We Rank the Pac-12 Football Coaches and Give Our Reasons

Everyone in town was a little frustrated with the University of Washington football program after coach after coach took a long look at the job opening and passed on it.

The Huskies seemingly had to settle for pick No. 4, a guy from a smaller conference, relatively far removed from the college football mainstream, someone people in Seattle had never heard of.

Had there been social media or sports-talk radio back then, the hiring of Don James would have been roasted like some overcooked Southern brisket. It would have been challenged and castigated. It would have been tough to swallow.

James, it seems, turned out OK. Quickly, it soon became known that he was an obsessive organizer, someone who set only the highest expectations and finally a big winner.

In one season, Kalen DeBoer has demonstrated similar qualities in an even more accelerated fashion, beating the likes of Michigan State, Oregon and Texas out of the gate, and coming up two touchdowns and a lot of cornerbacks short of running the table.

DeBoer sneaks up on you. He just tees it up like he's good at everything, like that golfer who always shoots the low round and you don't know it until looking at the scorecards later. He has an "It factor" about him.

The Pac-12 has a few others like him. Unsung yet very, very capable coaches.

For comparative sake, here's a recent CBS Sports list, with a strong Los Angeles tinge to it, and we'll respect it: 1. USC, Lincoln Riley; 2. Utah, Kyle Whittingham; 3. UCLA, Chip Kelly; 4. Washington, Kalen DeBoer; 5. Oregon State, Jonathan Smith; 6. Oregon, Dan Lanning; 7. Colorado, Deion Sanders; 8. Washington State, Jake Dickert; 9. California, Justin Wilcox; 10. Arizona, Jedd Fisch; 11. Arizona State, Kenny Dillingham; 12. Stanford, Troy Taylor.

However, it we were to put together a similar ranking of Pac-12 coaches, we'd be more inclined to shuffle the deck and do something far different, with a comment attached to each one explaining why.

RANKING THE PAC-12 COACHES

1. Kyle Whittingham, Utah — He out-coached Riley in a big way in the Pac-12 championship game, has a ruggedness that attracts him to his players, possesses a nice confident manner and, face it, he wins football games.

2. Kalen DeBoer, Washington — The fastest coaching start in Husky history with a previously beaten-down team is going to draw very high marks. Inevitably, he could have a fall-back season, maybe in year three in 2024, but it won't be in season two.

3. Jonathan Smith, Oregon State — This guy is so comfortable in his own skin that you could make a nice pair of boots out of it. Watch him win the conference this year and have everyone else be so surprised by it all.

4. Lincoln Riley, USC — He has a heady reputation that comes with coaching at Oklahoma and USC. He has unlimited resources wherever he goes. Yet we're not into prefab. He's practically going to need to go unbeaten for us to elevate him on this list.

5. Jedd Fisch, Arizona — OK, we hear you howling. Yet this guy has come into a badly broken situation and he's out-recruited everyone in the league this winter while he patiently puts everything back together in the desert.

6. Chip Kelly, UCLA — Kelly still puts a solid product on the field, but his time as the conference offensive mastermind, as a new-age play-caller, appears to have come and gone since he went to the NFL and, like Nick Saban, found it a humbling experience.

7. Jake Dickert, WSU — Dickert has done everything at WSU that Jimmy Lake didn't do at the UW: make that easy transition from coordinator to head coach with minimal blowback. He's a calming influence in Pullman.

8. Justin Wilcox, California — This guy carries a lot of respect and has good coaches, but years of Berkeley football neglect have made it difficult for him to get over the hump. It's good to see Cal hang with him as he presses on.

9. Dan Lanning, Oregon — He has every resource known available to man who walks the college sideline. However, he let two winnable games get away from him last season; with different outcomes, we would have ranked him where DeBoer sits now on this list. He also took on the wayward Taki Taimani, a head-scratcher transfer pick-up. No offense to Lanning, but the Jimmy Lake factor makes us dubious of all assistant coaches elevated to top-level programs.

10. Troy Taylor, Stanford — He has a decent lower-level head-coaching track record coming in and was a successful Pac-10 quarterback in another time, but he hasn't done it yet as a conference coach, so we'll make him earn it.

11. Kenny Dillingham, Arizona State — Nothing against Dillingham, but we'll need to see some results first before we reward the former Oregon assistant on our list. Again, the Lake factor figures in here.

12. Deion Sanders, Colorado — Fantastic NFL cornerback. Decent big-league outfielder. Successful lower-level college football coach. Yet he strikes us as all bluster and bravado entering the Pac-12 Conference and he'll have to win a bunch of games before we take him seriously.

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