Ranking the nine Big Ten coaches Lincoln Riley will face in 2024
How Lincoln Riley fares against Notre Dame or against LSU and Brian Kelly in 2024 will be fascinating to watch.
However, 2024 will be centrally intriguing because Lincoln Riley will match wits with a fresh set of coaches in his conference. Riley has been game-planning for Arizona State and Stanford and Utah and other Pac-12 schools the past few years. This coming season, he will prepare for Kalen DeBoer of Washington and Dan Lanning of Oregon. Next year will bring about a reset. There won’t be familiar conference opponents (other than UCLA, of course). Riley will have to start fresh and scout a bunch of Big Ten teams.
Let’s rank the nine Big Ten coaches Riley will face in 2024. Our one ground rule: These rankings are based on all-time achievements, not who has the hot hand right now.
Here we go:
RYAN WALTERS, PURDUE
Walters isn’t last as a measure of his skill or acumen. He simply hasn’t coached a game yet. Wait and see at Purdue.
MIKE LOCKSLEY, MARYLAND
Can Locksley lift Maryland above mediocrity? Until he does, he won’t move up the rankings.
PAT FITZGERALD, NORTHWESTERN
A few 10-win seasons at Northwestern are spectacular achievements, but much like Kirk Ferentz at Iowa, there is and has been a lot of “blah” surrounding those excellent seasons.
KIRK FERENTZ, IOWA
Ferentz has had a very good career, no question, but he hasn’t won a Big Ten Championship Game. He did win one BCS bowl game, but that was against Georgia Tech in a down year for the ACC (2009). His 2002 Iowa season was a masterpiece, but that can only go so far when measured against over 20 years of results which have been ordinary more often than great.
Get more Iowa news, analysis and opinions at Hawkeyes Wire.
BRET BIELEMA, ILLINOIS
Bielema has won two Big Ten Championship Games. He made three consecutive Rose Bowls with Wisconsin. He went 12-1 at Wisconsin in 2006. He isn’t higher on this list because his Arkansas tenure was a failure, but he has done more than Ferentz in Big Ten competition in a shorter period of time.
Get more Wisconsin news, analysis and opinions at Badgers Wire.
Get more Arkansas news, analysis and opinions at Razorbacks Wire.
CHIP KELLY, UCLA
Chip Kelly hasn’t been great at UCLA, but he hasn’t been terrible. He actually did fairly well last season. Unlike Bielema and Ferentz — two very good coaches — Kelly has won the Rose Bowl. He beat Bielema, in fact. He has also reached the BCS National Championship Game. He also won a Fiesta Bowl over Kansas State and Bill Snyder. Sure, he hasn’t been an elite college football coach beyond those four years in Eugene, but during those four years, he accomplished a ton. He achieved more than Bielema and Ferentz, instructively.
Get more Oregon news, analysis and opinions at Ducks Wire.
JAMES FRANKLIN, PENN STATE
Franklin has the 2016 Big Ten championship, the 2017 Fiesta Bowl, and the 2023 Rose Bowl on his list of achievements. He won at Vanderbilt. Many will wonder why he would be lower than Luke Fickell on this list.
A few reasons:
His success at Vanderbilt was built on playing nonconference cupcakes to fatten up his record.
He has a scandal-marked career which shouldn’t remain ignored.
Much as Clay Helton’s career was built on Sam Darnold’s excellence at USC, Franklin’s Penn State career was built on Saquon Barkley and Trace McSorley.
Get more Penn State news, analysis and opinions at Nittany Lions Wire.
LUKE FICKELL, WISCONSIN
What Fickell did at Cincinnati was and is remarkable. He is the first coach to take a Group of Five team to the College Football Playoff. If a Group of Five team doesn’t make the four-team playoff this year, Fickell will be the only man to take a G-5 team to the playoff in the 10-year period in which the playoff had only four teams. In 2024, the playoff will have 12 teams, and a Group of Five team will get a seat at the table every year. Fickell currently stands alone. He doesn’t have as large a collection of achievements as Franklin, but his one achievement is large enough to outweigh Franklin’s resume. Fickell did more with less at Cincinnati, compared to Franklin at Penn State.
JIM HARBAUGH, MICHIGAN
He did struggle for a few seasons at Michigan, but some of his “down years” still weren’t bad. The problem for Harbaugh was that Ohio State annually defeated Michigan. Harbaugh had to solve that problem. He not only did that, but he did so two years in a row and has two playoff berths on top of his work at Stanford a decade earlier. Two years ago, we might not have placed Harbaugh at No. 1, but now, we certainly can (and should).
Get more Michigan news, analysis and opinions at Wolverines Wire.
