Players come and go in the world of college football, but its the head coaches that serve as the iconic faces of the game today. Hiring an elite head coach in his prime can be as significant for a college program as drafting an elite quarterback can be for an NFL franchise. One strong hire can result in a decade of dominance, while one false move can send a program into a tailspin in the blink of an eye.

Michigan is hoping it hired the man to lead the Maize and Blue back to its former glory in new head coach Jim Harbaugh, who was regarded as one of the NFL’s best head coaches the last four years. It remains to be seen whether or not Harbaugh can turn around the Wolverines, but there’s certainly been a precedent set by the best college coaches in the game today. Many of these men took over reeling programs and elevated them to new heights in a short amount of time.

The following are the five best coaching hires in college football in the last 15 years, and it’s easy to see how these five head coaches have shaped the college football landscape since the turn of the century.

5. Les Miles to LSU

When Nick Saban walked away from LSU to try his hand at the NFL just two years removed from the Tigers’ 2003 national title, many feared it would take years for the program to return to the prominence of the Saban era. As it turned out, the Tigers would hardly experience any drop-off at all upon hiring then-Oklahoma State coach Les Miles to take over the program. Miles lost 21 games in four years at OSU, including 16 in Big 12 play, but he’s won at least eight games in each of his first 10 seasons at LSU, and has only lost 29 games in that time, including just 24 in SEC play. The Mad Hatter brought LSU another national title in just his third year on the job, and he’s won two SEC titles and appeared in two BCS national championship games. Had LSU flopped on its first and only post-Saban hire, the program might still be struggling to rise back to the top of the daunting SEC West. Instead, Miles picked up right where Saban left off, making the hire one of the biggest coaching moves of the last 15 years.

4. Mark Dantonio to Michigan State

Prior to Mark Dantonio’s arrival in East Lansing in 2007, Michigan State was widely known as a basketball school with little chance to make a serious run at a Big Ten title on the gridiron. The Spartans hired Dantonio after he posted a 18-17 record in three years as the head coach at Cincinnati, including an 11-11 record in Big East play, and few expected him to elevate the program to the perennial conference title contender it’s become. Dantonio has led MSU to bowl appearances in each of his eight seasons on the job, and he’s 4-4 in those bowl games, including a Rose Bowl victory. After suffering a blowout loss to arch-rival Michigan in 2007, the Spartans have won six of the last seven meetings in the rivalry by an average margin of 16 points per game. Tom Izzo no longer the only face of Michigan State athletics, and Dantonio’s emergence in the Big Ten ranks his hire among the best the nation has seen in recent memory.

3. Pete Carroll to USC

When Pete Carroll arrived at USC in 2001, he was a mediocre NFL head coach forced out of the New England Patriots organization in favor of current head coach Bill Belichick. By the time he left USC to return to the NFL in 2010, he’d emerged as the best college coach of the last decade, and had led USC back to its former glory as one of the titans of college football. Carroll won at least 10 games in seven consecutive seasons from 2002-2008, and although the 2005 season was voided from the record books due to NCAA infractions, he remains the last coach in the FBS to boast back to back national titles. Carroll coached three Heisman Trophy winners in a four-year span (Carson Palmer, Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush) and coached four different quarterbacks that went on to play in the NFL. There wasn’t a better coach in the country during those years than Carroll, and he’s carried that success back into the NFL, winning Super Bowl XLVIII as coach of the Seattle Seahawks.

2. Urban Meyer to Florida/Ohio State

Urban Meyer has led two of college football’s traditional powers to glory in the last 15 years, and his hires at both schools rank among the most significant in college football in that time. Florida hired Meyer before the 2005 season after he posted a record of 22-2 in two seasons at Utah (his 2004 Utes squad was the first team from outside the BCS conferences to reach a BCS bowl game). He won at least nine games in each of his first five seasons at Florida, and led the Gators to two national titles in 2006 and 2008, the program’s first since Steve Spurrier’s Gators won it all in 1996. Meyer also recruited and coached college football legend Tim Tebow, who played a major role in Meyer’s success at UF. But the head coach proved he could win anywhere when, after a year of retirement to focus on his health and family, he returned to the college game as the head coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes. He’s just days removed from his third career national title, his first with the Buckeyes and OSU’s first since 2002. In three years in Columbus, Meyer has posted a record of 38-3, and he’s yet to lose a game in Big Ten play (23-0). Florida was reeling from the Ron Zook years when Meyer led the Gators back to glory; OSU was facing major NCAA sanctions before Meyer resurrected the Buckeyes. Both hires will be regarded as critical hires not just for the programs involved, but for the entire landscape of college football in this century.

1. Nick Saban to Alabama

After a failed two-year experiment in the NFL, Saban returned to college to take over the Alabama Crimson Tide, one of the pillars of college football that experienced unprecedented mediocrity in the early 2000s under head coach Mike Shula. It didn’t take Saban long to revive the program. Since finishing with a 7-6 record in 2007 (many of those wins have since been wiped away) Saban has led Alabama to seven straight 10-win seasons, including three national titles, three SEC titles and six BCS or New Year’s Six bowls. He coached Alabama’s first and only Heisman Trophy winner (Mark Ingram) and has brought in more top-flight high school and junior college talent than any coach in America in the last decade. Saban grew Alabama from a program predicated on the past to the nation’s most dominant force in no time at all, and he’s shown no signs of relenting or losing interest amid the run of success. No coach or program is more accomplished than Saban and Alabama, which is why their marriage in 2007 remains college football’s most significant coaching hire of the 2000s.