. Dan Lanning, Oregon
The guy is still in his 30s and he had 3 consecutive seasons with double-digit wins. He is 24-3 in conference play as a coach in 2 different leagues, including a 9-0 mark in Big Ten play in 2024. Like Freeman, Lanning ran into the Ohio State buzzsaw. Oh well. When we look back on the 2024 season, failing to beat Ohio State in the Playoff won’t be seen as some indictment of a coach’s abilities. Lanning has 6 career losses as a head coach, 4 of which came vs. teams that played in a national championship that season.
Oregon withstood the Alabama vacancy when it was connected to Lanning, so unlike his 2 predecessors in Eugene, there’s legitimate hope that the 38-year-old is in it for the long haul. That’s good news for someone who continues to pile on top-5 high school classes and elite portal classes. Sure, Lanning might eventually come face-to-face with his 0-3 mark vs. DeBoer, but it’s worth noting that all of those losses came against Washington. It’s also worth noting that Lanning’s 3-year start happened with 2 different offensive coordinators and 2 different quarterbacks. With his 3rd different quarterback in 2025, Lanning’s squad is still 4th in the national title odds.
Nothing should be standing in Lanning’s way of a title in the latter half of the decade.
1. Steve Sarkisian, Texas
I’ll be stunned if Sarkisian never wins a title at Texas. And sure, maybe he’ll have to give into some Ryan Day-like discourse about his play-calling duties, but eventually, Sarkisian will get it done. On the heels of consecutive trips to the Playoff semifinals, Sarkisian is leading a team that’s on any short list of national-title contenders. No, that’s not just Arch Manning, who might have 2 years as a starter instead of the 1 that everyone assumes. At the root of that title window is having what should be the best returning defense in America, which was the steadying force of the 2024 squad. That’s what puts Sarkisian past someone like Lincoln Riley, who hasn’t found the championship solution on defense. Sarkisian, Lanning and Freeman all deserve immense credit for elite coordinator hires.
But Sarkisian’s offensive acumen is second to none. That’s ultimately going to be at the root of whenever he wins a title at Texas. Is challenging as it is to get back to the semifinals in this era of the Playoff, there’s no reason why Sarkisian can’t make that happen as soon as 2025.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
