Highlighting the Best (and Worst) Coaching Performances of 2023

As we head down the home stretch of the regular season, it’s time to shine the light on each conference’s most and least impressive head coaches.

Forty names, games, teams and minutiae making news in college football, where Arch Manning Watch is now officially on in Austin:

First Quarter: Top Coaches-Gone-Wild Moments | Second Quarter: October Revivals

Third Quarter: Conference Coach of the Year (and Not Coach of the Year) Races

With five weeks of regular-season conference play left, it’s time to take a look at which coaches are doing the best work—and those who are not.

American Athletic Conference (20): Coach of the Year as of now: Can Mike Bloomgren of Rice be the early COY and on the hot seat at the same time? Yes. Bloomgren scored big in the transfer portal by landing former USC/Georgia/West Virginia quarterback J.T. Daniels, who leads the league in passing yards and efficiency. That’s led to a 2–1 start in league play after being picked to finish 12th in the 14-team league. The Owls are 4–3 overall, with a rivalry upset of Houston in a non-conference play. However, Rice has also provided Connecticut’s only win of the season, and Bloomgren is still looking for his first winning record in year six on the job.

Not COY: Mike Houston. East Carolina is 1–6 and winless against FBS competition. A downturn was expected after going 15–10 the past two seasons, but this has been a plummet.

Norvell’s fourth season in Tallahassee has been a breakthrough, with the Seminoles unbeaten through seven games :: Alicia Devine/Tallahassee Democrat/USA TODAY NETWORK

Atlantic Coast Conference (21): Coach of the Year as of now: Mike Norvell, Florida State. Much was expected of Norvell’s team, and thus far the Seminoles have delivered handsomely. This is a breaththrough season for the coach’s credibility. Norvell has crushed the portal the last couple of seasons, and turned that talent influx into a cohesive power. The Seminoles are working on an active streak of scoring at least 31 points in 13 straight games, which equals their current winning streak. Also in contention: Jeff Brohm of Louisville and Mike Elko of Duke.

Not COY: Dabo Swinney. Clemson has lost three of its first five ACC games, which last happened in 2010. The Garrett Riley reboot of the offense is not yielding results. The golden run from 2015 to ‘20 was destined to end sometime, and three straight seasons missing the College Football Playoff are a clear demarcation.

Big 12 (22): Coach of the Year as of now: Brent Venables, Oklahoma. Venables and the Sooners did their best to undercut their great start by flopping against Central Florida, but Gus Malzahn dialed up a sufficiently ridiculous two-point conversion play for the tie to allow Oklahoma to escape. The Sooners are vastly improved defensively and explosive offensively—but they need to button up the place kicking after missing four field goals in the last three games.

Not COY: Sonny Dykes. What he did at TCU last year was magical and will never be forgotten, but the drop-off from there to here has been rather severe. The Horned Frogs are 4–4 overall and 2–3 in the league, and coming off a 38-point bludgeoning at Kansas State.

Big Ten (23): Coach of the Year as of now: Jim Harbaugh has the best team at Michigan, but also the most active investigations (two of them, and the second one is getting uglier by the day). Ryan Day is fashioning a new identity with the current Ohio State team, but the current Buckeyes are a cut below other recent editions. So the choice here is Rutgers’s Greg Schiano, who has the most wins at the school in a season since 2014—and it’s still October. The Scarlet Knights’ 28.1 points per game would be their highest since ‘09 if it stands up.

Not COY: Tom Allen. Indiana (2–5) is winless against Power Five competition and needed four overtimes to defeat a 1–7 Akron team. Allen’s buyout and the school’s emphasis on basketball might be the only things that keep him around for 2024.

Conference USA (24): Coach of the Year as of now: In his first season, Jamey Chadwell has Liberty 7–0 and atop its new league. The Flames are 15th nationally in scoring and 11th in yards per play, copying and pasting Chadwell’s creative offense that he ran at Coastal Carolina. He inherited a healthy program from Hugh Freeze, but Chadwell knows what he’s doing. He’s 38–6 in his past four seasons as a head coach.

