College Football Coaching Tiers: Where 116 coaches stand entering 2023
We spoke with coaches, agents and industry experts to sort every non-rookie FBS coach into eight tiers based on body of work.
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Vannini: James Franklin is the toughest coach to place. I would take him over most coaches in this group. He is at the top of this tier. But it’s hard to put him in Tier 2 on the same level with Harbaugh and Day when Franklin loses to those schools so frequently. He is 3-5 against Michigan and 1-8 against Ohio State.
Feldman: Franklin is the one guy in here I think should be bumped up a tier. I know that it feels like a lifetime ago, but he deserves a ton of credit for taking a Vanderbilt program that hadn’t finished in the Top 25 in more than 60 years to two Top 25 seasons in three years. And the Commodores haven’t had a winning season since he left, going 34-73. Then he took over a Penn State program gutted by hefty sanctions and won a Big Ten title in Year 3. He’s had four top-10 finishes in the past seven seasons and won 11 games four times, including last year, capped off by a Rose Bowl win over Utah. Franklin has recruited really well, and the Nittany Lions are set up to make a run at the CFP in the next two years. There are other really good coaches in this tier, but Franklin has done way more than most of them. I certainly put Franklin in the same category with Fickell, who did a tremendous job at Cincinnati, along with Day and Lincoln Riley, who took over much better situations in their first jobs.
