How long does it take for coaches to win national championships?

Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian is finishing up his fifth year as the head coach at the University of Texas.

Entering this season, the expectations were clear: Sarkisian was to compete for a national championship. If it didn’t happen this year with a young team, it was bound to happen next.

Sarkisian had everything going for him. He was the only coach with back-to-back CFP semi-final appearances. He had just signed the No. 1 recruiting class. He’d sent 12 players to the NFL. Arch Manning was stepping up to be QB1 in Austin, and stars like Anthony Hill, Michael Taaffe and Malik Muhammad were expected to star in their final year on campus.

Instead, Sarkisian’s Longhorns sit at 7-3. Their likelihood of even making the 12-team Playoff is extremely low. At best, they finish the year as around the 11th-ranked team in the nation. At worst, a complete disaster.

Sarkisian has received a ton of criticism for his inability to beat elite teams and coaches, specifically Kirby Smart and Georgia, as well as his mishandling of team building this offseason, which led to an incomplete roster. Year 5 was expected to be the true breakout year for the coach: a full team of players he recruited. Full NIL backing and support. Multiple seasons to make his system work.

With rumors about the NFL swirling and doubt about the head coach at an all-time high, now feels like a good time to take a step back and actually figure out what realistic expectations are for a head coach in this day and age.

There have been 12 coaches that have won a national championship since 2003 (the BCS controversy year that, in some ways, started the whole mess of where we are at with college football). Of those 12, two (Gene Chizik and Ed Orgeron) are clear outliers. Both won with outlandishly dominant teams but were out of their programs and never head-coached again within two years.

That leaves us with a clean sample of 10 coaches who can be seen as the best of the best coaches in the 2000s. In fact, the Athletic has all but one of them in the top-13. The other 4 that I won’t mention either didn’t win national championships, or had their success before 2003.

Nick Saban
Urban Meyer
Pete Carroll
Kirby Smart
Dabo Swinney
Jim Harbaugh
Mack Brown
Ryan Day
Jimbo Fisher
Les Miles

Let’s talk about them.

Legendary coaches

I think we’ve gotten past the idea that Sarkisian can be a truly generational head coach. I don’t think most people thought that anyway.

This group includes Pete Carroll, Urban Meyer and Nick Saban. They’re the top-3 coaches of the 2000s for a reason. All three had a title within four years at their respective stops, having coached elsewhere before.

Carroll was an NFL head coach who came to college and won a title with USC within four seasons. One could argue they won in 2003.

Meyer won within two seasons at Florida after four years at different schools beforehand. Just an elite program resurgence.

But Saban is a little more interesting. Yes, he won a title at LSU within four seasons, but it wasn’t always easy.

He spent six years coaching elsewhere in CFB before LSU. In 2001, he went 10-3, but fell to 8-5 a season later. He lost to Arkansas and Virginia Tech. Auburn and Alabama combined to beat him 62-7 that season. And yet, Saban would win the national championship the very next season. Keep that in mind.

Woke up on third base

Ryan Day and Les Miles inherited elite programs. One could argue Jimbo Fisher or Kirby Smart did as well, but not to the level the other two did.

Miles took over for Saban just two years after that national championship. He won it all within three years. He’s not much of a relevant data point.

But Day is. He took over an elite Ohio State program that Meyer had left him. They were 13-1 the season he was an interim.

Day wouldn’t win a national championship for six years. He is still 1-4 against Michigan. This was not a popular man in Ohio this time last year after the loss to Michigan. Before he won the national championship, there were rumors of his firing. Another interesting data point from a very prominent tier.

Quick winner from a great program

This is where Fisher and Smart play in. These are two coaches who took over at strong programs, but ones that needed heavy retooling. They both delivered.

Fisher is a polarizing figure now, but his FSU turnaround was remarkable. Bobby Bowden was a legend who coached there for 34 years, but he hadn’t had back-to-back 10-win seasons since 2000. Fisher took over in 2010 and was lifting a trophy by 2014. He didn’t wake up on third base, but Bowden gave him a chance to pinch run against a pitcher with a long wind-up.

Smart took over a Georgia program that needed to get over a hump, and he did that. Still, it took him six years. Smart is still 1-7 against Alabama.

The program builders

This is where Sarkisian would fit in if he were to be the next new head coach to take over for a team. Texas’ roster was in shambles when he took over in 2021, leading to that disastrous 5-7 year.

That’s what it was like for Dabo Swinney, Jim Harbaugh and Mack Brown.

Clemson was an ok program with little history until Swinney took over. Still, it took him nine years to get that championship.

Harbaugh took over a horrible Michigan program and took nine years to get them a title. He had a well-known problem with Ohio State and Meyer. He had 4 seasons in that span with 3 or more regular season losses.

Brown is the one we’re all familiar with. He had an extensive coaching track record beforehand, but no titles to show for it. It took him eight years in Austin to raise that trophy.

What does it all mean?

Here’s a table to illustrate it all:

Sarkisian isn’t a legendarily talented coach like Saban, Meyer or Carroll, nor did he step into a top-five program like Miles or Day. Still, he has a lot to learn from the coach who mentored him, and the one who beat him to end the 2024 season.

Saban had a blip year like Sark is currently having in 2002. He was embarrassed by elite SEC programs. LSU didn’t finish ranked.

And yet, one season later, the Tigers were national champions. Saban had a new QB. Will Muschamp went from an inexperienced DC in his first year to an elite one in year two. He won high pressure games, including two wins against a great Georgia team. One offseason truly did turn that program around.

Day took ages to finally get over the hump. He got it in year six, and he had the talent to win in year one. Despite all of the noise about the Michigan losses and him being on the hot seat, Day delivered when it mattered most. Now, no one in Ohio has any qualms with their head guy.

But the true place to observe is in that program builders tier. Swinney, Harbaugh, Brown. All three coaches took eight or more years to hit the ultimate goal: win the national championship.

If you, as a Texas fan, truly expect the Longhorns to compete for a national title, you might need to accept that Sarkisian needs more time.

It’s not exactly easy to win a title. That’s why there’s only 12 total coaches who have done it in the last 21 years. Only three of them still coach. If you want to win a title, you’re almost guaranteed to have to beat one of them. As well as Dan Lanning. As well as Kalen DeBoer. As well as Curt Cignetti, or Lane Kiffin, or Marcus Freeman.

The conversation is the same for all of them. Winning titles is rare. Only one team can do it per season. Smart and Day have won three of the last four.

So, yes, this season has sucked for Texas. Sarkisian has to change A LOT going forward to be able to get his team to a national championship level, but that doesn’t mean he can’t do it. You can afford a blip in year 5, believe it or not. I’d bet good money Texas is top-five in odds and ratings heading into the 2026 season. Were Sarkisian to win one in the next two years, he’d not only join elite company: he’d surpass it.

A lot needs to happen before that though. Sark will need to get over the Kirby Smart hump. He’s going to need to make changes in his coaching staff. He needs to approach the portal and its relationship to high school recruiting differently. Hell, maybe giving up play calling could be the difference. Day stopped doing it.

These days, it’s hard to have a neutral take on Sarkisian, so we’ll do our best to give you one: Sarkisian failed this season, but expecting a national championship this soon into a coaches tenure is foolhardy. What happens in the next 2 weeks, and then the seven months after that, will say a lot about him as a coach and potential leader of a national champion.