Not COY: Mike McIntyre, Florida International. McIntyre lost the Disappointment Bowl to Dana Dimel and UTEP, 27–14, on Oct. 14, dropping to 1–4 in league play.

Mid-American Conference (25): Coach of the Year as of now: Chuck Martin, Miami (Ohio). In his 10th season at Miami, does Martin have his best team? The RedHawks are 6–2, with an upset of Cincinnati, three double-digit conference wins and a close loss Saturday to the MAC’s top team, Toledo. Miami’s trip to play Ohio Saturday could go a long way toward determining who wins the MAC East.

Not COY: Mike Neu, Ball State. The Cardinals are one loss away from their seventh losing season in eight under Neu, It’s time for a change in Muncie.

Mountain West (26): Coach of the Year as of now: Give it to UNLV’s Barry Odom over Air Force’s Troy Calhoun, but let them settle in on the field in Colorado Springs Nov. 18. After driving 56 yards in the final minute for the winning field goal against Colorado State, the Rebels are bowl-eligible for the first time in a decade. Their 6–1 record is the best at the school since 1984, when UNLV went 11–2 but had to forfeit all the victories as part of NCAA sanctions for rules violations.

Not COY: Brady Hoke, San Diego State. After going 12–2 in 2021, it’s been steadily diminishing returns under Hoke in his second stint at the school. The Aztecs were 7–6 last year and are 3–5 this year, bottoming out (presumably) with a shutout loss to previously winless Nevada Saturday. They didn’t build that fancy new stadium to host debacles like that.

Whittingham and the Utes have won their last four games over USC, including three against Riley :: Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports

Pac-12 (27): Coach of the Year as of now: Give Utah’s Kyle Whittingham the nod over Washington’s Kalen DeBoer and Oregon State’s Jonathan Smith, with a lot of football left to play. Whittingham is the Jim Larrañaga of college football, eternally underrated and eternally fielding competitive teams. For this injury-riddled bunch to be 6–1 and in the thick of the league race is some of Whittingham’s best work.

Not COY: Lincoln Riley, USC. His team is soft. His attempt to deflect high expectations as somehow having been externally placed upon the Trojans is soft. His hiding of the players from the media after losing to Utah is soft. USC is not out of the Pac-12 race, but this doesn’t seem like a group with much resilience.

Southeastern Conference (28): Coach of the Year as of now: Eli Drinkwitz, Missouri. Nobody expected the Tigers to be playing huge SEC games in November, but that’s what they’ll be doing Nov. 4 at Georgia. At 7–1, Mizzou is coming off consecutive ladder-game victories over Kentucky and South Carolina — the kind of opponents it generally battles with for mid-pack status in the SEC East. Now the stakes going forward will be much higher. (Honorable mention to Nick Saban, who has pulled a fragile Crimson Tide team together since the loss to Texas and pushed it back toward the upper echelon of the sport.)

Not COY: Sam Pittman of Arkansas. The Razorbacks just scapegoated offensive coordinator Dan Enos, firing him after they scored three points in a loss to Mississippi State and dropped to 2–6. (In the heedless spending world of college football, Enos was given a three-year contract valued at $3.4 million. He made it eight games and could be owed as much as $2.8 million.) South Carolina’s Shane Beamer is a competitive second to Pittman here.

Sun Belt (29): Coach of the Year as of now: Curt Cignetti, James Madison. Just because the Dukes can’t play for the league title or go to a bowl game as a transitioning FBS member, that doesn’t mean Cignetti isn’t doing the best work. His undefeated team leads the nation in rushing defense, sacks and tackles for loss, with senior Jalen Green already racking up 13 sacks and 18 TFLs. This is the 62-year-old Cignetti’s 13th season as a college head coach, and he’s never had a losing record.

Not COY: Will Hall, Southern Mississippi. Holy Hattiesburg, the Golden Eagles are bad. They’re 1–6, winless against FBS competition, and coming off a 55–3 trampling from South Alabama. They’re 131st out of 133 teams nationally in yards allowed per play (7.12).