SMQ: Evaluating the backgrounds of championship coaches

As we near the end of the regular season in 2017, SMQ dives into the history of college football head coaches who have played for national titles.

Since the start of the BCS era in 1998, only four head coaches have led teams to national titles after getting their starts at lower-tier schools. Two more head coaches have put their schools into a national title game over the past two decades. And one other reached the semifinal stage in the College Football Playoff.

Whether at programs we now refer to as Group of Five conferences or at an FCS school, these coaches seem to be the exception rather than the norm. Most of the head coaches who have either played for or won a national title got their start at a major-college program, and were either lifers at the school or jumped to an even bigger outfit along the road to success.

The short list of schools in the hunt to reach the College Football Playoff this year features just a few names that landed their first head coaching gigs at mid-major or second-subdivision Division I programs. They mostly encompass the usual suspects.

Have past coaches managed to springboard from the lower ranks?

Let’s go back even further than the BCS era today. In 1974, the Coaches Poll joined the AP in naming its champion after the bowl season concluded. Since that point, only five other coaches can add their names to the list of winners who started at smaller schools.

Of course, guys like Nick Saban and Urban Meyer have broken the mold to prove themselves winners who could manage any program to prominence. Saban turned Toledo into a MAC champion his only season at the school. Meyer is famous for turning Utah into the first-ever BCS Buster in history.

We hear stories about places like the MAC as the “Cradle of Coaches” — but is that really a true moniker? The group that manages to climb the ladder from a lower-tier position into a championship winner at a major program are just one subset of championship-caliber leader.

When you break things down, there are really four types of championship coaches. The first are those who win a title at the only school they’ve coached. The second group consists of those who got a start at another major program. A third group consists of those who start their careers at the school where they won a title before moving on to another program. And then there are the handful of leaders who worked their way up the ranks from a mid-major or FCS school.

In this week’s Sunday Morning Quarterback, let’s take a deeper look at where championship coaches get their start and how they go about becoming title winners. Keep reading to learn more about each subset of championship coach since the advent of post-bowl championships.