CBS Sports releases Pac-12 head coach rankings ahead of 2023 college football season

The Pac-12 experienced a pretty awesome year of football in 2022. Five of the conference’s 12 teams wound up winning 10+ games while all five also finished between 10-20 in the final College Football Playoff rankings. Plus, they had the Heisman Trophy winner in USC’s Caleb Williams.

Overall, it was just an incredibly entertaining fall worth of football on the west coast. And all that pandemonium led to a massive shakeup in the conference’s head coach rankings, as produced by CBS Sports. There’s a pretty obvious and flashy name at the top spot, but otherwise, it’s a list with plenty of unexpected twists and turns.

So take a look at who CBS Sports views as the best coaches in the conference heading into the 2023 season.

1. Lincoln Riley | USC

It’s hard to remember a more explosive top tier coach out of the gate than Lincoln Riley. In just six years as a college football head coach, Riley has won double digit games every year except the COVID-shortened season and began his career with four straight Big 12 titles and three straight College Football Playoff appearances.

Through one season with USC, he produced his third Heisman winner in six years with Caleb Williams and also gave the program its most successful season since 2017. All of this… and he’s still not 40 years old. Riley is easily one of the top coaches in America and has earned this ranking.

2. Kyle Whittingham | Utah

If there is one man with a case to jump Riley in these rankings, it’s Utah’s Kyle Whittingham. Because if we’re speaking strictly about Pac-12 performance, Whittingham holds the cards over Riley after one year.

A pair of contests against these Utah Utes were the only thing that stood between USC and a College Football Playoff berth in year one of the Riley era. Utah outlasted the Trojans in the thriller of the year on the west coast in a 43-42 regular season victory. Then, in the Pac-12 title game with USC still in position to make the CFP with a win, they lost again to the Utes, this time getting beat by more than three touchdowns, 47-24.

Lincoln Riley may be the best coach in the conference, but Kyle Whittingham has the personal advantage over him.

3. Chip Kelly | UCLA

Chip Kelly’s second stint in the pac-12 was a slow build. The Bruins were massively below .500 through three years with him at the helm and a firing seemed ready to go if year four was anything like the previous trio.

But in 2021, Kelly struck oil with the QB-RB duo of Dorian Thompson-Robinson and Zach Charbonnet, who helped lead UCLA to an 8-4 record in 2021 and then a 9-4 mark in 2022 as in a stronger Pac-12 than we’d seen in quite a while. There’s some momentum with the LA football scene at the moment.

4. Kalen DeBoer | Washington

DeBoer’s first year went off spectacularly, as Kalen DeBoer led the Huskies to their best season since they snuck into the 2016 College Football Playoff and in just his first year as head coach of the program.

He’s only been a college head coach for three years, which included the one at UW and two with Fresno State before that. With Michael Penix coming back and a rising star as head coach, Washington is worth all the hype in 2023.

5. Jonathan Smith | Oregon State

2022 was a banner year for Pac-12 football. There was a depth of very strong teams all at the top, one of which being Oregon State, who came on strong and turned an 0-2 start to Pac-12 play into a 6-1 finish in conference games and a 10-3 season overall that was capped off by a dominant 30-3 bowl victory over Florida

Smith isn’t as new as some of these other coaches, but like several of them, 2022 featured a breakthrough year for him and his program. The real question is whether OSU will look more like the 2022 version or the 2018-2021 version going forward.

For the rest of the rankings, go ahead and check below:

CBS Sports Pac-12 coach rankings 6-14

6. Dan Lanning | Oregon
7. Deion Sanders | Colorado
8. Jake Dickert | Washington State
9. Justin Wilcox | California
10. Jedd Fisch | Arizona
11. Kenny Dillingham | Arizona State
12. Troy Taylor | Stanford

Recap

Well, much like the 2022 Pac-12 standings, the top half is jam-packed with quality names while the bottom is a bit more lacking in terms of established and successful power conference head coaches. The big eyebrow-raiser in the back half has to be Deion Sanders, who flies in at seventh place despite never having coached a Division I football game before. That one feels a bit wishful, but otherwise, it’s hard to make too big a fuss over the order of these coaches given their recent track records.