My, has the college coaching landscape changed in a hurry. Only two years ago, this column included the following coaches in the Top 10: Urban Meyer, Chris Petersen, Mark Dantonio, Gary Patterson, David Shaw and Chip Kelly. Three have since retired; TCU’s Patterson and Stanford’s Shaw have not exactly been performing at a Top 10 level recently, and UCLA’s Kelly no longer merits inclusion in any part of the Top 25.



That means a whole lot of new blood this season — nine guys who did not appear on this list just a year earlier. It also means I had far more legit contenders for Nos. 20-25 than I did for Nos. 8-10. There’s been a brain drain in the sport.



For those of you who may be new here, don’t view this list as a career achievement ranking. It is heavily weighted for recent performance (the last three years in particular). In other words, the top 25 coaches as of today.



Also, as in the past, I only considered those...