Top 5 rivalries between college football head coaches

In light of Jimbo Fisher and Nick Saban’s spat, here’s a look at the five-best head-coaching rivalries in college football. 

The month of May usually starts a quiet trend of no news in college football. That was not the case this year as earlier in the week. Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban said that Texas A&M Aggies head coach Jimbo Fisher bought his elite 2022 national recruiting class. Fisher took this matter as an extremely personal attack on him and the program.

This petty feud will turn ugly throughout the off-season and create a fantastic storyline when the Tide and the Aggies meet during the regular season. This feud is just an example of the turmoil created by the head coaches of college football programs.

Some of the top rivalries in college football include Alabama’s Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant vs. Georgia Tech’s Bobby Dodd, Auburn’s Pat Dye vs. Tennessee’s Vince Dooley, Ohio State’s Woody Hayes vs. Michigan’s Bo Schembechler, and USC’s Pete Carroll vs. Stanford’s Jim Harbaugh. These rivalries between head coaches helped fuel the fire and hate the fanbases have for their other programs.

It is difficult to determine how many feuds there are between head coaches, but social media and the reliability of quick media have caused a rise to the discovery of feuds. Several current rivalries between head coaches are friendly such as Alabama’s Nick Saban and Georgia’s Kirby Smart or Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz and Minnesota’s P.J. Fleck.

Other coach rivalries have been created with pettiness or hate and these are the top five college football coaching rivalries in Division I.