What makes a good job in college football?
It’s a question that is more relevant than ever as the coaching carousel spins, potentially to record heights in 2025 with 10 FBS coaches already axed and plenty more firmly on the hot seat.
While not all things are guaranteed when it comes to winning in college football, the fewer obstacles there are on and off the field tend to make for a clearer path to success.
Here, we take a look at each of the Power 4 conferences and which jobs are better than others in a bit of a vacuum. Recruiting base, donor support, NIL, school leadership, staff salary pool, historic success and facilities were factored in. The result is the coaching job pyramid, from the best gig in each league down to the stepping-stone jobs that make up the base.
First, we looked at the ACC and next up is the Big 12, which used to have a much clearer hierarchy before recent rounds of realignment but now is mostly flat. Mirroring the league itself, there’s little separation between the very top of the pyramid and the bottom, especially as most schools have opened (or are planning to open) new football facilities and have easy access to talent in the conference’s home base in the state of Texas.
You could honestly argue for any of the top half of jobs to be the actual one as there are fewer issues to navigate for potential head coaches than in other leagues. The problem, as one can surmise, is there are no elite-level programs in the Big 12 that you see as regular contenders for a national title—providing the kind of ceiling that would make them final destinations for top-tier coaches. Just about every gig has a fairly obvious flaw, but some good coaching can overcome that and lead to success.
The Big 12 is easily the most difficult of the power conferences to tier as a result, but that only reconfirms that there’s plenty of upward mobility inside a league that has no bluebloods to overcome.
The top jobs: TCU, Baylor
It’s a credit to the schools in the past two decades after the Southwest Conference breakup that the Horned Frogs and Bears have chipped away at their peers to become some of the most attractive jobs in a power conference. After previously being historical bottom-dwellers, there’s been recent success on the field under former coaches while their current head men have led the programs to a Big 12 title (Dave Aranda) and national championship game (Sonny Dykes). They’ve each put in a slew of facilities upgrades and notably sit in one of the most talent-rich parts of the country to the point where you can win the league by only getting in your car.
Each school also has committed, veteran leadership and excellent alignment off the field. Things on the NIL front aren’t quite to the level of some in the Big 12 but are good enough to be consistently competitive. There’s enough patience in both Waco, Texas, and Fort Worth that they won’t be running coaches off after three seasons. Of course, it doesn’t help that each is a smaller private school that doesn't have anything close to the fan bases of others, but the number of influential alumni and boosters makes up for that.
High ceiling: BYU, Texas Tech, Arizona State, Utah
If not for some of the unique challenges at BYU, that just might be the best job in the league between the on-field history in Provo, Utah, and how tolerant higher-ups are of a rogue bad season. The Cougars have become much more of a player than expected in the NIL era, and there’s a growing recruiting footprint that might be the most widespread of any school in the conference. The Red Raiders are hampered by their location in fairly remote Lubbock but otherwise have everything in place to being a consistent threat to win the league. Arizona State seems to finally have woken up to investment in football to start shedding its label of being a sleeping giant. Utah might be the most consistent program west of the Mississippi with a terrific fan base, but also doesn’t quite have as many resources as some in this group.
Aspiring: Oklahoma State, UCF, Kansas State, Houston
These are the jobs that are made by the coaches who take them over. A place like Houston has easy access to talent, but it’s taken a while to get everything in place like facilities, fan support and alignment. Kansas State leans into the blue-collar attitude and overall player development to overcome its inherent disadvantages. UCF is still a fairly young program growing in its first few years in a power conference but has all the ingredients to be successful and win the league. Oklahoma State is difficult in several respects but has money, good facilities and could use the current coaching change to further rally boosters to keep the program in the top half of the league.
Wax and wane: Iowa State, Kansas, Cincinnati, Arizona, West Virginia, Colorado
There’s not a ton of separation between the lines or away from them with this group and others in the above tier. Matt Campbell has shown you can win at a place like Iowa State, but the lack of hardware reconfirms how difficult a job it is. Kansas would have been an easy choice for the worst job in the Big 12, but the latest investments in the facilities and the team have changed that calculus quite a bit in recent years. Cincinnati was one of the best Group of 5 jobs back in the day with a string of accomplished coaches who moved onto better gigs, but it is slightly more middle of the pack even with plenty of new facilities. West Virginia is one of the harder jobs because of the location, which is tough given the support of the program inside the state. It will be interesting to see if Colorado can escape being a one-man operation at the moment given how far back the Buffs are in terms of facilities and school leadership in the midst of a multiyear transition.
