College Football: 25 greatest head coaches of the 21st century

Best college football coaches of 21st century: 9. Chris Petersen

• Boise State Broncos (2006-13)
• Washington Huskies (2014-Present)

Chris Petersen is the highest-ranked coach never to win a ring, but he is very special. His career as a head coach started with Boise State, where he absolutely dominated. What he did with the Broncos often gets discredited because they weren’t in the Power 5, but it is incredibly hard to go undefeated at any level in college football. Petersen did it twice.

Boise State had finished in the AP top five in two seasons while Petersen was the coach. This is in part thanks to Kellen Moore at quarterback, but he managed to develop talent all over the field at a smaller school.

In his career with Washington, things haven’t gone as great as some had hoped. However, Washington has little to no recruiting pull, and Petersen has had to build the program.

Once he got his own recruits in the doors, the Huskies won at least 10 games for three straight seasons. They also made it to the College Football Playoff in 2016, but they ended up losing in the national semifinals to Alabama.

One thing that Petersen has going for him is consistency. As of February 2021, he has led his team to at least 10 wins in 10 of his 14 seasons as a head coach. He might not get to the national championship often, but he still wins a lot of games.

As of now, he has 14th best winning percentage in the FBS in college football history. When he doesn’t have the recruiting pull of other programs, he still built Washington to be one of the best teams in the Pac-12 on a consistent basis. He doesn’t have the rings, but he is still one of the best coaches of this era. His career might be over, but he still had a great run with two schools.