A head coach in college football is probably more important to a team than in any other sport out there. All the talent in the world could be wasted if the head coach, and his staff, can’t figure out how to teach their young players how to play. They also need to be able to recruit, so some coaches, who don’t have the greatest facilities or program history, have a harder time getting their teams off the ground. Ranking a coach in college football is also a difficult task. Some coaches come into a bad team and need to take a year or two to rebuild it, so for this ranking records will not be the only factor taken into account. Instead, it will be ranked on who would you want to start up your football program. With that being said, here is part 1 of the best coaches in the Pac-12.
The Bottom 6 Pac-12 Coaches:
12. Sonny Dykes- Cal (1-11 at Cal/23-26 career record)
In a conference where no coach is a bad coach this is the guy who gets ranked the worst. Sonny Dykes and the Cal Bears finished 1-11 last season and did not have many bright spots besides the introduction of his QB. Dykes has taken on a project at Cal, if he can continue to develop his stud QB Jared Goff he should find his way out of the bottom of the list.
11. Mike MacIntyre- Colorado (4-8 at Colorado/20-29 career record)
Another guy who is in a tough situation. Mike MacIntyre is stuck dealing with facilities that are nowhere near the quality as every other team in the Pac-12 and, as a result, is finding it hard to recruit players to come to Colorado. Give MacIntyre some time though and he should bring the Buffs back to prominence. After all, he did turn a 1-11 San Jose St. team to a 10-2 team two years later.
10. Mark Helfrich- Oregon (11-2 at Oregon and career record)
It is really hard to judge just how good of a coach Mark Helfrich is. He had to replace offensive guru Chip Kelly and still is using Kelly’s players. Marcus Mariota can make any coach look good, so it will be interesting to see how Helfrich does once he has to start using the players he recruited. Keep an eye on him, though; the sky is the limit for Mark Helfrich.
9. Kyle Whittingham- Utah (76-39 at Utah and career record)
The quality of coaches in the Pac-12 can really be seen when Kyle Whittingham is only the 9th best coach in the conference. He led Utah to national prominence when they were in the Mountain West Conference, but the transition to the Pac-12 has not been a good one. The Utes conference wins have declined the last two years so 2014 is an important one for the team, but Utah wouldn’t rather have any other coach attempt to lead them back to being relevant.
8. Steve Sarkisian- USC (First Season at USC/34-29 career record)
Steve Sarkisian is an interesting coach. He gets a lot of praise for what he did at Washington, taking a 0-12 team, and making them competitive again. However, there is a very confusing love fest with the now USC coach. Sure, he turned around the Huskies, but they never finished higher than third in the Pac-12 North division, so in order for Sarkisian to rise up this list he will have to win more at USC, which should not be too hard. He does have the No. 10 signing class from 2014 so Sarkisian is trending upward.
7. Rich Rodriguez- Arizona (16-10 at Arizona/136-94-2 career record)
Rich Rod is finally starting to recover from his debacle coaching tenure at Michigan. He is another great offensive mind in this conference and has had some nice success in Tucson. After back-to-back 8-5 seasons and two bowl victories Rich Rodriguez and the Wildcats will look to compete with the big guns in thePac-12 during the 2014 season.
There are no bad coaches in the Pac-12, so when there is this many quality coaches in one conference a lot of great coaches are going to be near the bottom of the list. All six of these coaches have the ability to make the top half of this list and, given some time, may just be there.
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