SEC Coaching Power Rankings 2025: Kirby Smart leads the way

By Chris Marler

Rankings season is here, and the focus shifts to the men leading the SEC into 2025. Some coaches carry decades of success, others are still chasing credibility. From Jeff Lebby at Mississippi State to Kirby Smart at Georgia, this list reveals who’s climbing and who’s already at the top.

16. Jeff Lebby, Mississippi State
15. Clark Lea, Vanderbilt
14. Brent Venables, Oklahoma
13. Sam Pittman, Arkansas
12. Hugh Freeze, Auburn
11. Billy Napier, Florida

10. Mark Stoops, Kentucky

Stoops has overachieved during the entirety of his time in Lexington. Few coaches get as much leeway for mediocrity and such a dreadful track record against quality opponents. 

Stoops is 28-62 vs the SEC since becoming head coach at UK. If a .311 winning percentage against his own conference wasn’t bad enough, his teams are also 3-32 against SEC teams that finished with a winning record. 

9. Mike Elko, Texas A&M

There’s not a ton on the resumé for Elko yet, and the way the Aggies finished last season was not great. However, Elko inherited a Duke program that went 5-18 over the previous two seasons, managing just one conference win in 17 tries. Elko got them to nine wins in year one and finished above .500 in ACC play. 

Texas A&M was in a similar spot before Elko, but he immediately went 7-1 and matched Jimbo Fisher’s total number of top-25 wins from the previous three seasons in just his first year.

8. Shane Beamer, South Carolina 

Beamer gets more unnecessary criticism than he should. Sure, throwing a sideline tantrum in the bowl game after Bret Bielema got under your skin, and the occasional cringe TikTok, doesn’t exactly help his case. 

Beamer has done a great job in Columbia at exceeding expectations, though. He’s also quietly become one of the best at assessing and developing overlooked players from the transfer portal and turning them into SEC starters and NFL draft picks.

Beamer has made a habit of finishing strong, especially when the stakes are highest. South Carolina is 6-0 in its last six November matchups against ranked opponents.

7. Eli Drinkwitz, Missouri 

He’s goofy as can be, and absolutely looks like he swims with a shirt on and possibly floaties in the deep end. Still, give Eli Drinkwitz his flowers because he’s been great at Mizzou. 

Drinkwitz is 21-5 over the last two seasons and has been to four straight bowl games. He’s also owned South Carolina and Shane Beamer, going 4-1 against him. 

6. Lane Kiffin, Ole Miss

Kiffin has been great in Oxford. The Rebels went four straight years without a winning season before Kiffin. Now, they’ve stacked five straight at .500 or better and three double-digit win seasons in four years, their best stretch in 65+ years. Ole Miss has been ranked in the top ten at some point during the season for four straight years. 

What Kiffin hasn’t mastered yet is finishing. Too often, Ole Miss finds new ways to lose games inexcusably. As good as he was last year, a signature win over Kirby Smart was overshadowed by a home loss to 4-8 Kentucky, a road loss to Florida as a 13-point favorite and a blown lead in the final minutes at LSU, which cost them a shot at the Playoff.

5. Josh Heupel, Tennessee

There’s a very valid case for Heupel to be ahead of Kiffin. He’s done several things that Kiffin hasn’t during his first four years in Knoxville: he’s held a No. 1 ranking, won in Death Valley, beaten Alabama and made it to the College Football Playoff. 

He’s struggled mightily with Kirby Smart and UGA, and the Vols still can’t get out of The Swamp with a win to save their lives. But, Heupel is one of just three SEC coaches with a winning record against Top 25 SEC teams, along with Kirby Smart and Kalen Deboer, who’s only had one season. 

4. Brian Kelly, LSU

Brian Kelly seems to always be criminally under-ranked in most of these head coaching lists. People forget that before he was at Cincinnati, he created a juggernaut at Grand Valley State. He’s been a head coach for 35 years and has amassed 292 total wins across all levels. Still, his reputation tends to be judged almost exclusively through one lens: how he did at Notre Dame, and now LSU, against the SEC’s elite.

That comes with the territory. Even so, Kelly has stacked 12 double-digit win seasons in the last 18 years. He’s struggled against elite teams, but he’s also proven remarkably consistent at handling the games he’s expected to win. Eight of his 11 total losses in Baton Rouge were to Top 25 teams. In three years he’s beaten Bama, had a player win a Heisman trophy and is now going into the season with his most talented roster in years. 

3. Kalen Deboer, Alabama 

Deboer did lose to Vanderbilt and Oklahoma last year, which was inexcusable. But his full body of work is arguably good enough to be 2nd on this list. 

He’s 15-3 against ranked opponents, the best winning percentage (.833) of any Power 4 coach. He’s also 4-0 head-to-head against the other three coaches in this top four, and 6-1 against Top 10 teams over the last three seasons. His lone loss coming on the biggest stage, the national championship. For good measure, he’s also 3-0 against the sport’s rising star, Dan Lanning.

2. Steve Sarkisian, Texas 

Sark’s resumé should probably put him behind Deboer. However, there has to be a bit of a curve in favor of Sark considering that he was able to win against Vandy and Oklahoma and get his team back to the College Football Playoff for two straight years. 

Texas is back for good. Sarkisian is recruiting at an elite level, and he’s accomplished something no other Texas coach has managed in the past two decades: consistently putting players into the NFL. Sark has put 23 players in the NFL Draft in the last two seasons. That’s two more than they had in the previous seven years combined and includes five first rounders. 

Sark is also 10-2 against ranked teams not named UGA and Ohio State over the last two seasons. Now, it’s time to figure out how to get over that hump. 

1. Kirby Smart, Georgia

Smart is the best coach in all of college football, and it’s not particularly close. Smart has a .847 career winning percentage in nine seasons, going 105-19 with just three losses to unranked opponents. From 2019 to 2023, Georgia dropped only six games, four of them to either Nick Saban or 2019 LSU. Since 2017, he’s 58-7 in SEC regular-season play. 

He’s also one of the best coaches at developing NFL talent in college football history, and we are still less than a decade into his tenure. Georgia has produced 75 NFL Draft picks over the last eight years, including 55 in the past five seasons, 20 first-round selections, and a record-setting 15 in 2022 alone.