Is Oklahoma State football the best coaching job in new-look Big 12? Cowboys have company
The college football coaching carousel has been rather idle in Big 12 country.
Houston fired Dana Holgorsen after the Cougars went 4-8 in their inaugural Big 12 season, and Houston might be the only Big 12 job open this offseason.
Baylor is retaining Dave Aranda, Neal Brown looks to have saved his job at West Virginia and no other Big 12 coach appears to be in peril. At least for now.
How good is the Houston job? That’s a question we’re tackling in this week’s edition of Big 12 tiers.
With OU and Texas out — and Utah, Colorado, Arizona and Arizona State in — ranking the best jobs in the 16-team Big 12 isn’t as easy as it once was. There’s no “destination job,” but there’s a whole lot of good ones.
*-Teams in the same tier are sorted alphabetically
More: Oklahoma State football rewind: Jaden Nixon's fourth-down play vs. BYU can't be overlooked
Tier 1
Oklahoma State
Alabama, Ohio State, Clemson, Georgia, Oklahoma, Oregon, LSU, Notre Dame, Oklahoma State, Wisconsin. Those are the 10 Power schools with the most wins since 2010.
If OSU gets another win this season, it will be the Cowboys’ eighth 10-win season during that span.
OSU has been ranked in the top-15 of the AP in 14 of the past 16 seasons, including this one. The Cowboys are set to play in their 18th consecutive bowl game, and they’re playing in the Big 12 Championship for the second time in three years.
All of that was accomplished under Mike Gundy, the best coach in school history, but the Cowboys also had sustained success under Jimmy Johnson and Pat Jones in the late 70s and 80s.
OSU should be an annual contender in the new-look Big 12, and an annual threat to make the new 12-team College Football Playoff.
Utah
Utes coach Kyle Whittingham is the Mike Gundy of Salt Lake City. Both of them are going to leave big shoes to fill for the next guy, but both have made their respective programs stronger over a two-decade run.
Utah joined the Pac-12 in 2011, and the Utes had no trouble adjusting to the step up in competition. Utah went 65-48 in the Pac-12 under Whittingham.
Since the inception of the College Football Playoff in 2014, Utah has been ranked for 44 weeks, which is the most of any Big 12 school. Oklahoma State (41 weeks) is second.
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Tier 2
Baylor
Art Briles, as disgraced as his tenure was, made Baylor relevant on the national scene. When Briles took over in 2008, the Bears hadn’t played in a bowl game since 1994. Briles then led the Bears to six consecutive bowls from 2010-15.
Matt Rhule cleaned things up after the sexual assault scandal, and Dave Aranda just finished his fourth season as head coach. The Bears went 3-9, which is no longer the norm in Waco like it once was.
Baylor has the resources and recruiting base to remain a Big 12 threat.
Kansas State
Kansas State was one of the worst jobs in the country prior to Bill Snyder arriving in 1989. K-State’s turnaround under Snyder, dubbed the Miracle in Manhattan, was unbelievable.
In the modern era (1946-present), Kansas State has only had 27 winning seasons. Snyder is responsible for 18 of those.
The Wildcats won at least nine games under Snyder in every season but one from 1993 to 2003.
It’s hard to separate Snyder from the Kansas State job, but Chris Klieman has sustained a winning culture in Manhattan. Klieman has won at least eight games in four of his first five seasons.
Kansas State has a loyal fan base, and the program long ago shook its losing reputation.
TCU
The Horned Frogs just played in the national championship under a four-team playoff format. So yeah, TCU is well positioned to compete for Big 12 titles and playoff spots under the expanded format.
Gary Patterson, despite getting fired, has a statue outside of Amon G. Carter Stadium. Patterson won 70% of his games at TCU in his 22-year tenure.
This is a big-time job despite its newness as a power-conference program.
More: Mike Gundy recalls how Ollie Gordon landed with Oklahoma State football instead of Texas
Tier 3
Texas Tech
The Red Raiders have been mediocre ever since Mike Leach was fired in 2009.
Texas Tech has never been ranked in the College Football Playoff Top 25, which has been around for a decade.
Leach (.661), Steve Sloan (.657) and Jim Carlen (.644) are the only three Texas Tech coaches since World War II, minimum three seasons coached, who won at least 60% of their games.
Spike Dykes, second behind Leach on Tech’s all-time wins list, went 82-67-1 (.550).
UCF
With an enrollment north of 68,000, UCF is the largest school in Florida and among the biggest in the country.
