With few exceptions, the opinions on head college football coaches vary widely. Is Penn State’s James Franklin really good or is he very overrated? USC’s Lincoln Riley was great at Oklahoma but has struggled at USC so far. Is he no longer a good coach or just needs a little more time to align program resources and so what grade does he get? And how do we grade Wisconsin’s Luke Fickell who was the A+/Best of the hiring cycle 3 years ago, but is under .500 after two years with the Badgers?
Often emotions and perceptions of coach’s personalities dictate how fans view a coach. In this article, I am going to grade all Big Ten coaches in their current jobs only on what some key statistics tell us. I could analyze this on many dimensions but am really focused here on what the stats say about winning football games with the strongest emphasis on Big Ten conference game results vs recent history.
The data in the table below summarizes the key statistics I gathered and it’s intent is to grade the coach STRICTLY on his performance in his current head coach position. For example, Lincoln Riley’s grade is only based on his 3 years and 26-14 overall record at USC, even though his career Division 1 coaching record is listed (81-24) and includes his time at Oklahoma.
Also, the shade of cells indicates relative performance. In general, here are the meanings of the color coding:
- Deep Green means “very good/great” performance
- Light Green means “good” performance
- Light Tan means “poor/below average” performance
- Deep Tan means “bad” performance
Evaluating a college coach is much different than the NFL where the goal of the league it to create as much parity as possible making comparing overall team records a mostly “apples-to-apples” comparison. College football is definitively NOT set up this way. Certain schools like Ohio State and Michigan have inherent big advantages over other schools in financial funding and stability, facilities, more ready access to talent, and reputation which helps recruiting, among other factors.
Given this unbalanced playing field and greatly varied school performance, my coaching grades are mostly based on how each coach has performed in Big Ten conference games (in winning percentage), compared to recent team Big Ten conference performance over the Prior 5 Years and Prior 15 Years in the middle-highlighted columns (i.e. Record vs Prior 5 Yrs).
For example, Oregon’s Dan Lanning grades out well mostly due to his conference record of 24-4 (86%), which is 20 percentage points better than the prior 5-year conference record for Oregon (at 27-14 or 66%) and 12 percentage points better than Oregon’s prior 15-year conference record (at 96-35 or 73%).
I also factor in each coach’s current position Big Ten bowl record as well as current position Overall Record to some extent, though I don’t put less weight on this since school’s non-conference schedules vary so much and tend to be mostly “easy wins”.
Another reality to consider is the small sample sizes of so many of these coaches. Half (9 of 18) of the 18 Big Ten coaches have 2 years of experience or less even including their years in the former Pac 12 conference. Therefore, for so many of these coaches a poor grade does not mean they can’t get the job done. Even one good year can totally change the grade since it’s based on pure data.
Data for Grading Big Ten Football Coaches Entering 2025
Notes: These are not 2024 grades but grades over their entire current Big Ten school tenure; Coaches in Bold have won Big Ten titles; Coaches in Blue font have won a National Championship; For the new Pac 12 schools we include their schools Pac 12 records in the data.
Let’s look at the coaches within four tiers – A Grade coaches, B Grades, C Grades and D/F Grades. I am leaving new Purdue coach Barry Odom out of this since he has yet to coach a game, but you can see his career D1 record and how Purdue coaches have done the past 5 and 15 years in conference games.
Also below is a link to my Mid-Season coaching report card article published in late October.
Big 10 Football Mid-Season Report Card – Big Jeff’s Football
The A Grade Coaches (4)
- Indiana: Curt Cignetti A+
- Ohio State: Ryan Day A
- Oregon: Dan Lanning A
- Illinois; Brett Bielema A
Right now, the data says Indiana’s Curt Cignetti is really the King of Big Ten coaches. The Indiana football program is infamously the losingest D1 football program in all of college football and has the worst history of any Big Ten team. With the exception of a few brief periods of winning (i.e. Bill Mallory in the 1980’s and Tom Allen in 2019-2020), Indiana football has been frankly pathetic.
Going 8-1 in conference and taking Indiana to the first 12-team college playoffs was truly a minor miracle. Even though they were aided by the easiest Big Ten schedule, they impressed by compiling a record that included the largest average margin of victory in the nation. It’s only a one-year sample, but Cignetti’s 89% Big Ten win rate crushed Indiana’s prior 5-year record by 56 percentage points and the prior 15-year record by 63 percentage points.
Incredible. This is the definition of an A+ grade at IU. Cignetti also has a current 83% overall career D1 win rate indicating he is unlikely just a one hit wonder. While it’s unrealistic to expect Indiana to come close to winning 11 games, Cignetti has a good chance to make the Hoosiers a perennial bowl team.
