New Headline: Lane Kiffin Thrives Despite Challenges as He Earns 2019 Coaching Title

The Athletic’s Stewart Mandel and Bruce Feldman released their annual top 25 college football coaches rankings Thursday morning, the latest installment of the offseason content machine. Mandel and Feldman aren’t typically known as hot take artists, but given how the 2025 season played out, it’s difficult to even define what the chalk rankings are, which made this year’s list particularly interesting. But it was hard to find something more curious than where the latter ranked LSU’s new head coach, Lane Kiffin.

Mandel was fairly high on the Tigers ’ head man, ranking him eighth, just behind Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman and Texas’ Steve Sarkisian. Feldman’s ranking, on the other hand, came as a real shock. He placed Kiffin 15th, right behind recently-fired Penn State head coach James Franklin, who has since taken over at Virginia Tech.

This ranking becomes even more mystifying when you read what appears to be Feldman’s explanation for why he’s so low on the Tigers’ head coach: “Overall, [Kiffin is] 6-16 all-time against top-10 opponents and 14-25 vs. Top 25 opponents,” Feldman wrote. To be fair, it's true that Kiffin doesn’t have the strongest track record against the top teams in the country.

But can you really say Franklin did a much better job than Kiffin during his time at Penn State? Franklin vs. Kiffin The Athletic gave the Penn State job an “A” grade in an article that ranked the open head coaching positions back in December, citing the Nittany Lions ’ tradition, money, and facilities as reasons why it’s considered one of the top jobs in college football.