Power ranking Big 12 football head coaches ahead of 2022 season

Big 12 football has seen its fair share of coaching turnover over the past few offseasons and that means the ranking of head coaches may surprise you.

The quality of Big 12 football coaches has dipped over the years, but with some fresh new hires this offseason, that could soon change.

Gone is Lincoln Riley, however, and Les Miles’ Kansas career fizzled out before it ever really started. Gary Patterson, too, has moved on as he stepped down from his position as TCU head coach this offseason. There will be plenty of new faces on the sidelines this year.

So what does that mean for the head coach rankings? The names at the top of this list may surprise you as much as they surprised me to write them out.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t know much of anything about Joey McGuire before he was hired by Texas Tech this offseason but looking at his body of work at Baylor, he deserves some hype.

Since he has yet to head coach a single college football game, he sits at 10th on this list, especially since most of his experience is at the high school level. I do think he’s bringing the excitement back to Lubbock and the Red Raiders will soon contend in the Big 12, but this season might be a little rough. McGuire needs patience from the fanbase but he’s already recruiting well.

If this list was based on non-FBS success, Lance Leipold might just be No. 1. He won six Division III national titles with Wisconsin-Whitewater and led a dynasty there. He did a good enough job to make the jump to the FBS where Buffalo hired him in 2015 and he went 37-33 in six years.

After starting his FBS career 13-23, he went 24-10 in his final three years and was hired by Kansas to turn around a program that was left in shambles by Les Miles.

A 2-10 inaugural season won’t get him a ton of credit here, though.