Ohio State’s Ryan Day went from some wanting to fire him after the upset Michigan loss to winning the National Championship. And by all accounts from the rest of the data, Day deserves an A. He has a 90% conference win rate, with 4 of his 5 losses of course coming at the hands of the Wolverines. But that makes him 47-1 against the rest of the Big Ten at a time when the Big Ten has been overall very strong.
Given how great prior coach Urban Meyer performed, it’s hard to raise the winning rate but Day has done exactly that winning at a 5-percentage point clip better than the 85% of the prior 15-years before his tenure and matching the prior 5-year record attained by Meyer. Also, Day’s 70-10 and 88% overall win rate ranks third all-time among division one coaches with at least 75 games behind only Knute Rockne and Walter Camp.
Could a team have any better regular season in a new conference than Oregon’s Dan Lanning? The Ducks came in and mostly dominated the Big Ten winning the conference and going unbeaten at 13-0 after beating Penn State in the Big Ten Championship game. Lanning completed his third season in Eugene and has gone 24-4 for a stellar 86% conference win rate, which is a 20 percent point rate better than the prior 5 years for Oregon and a 12 percent rate better rate than the prior 15 years.
Lanning is one of only three current Big Ten coaches to have won a Big Ten title. He is also 2-1 in Bowl games but unfortunately that includes the surprising 41-21 blowout Rose Bowl loss to Ohio State in the 2024 playoff quarterfinals. It was a sour way to end a great year, but Lanning easily earns an A and is right “on track” given even Kirby Smart and Ryan Day, who are likely considered the top 2 current college coaches, both won their first National Titles in their 6th years.
The final coach earning an “A” is Illinois’ Brett Bielema who just completed a surprisingly good season in his 4th year at Illinois going 6-3 in conference, 10-3 overall, beating South Carolina in the Citrus Bowl and finishing 20th in the final rankings. And expectations are really high for next year as they return the majority of their starters and Illinois ranks in most prognosticators “way too early” 2025 season Top 25 rankings.
Bielema’s stats in fact are second best in the Big Ten only to Curt Cignetti with his 50% (18-18) conference win rate, which is 30 and 23 percentage points respectively better than the prior 5-year and 15-year for previous Illinois coaches. Illinois hasn’t sustained success in the modern era, but they could under Bielema who clearly knows how to run winning programs, as evidenced by his lifetime 61% winning rate.
The B Grade Coaches (3)
- Penn State: James Franklin B+
- Minnesota: TJ Fleck B+
- Iowa: Kirk Ferentz B
Now that Ryan Day has won a National Title, Penn State’s James Franklin takes over as the coach with likely the most widely varied opinion on his coaching acumen. He often makes the “most overrated coach” lists, but others believe he is a really good coach who is just on the brink of being considered great.
At 64-33 Franklin has a 66% conference win rate, which is 4th best among current Big Ten coaches, and is 1 and 8 percentage points respectively better than the prior 5-year and 15-year win rates for previous Penn State coaches. His career win percent is 69%. and he is 6-6 in bowl games. All these figures speak to him being better than average and so I give him a B+ grade, though you could convince me he deserves a B grade.
What my numbers don’t show and why he is so often criticized is despite consistently beating the teams Penn State is supposed to, he fails in the biggest games sporting a 1-15 record vs. Top 5 opponents, 4-20 vs. Top 10 teams, and 15-29 vs. top 25 teams. Plus, he is 4-17 vs Michigan and Ohio State. I would give him a “D” as a big game coach, but he has a chance to change that perception with a very talented and experienced team coming back in 2025.
Another coach with a B+ grade who also has a widely varying reputation is Minnesota’s PJ Fleck who sports a 34-36 conference record over 8 seasons for the Golden Gophers. He is a strong 5 and 11 percentage points respectively better than the prior 5-year and 15-year win rates for previous Golden Gopher coaches. Fleck gets high marks for his Big Ten best 6-0 record in Bowl games as well and he has a 60% win rate at Minnesota overall.
Minnesota rarely is in the top half of the Big Ten recruiting rankings, so his record proves he is good at developing players and being consistently competitive every year behind a culture based on good defense and running the football.
The final in this group is the longest tenured head coach in Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz who just completed his 26th season in Iowa City after taking over for long-time coach of 20 years Hayden Fry. Ferentz is 128-89 in conference for a 59%-win rate which is 10 and 0 percentage points respectively better than the prior 5-year and 15-year win rates achieved by Fry. Clearly Fry had fallen off in his last 5 years at Iowa and Ferentz in the long-run has pretty much maintained Fry’s conference winning percent.
Consistency is the definition of both Iowa football and Ferentz who is 10-11 in bowl games having only not made a bowl in 5 of his 26 years. His overall win rate is 62%, so overall I feel these numbers deserve a B- for Ferentz which still places him as 7th best of 18 coaches.
