2024 Group of 5 head coach rankings: Jamey Chadwell, Jeff Traylor headline the Top 10
It’s the spring, which means pollen-covered cars, March Madness and head coach rankings!
That’s right, it’s time for the 2024 series ranking the head coaches from each Power Conference, the Top 10 in the Group of 5 and an updated Top 25 for all of college football.
We started the series last week looking at the 16 head coaches in the SEC. Then I looked at the 18 head coaches in the Big Ten. Followed by the 17 head coaches in the ACC. We wrapped up the Power Conference rankings with a look at the 16 coaches in the Big 12.
Today, the best Group of 5 coaches get a day in the spotlight.
While the sport continues to adapt to a new landscape (i.e. continued conference realignment), coupled with losing venerable coaches like Nick Saban, Jim Harbaugh and Chip Kelly, these head coach rankings will look much differently than they did a year ago.
For the uninitiated, these lists are totally subjective. This is meant to be a fun exercise, but it’s my rankings.
While career achievements are taken into account, college football has become a sport that’s constantly changing, so recent performance (wins, recruiting, working the transfer portal, hiring assistants, producing NFL Draft picks, etc) is weighed much more heavily than what you’ve done in the past.
The list of G5 coaches has a different feel than it did a year ago. Chadwell and Traylor are still high atop the rankings, but Willie Fritz, who was No. 1 in 2023, is no longer eligible now that he’s the head coach at Houston. Same for SMU’s Rhett Lashlee, who won a conference championship in his first season with the Mustangs, and Curt Cignetti, who left James Madison for Indiana.
Let’s dive in.
1. Jamey Chadwell, Liberty
Chadwell moves to the top of the rankings after going 13-0 in the regular season in Year 1 with the Flames. The former Coastal Carolina head coach has three seasons with at least 11 wins in the last four years, including two conference championships.
He coaches a unique, fun-spread option offense that has ranked in the Top 5 nationally in two of the last three seasons. As long as Chadwell is at Liberty, the Flames could be the perennial Group of 5 representatives in the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff.
2. Jeff Traylor, UTSA
Traylor was a long-shot candidate for the Texas A&M job, but the Roadrunners held onto their winning head coach. Traylor is 39-14 in four seasons in San Antonio, delivering a pair of Conference USA Championships. UTSA went 9-4 in 2023 — 7-1 in its first season in the AAC.
Traylor seems primed for a future Power 5 head coaching job, and the longtime Texas high school coach would be a perfect fit at some Big 12 schools (like Baylor perhaps?).
3. Jon Sumrall, Tulane
For a brief moment during a wild coaching carousel, it looked like Sumrall might return to his alma mater Kentucky and replace Mark Stoops, who nearly became the head coach at Texas A&M. And then the deal fell through.
Instead, Sumrall made the move from Troy, where he went 23-4 over two seasons after inheriting a 5-7 team. He won a pair of Sun Belt titles and coached one of the saltier defenses in the country.
4. Rich Rodriguez, Jacksonville State
Rodriguez’s return to the sidelines as a head coach has been an unquestioned success at Jacksonville State, going 18-6 the last two seasons — including 9-4 in 2023 in the program’s first FBS season.
While deemed a failure at Michigan, Rich-Rod has won everywhere else he’s ever coached, going 60-26 at West Virginia and then taking Arizona to the Fiesta Bowl. Before Chip Kelly or Lincoln Riley came along, Rodriguez was considered the sport’s offensive mastermind, ushering in the proliferation of the zone read.
5. Troy Calhoun, Air Force
Calhoun might be the best coach no one talks about. I’m not sure even die-hard college football fans would recognize him in the grocery store. He’s been at Air Force since 2007 and has his program playing some of its best football in school history for the last five years.
Aside from the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, the Falcons have wins of 11, 10, 10 and nine the last four full seasons — including four bowl victories in a row. The former Air Force quarterback has 12 seasons with at least eight wins.
6. Jeff Tedford, Fresno State
Tedford is 19-8 after his two-year sabbatical due to health reasons, and overall, the former longtime Cal head coach has three double-digit win seasons and two conference championships in five years with the Bulldogs. Tedford had another health scare late in the 2023 season, but for now, he remains his alma mater’s head coach.
Tedford was also a successful coach at Cal for close to a decade, where he won the Pac-12 Championship in 2006 and had six seasons of at least eight wins.
7. Jason Candle, Toledo
After several underwhelming seasons at Toledo, Candle led the Rockets to a conference championship and division title the last two years with a 20-8 record. He’s been at the program since 2009, taking over as head coach in 2016.
Overall, Candle is 65-35 as a head coach, winning a pair of MAC Championships in eight seasons. He’s also recruited better than other programs in the conference during the time period.
8. Barry Odom, UNLV
Odom cracks the Top 10 G5 head coaches after guiding UNLV to one of its best seasons in school history in 2023 — going 9-4 with a Mountain West title game appearance in Year 1 in Las Vegas. It was the Rebels’ most wins in 40 years and was the program’s second winning season in 19 years.
Odom was just ok as the head coach at Missouri (25-25), but if he has another strong showing with the Rebels in the next year or two, he could find himself back in a Power Conference.
9. Jeff Monken, Army
Monken’s shine has worn off a bit after the Black Knights have had consecutive 6-6 seasons, but that’s only because he set a standard at the Academy that hadn’t happened in decades. Prior to the last two seasons, Monken had a five-year run with at least nine wins in four seasons. He’s beaten rival Navy five of the last seven seasons.
Overall, he’s 70-55 at Army, and also has a trio of semifinal playoff losses (and two conference championships) at Georgia Southern.
10. Alex Golesh, USF
Golesh has been a head coach for just one season, but the former Tennessee offensive coordinator immediately turned around a dormant USF program that was 4-29 the previous three years. He took the Bulls bowling for the first time since 2018, and they finished the season 7-6 with a 45-0 rout over Syracuse.
The 39-year-old is seen as a rising star among industry insiders and could be a head coach in the SEC, ACC or Big 10 in the near future.
Best of the rest: Charles Huff, Marshall, Chris Creighton, Eastern Michigan, Tyson Helton, Western Kentucky, Chuck Martin, Miami (OH), Bronco Mendenhall, New Mexico