That kind of alumni base coupled with fertile recruiting ground in Orlando makes this one of the top jobs in the conference despite its lack of history.
UCF has only been playing Division-I football since 1996, but Scott Frost and Josh Heupel showed us how good of a job it can be.
West Virginia
Art Lewis (1950-59), Bobby Bowden (1970-75), Don Nehlen (1980-2000), Rich Rodriguez (2001-07) and Dana Holgorsen (2011-18) all had sustained success, winning at least 60% of their games at West Virginia.
West Virginia has only had five coaches since 1980, a rare sign of stability.
The Mountaineers have been ranked for 14 weeks in the history of the CFP era.
More: Oklahoma State football's Ollie Gordon again linked to Barry Sanders, Cowboys' 'Superman'
Tier 4
Arizona
In Arizona’s Pac-12 era, 1978-2023, the Wildcats went 171-201-6 in conference play. Only Cal, Washington State, Oregon State and Colorado had a worse conference record.
In this century, only once has Arizona finished a season ranked inside the AP top-25.
This season might be the second.
The Wildcats are 9-3 in Jedd Fisch’s third season. Fisch has gone from one win to five wins to nine wins in his Arizona tenure.
Arizona State
Lots of people refer to Arizona State as a sleeping giant, which is true. But that’s the point. It’s a giant school in an attractive locale, but is Arizona State ever going to wake up?
The fan base is apathetic and the end of the Herm Edwards era was a disaster.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad job. It’s just not a very good one.
BYU
The BYU job is unique given the school’s ties to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. When Diljeet Taylor was named BYU women’s cross-country coach in 2001, she became the first non-Mormon head coach at the school in at least 50 years.
So while being a member of the church is not a requirement for a head coach, it’s certainly a tradition, which limits the candidate pool.
From LaVell Edwards to Bronco Mendenahll and now Kalani Sitake, BYU football has been in good hands since the 1970s.
BYU won the 1984 national championship as a member of the WAC, and the Cougars have also competed in the Mountain West and as an independent. Winning at BYU seems like it will be harder now than ever given its move to a power conference.
Iowa State
Terrific fan base, but an awfully tough place to win.
Most of us recognize Matt Campbell as a great coach, but he’s 53-47 at Iowa State — a record that might get you fired at bigger programs but one that’s excellent at Iowa State.
Campbell and Earle Bruce (1973-78) are the only Iowa State coaches in the modern era to have a winning record.
More: How Rashod Owens sparked Oklahoma State football rally vs. BYU impromptu halftime speech
Tier 5
Cincinnati
In 2021 under coach Luke Fickell, the Bearcats became the first Group of Five team to make the College Football Playoff.
Cincinnati was among the best mid-major teams of the past two decades with name coaches like Fickell, Tommy Tuberville, Butch Jones, Brian Kelly and Mark Dantonio, but the Bearcats are going to have a hard time not getting lost in mediocrity in the Big 12.
This is a stepping-stone job, albeit a good one.
Colorado
As a member of the Pac-12 from 2011-23, Colorado won more than five games … once.
Colorado hasn’t won a bowl game since 2004.
The 90s, under Bill McCartney and Rick Neuheisel, were a glorious decade for the Buffs, but we’re almost 34 years removed from Colorado’s national championship.
Houston
Tom Herman, Kevin Sumlin and Art Briles all got their head coaching starts at Houston, and all left Houston for a better job in the state: Herman to Texas, Sumlin to Texas A&M and Briles to Baylor.
That’s a pro and a con. Houston is a proven launching pad, but that goes back to the Cougars mid-major days. All three of those aforementioned coaches left for Power Five jobs.
Now Houston is in a weird spot as it transitions from one of the best Group of Five jobs to a lower-end Power Five job.
Bill Yeoman won 160 games at Houston (1962-86). Sumlin is second on the school’s all-time wins list with 35.
Kansas
Kansas is a bottom-tier job, but Lance Leipold is at least proving that it’s not impossible to win football games in Lawrence. Leipold, hired in 2021, has done what Les Miles, David Beaty, Charlie Weis and Turner Gill could not.
Leipold has made the Jayhawks competitive, and they can stay competitive for as long as Leipold stays.
Aside from Leipold and Mark Mangino, there’s little precedent of sustained success in Lawrence, where basketball will always be king.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Is Oklahoma State football the best coaching job in new-look Big 12?