In sum, only 7 coaches of 18 get B level grades or better by my criteria. This highlights how top heavy the conference has been with the blue-blood programs mostly dominating.
The C Grade Coaches (5)
- Northwestern: David Braun C
- Maryland: Mike Locksley C
- Michigan: Sherrone Moore C-
- USC: Lincoln Riley C-
- Rutgers: Greg Schiano C-
Now we get into the C grades or more poorly performing coaches but again, only strictly based on my metrics. First up is Northwestern’s David Braun who had a surprisingly good 5-4 (8-5 overall) first Big Ten season, followed by a 2-7 conference record clunker in year 2. After two years, Braun is 7-11 for a 39% win rate which is minus 1 and minus 9 percentage points respectively worse than the prior 5-year and 15-year win rates for previous Northwestern coaches.
Overall Braun is 12-13 at Northwestern but did win his only bowl game at Northwestern in Year 1, so I give him a C grade. Given the higher academic standards at Northwestern, it should be harder to win there but going back to Gary Barnett’s success in the 1990’s, the Wildcats have found good coaches who have identified formulas for success. Prior coach Pat Fitzgerald even had Northwestern in two Big Ten title games coming out of the Big Ten West, but with the demise of divisions and entry of the tougher former Pac 12 programs, I think it will be much more difficult for the Cats to achieve winning seasons.
Maryland’s Mike Locksley is 15-35 or 30% in Big Ten conference games after six years in College Park, which is 0 and minus 5 percentage points respectively worse than the prior 5-year and 15-year win rates for previous Maryland coaches. His overall record at Maryland is 32-36 meaning he is an amazing 17-1 in non-conference games which includes a perfect 3-0 record in bowl games. This speaks to both Maryland’s typically very weak non-conference scheduling but also the difficulty of residing in the Big Ten East which includes playing blue-bloods Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State every year.
The bottom line is Locksley has not won many conference games and has maintained a similar to slightly worse conference record than prior coaches and thus gets a C grade despite his 3-0 bowl record. The pattern is early September non-conference wins to raise expectations, only to see disappointment once the Big Ten season commences.
Also working against Locksley’s reputation is his very poor overall 35-67 (34%) coaching record. But he recruits well so it’s fair to give him more time to potentially get better results now that Maryland no longer faces the rugged former Big Ten West teams every year.
First year Michigan coach Sherrone Moore had a true roller coaster ride his first year going 8-5 overall that included an all-time great upset at Ohio State and a bowl win over Top 25 Alabama the last two games. But earlier in the year, despite having potentially five 2025 NFL first round draft picks on the team, Michigan was a middling 6-5 team after starting the year ranked in the Top 10 and coming off their National Title. The main culprit was completely blowing management of their quarterback room after losing 2024 NFL first round pick JJ McCarthy.
Moore’s 5-4 conference record and 56%-win rate is minus 26 and minus 14 percentage points respectively worse than the prior 5-year and 15-year win rates for Michigan. And Michigan finished 8-5 overall. The numbers say Moore should get more like in the D range, but I am going with a C- giving strong credit for a huge rivalry and bowl win. But it’s mostly impossible to strongly evaluate a coach after one year.
Next up is the national top “home run” hire of the 2022 hiring cycle, USC’s Lincoln Riley who got off to a very promising start in 2022 with a 8-1 Pac 12 and overall 11-3 record. But he’s 15-11 the past two years with a 3-year conference record of 17-10 for a 63% win rate, which is minus 3 and minus 5 percentage points respectively worse than the prior 5-year and 15-year win rates for previous already disappointing USC coaching records.
Riley is 2-1 in bowl games and 26-14 (65%) overall at USC which is very underwhelming, all adding up to a C- grade. His 81-24 for 77%-win rate overall coaching record that includes great success at Oklahoma speaks to what I still feel is great potential success at USC.
The final C level coach is Rutger’s Greg Schiano who completed his 5th season in his second tenure with the Scarlet Knights. Schiano is only 13-32 for a 29% win rate in conference which is plus 20 percentage points better than the prior 5-year win rate but minus 6 percentage points worse than the prior 15-year win rates for Rutgers teams. The 5-year rate improvement is only due to how terrible Rutgers was (4-40) mostly due to Chris Ash’s extremely weak 3 plus year reign where he went 3-25 in the Big Ten.
Schiano is 1-1 in bowl games and 26-34 (43%) overall in this Rutgers tenure and has a 94-101 overall record. I give Schiano a C- mostly because he has a worse record than the prior 15 years which was not good in the first place. Similar to Locksley though, Schiano has been punished by being in the Big Ten West 4 of his 5 years. I think Schiano is a good coach and fit for Rutgers though and moving forward I expect his teams to perform better.
