Ranking college football's top coaches: Can Curt Cignetti win this title too?
Get the Sports newsletter
Daily sports — scores, transfers, the storylines from the leagues you actually follow. Free.
- Curt Cignetti topped ESPN's coach rankings with 94 points and five of 10 first-place votes, becoming the first head coach to win a national title within his first two seasons at a school since Gene Chizik at Auburn in 2010
- Cignetti went 27-2 at Indiana in two seasons — two more wins than any other coach in his first two years at a school since the AP poll debuted in 1936 — transforming a program that had a .419 winning percentage with no 10-win seasons from 1887 to 2023 into a .931 juggernaut
- Kirby Smart ranked second with 90 points and four first-place votes, holding 117-21 career record at Georgia with two national championships, four SEC titles and five College Football Playoff appearances
- Ryan Day landed at No. 3 with 77 points, his .872 career winning percentage ranking third in major college football history (minimum 50 games) and trailing only Walter Camp and Knute Rockne
- Marcus Freeman checked in at No. 4 (68 points), with Notre Dame going 16-7 against AP-ranked opponents under his watch — second best in the FBS, behind only Georgia's 19-6 mark
- Dan Lanning rounded out the top five (61 points) at Oregon, which is 48-8 since 2022 with 10-plus wins in all four of his seasons, though a 1-5 record against teams that reached the national title game tempers the dominance
Why it matters: The vote underscores how dramatically Indiana's program has been remade: Cignetti delivered more wins in his first two years (27) than any coach since the AP poll began, and the Hoosiers' .931 winning percentage over that span reflects a transformation from college football's all-time losingest program into a national champion — one voter, Bill Connelly, placed Day at No. 8, a notable outlier that could signal lingering skepticism about Day's late-game coaching.