The D/F Grade Coaches (5)
- Nebraska: Matt Rhule D+
- Washington: Jedd Fisch D
- Michigan State: Jonathan Smith D
- UCLA: Deshaun Foster D
- Wisconsin: Luke Fickell F
The final group is our D and F graded coaches who all completed only their first or second years in the Big Ten so it would be very premature to assume too much from this data given the very small sample size. Also, even very successful coaches have struggled to achieve good results in their first years at a new school. But the numbers are what they are so here goes.
First up is Nebraska’s Matt Rhule who just completed his second year with the Huskers and is 6-12 in conference which is plus 4 percentage points better than the prior 5-year win rate but minus 17 percentage points worse than the prior 15-year win rate for Nebraska teams. Rule is 12-13 overall for Nebraska and led them to their first bowl appearance in 8 years, a 20-15 victory over Boston College in the Pinstripe Bowl.
I have to give Rhule a D+ since he is only winning 33% of his Big Ten games which is must worse than the prior 15 years at Nebraska at a time when they were vastly under achieving during that time at a 51% win rate for a school that is supposed to be a football blueblood. But, Rhule’s past turnarounds and recruiting bode well for improved future results for Nebraska.
Next is Washington’s Jedd Fisch who went 4-5 in conference in Year 1 for a 44%-win rate which is minus 21 and minus 17 percentage points respectively worse than the prior 5-year and 15-year win rates for the Huskies putting him at a “D” grade.
Fisch finished 6-7 overall that included a Sun Bowl loss after Kalen DeBoer led the team to the College Football Playoff National Championship game the prior year. But his team lost a first round NFL draft pick quarterback as well as losing the majority of his starters to graduation or the transfer portal. Fisch is 23-29 for his career (44% win rate) but was able to fairly quickly turn around Arizona at his previous head coaching job going 1-11, 5-7 and then 10-3 in his third year. Husky fans would be thrilled if he follows a similar path at Washington.
Michigan State’s Jonathan Smith went 3-6 for a 33% win rate in conference in his first year in East Lansing which is minus 9 and minus 25 percentage points respectively worse than the prior 5-year and 15-year win rates for the Spartans putting him at a “D”. The 59% fifteen-year prior Spartan win rate mostly covered the highly successful 13-year Mark Dantonio era at Michigan State, so it’s not an easy comparison.
Smith finished 5-7 overall with no bowl game and his career record is 39-42 (48%) that includes six years at Oregon State where he thrived his final two years going 10-3 and 8-4 so he has demonstrated success in turning a program around.
UCLA’s Deshaun Foster assumed the head coaching job when Chip Kelly surprisingly left UCLA in February 2024 to take on the Offensive Coordinator job at Ohio State. Foster had no prior head coach experience, and his job was made more difficult by one of the toughest schedules in the Big Ten.
UCLA finished 3-6 in conference and that 33%-win rate is minus 20 and minus 16 percentage points respectively worse than the prior 5-year and 15-year win rates for the Bruins putting him at a “D” grade. UCLA was 5-7 overall, but Foster’s team played hard all season and finished a promising 4-2 after a 1-5 start to the season. It was a risk to hire a coach with no prior experience but Foster needs probably 3 years to truly judge him.
The final coach is Wisconsin’s Luke Fickell who is the only coach who gets an “F” grade. Similar to Lincoln Riley, Fickell was perceived as a home run hire and the consensus #1 coach hired in the 2023 hiring cycle. Through two years he is 8-10 in conference for a 44%-win rate which is a terrible minus 15 and minus 24 percentage points respectively worse than the prior 5-year and 15-year win rates for the Badgers.
Fickell is under .500 overall for Wisconsin at 12-13 and is 0-1 in bowl games and did not make a bowl game in 2024 which was the first time that happened in 24 years for the Badgers. As I wrote about this back in early February (see Link below), Fickell is a good example of how “Home Run” Coaching Hires do not really exist since each job is unique.
8 Truths about the 2024 Big Ten Football Season – Big Jeff’s Football
His F grade is further earned given the great success the prior three Wisconsin coaches had in their combined first two years overall record on the job of 61-18 or a 77%-win rate (Paul Chryst 21-6, Gary Anderson 19-7 and Bret Bielema 21-5). His hiring of Offensive Coordinator Phil Longo to run an Air Raid oriented offense is the key reason for Fickell’s terrible performance. Fortunately for him, Wisconsin is being patient so he will try to set things right with new OC Jeff Grimes after his one season at Kansas.
In summary, only 7 of the 18 Big Ten coaches have grades better than a C based strictly on the data. But again, so many of these coaches are very new to the job so even one good season can dramatically change their grades. And given the Big Ten has such unbalanced schedules from playing only 9 of 17 potential opponents, the luck from having easier schedules will strongly dictate results. But that is a story for another day.
Big Ten Football: Spring 2025 Power Rankings – Athlon Sports
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