The coach who will eventually hoist the national championship trophy in Atlanta on the evening of Jan. 20 will do so for the very first time. Here’s hoping he’s prepared for the heft — both literally and figuratively.
None of the four coaches left in the College Football Playoff have won a national title. But one of them will join an elite fraternity in less than two weeks, a notable development in a sport that has seen a number of its Hall of Fame coaches depart in recent years. Georgia’s Kirby Smart and Clemson’s Dabo Swinney are the only active head coaches with a national championship at the Football Bowl Subdivision level; each has two.
Texas’ Steve Sarkisian is two wins away from joining them. But so is Ohio State’s Ryan Day. And Penn State’s James Franklin. Or Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman.
“We didn’t come this far just to come this far,” Sarkisian said of his Longhorns. “The journey is not done; the mission is not complete. … None of this is guaranteed. It’s not like, ‘Well, we’ll just get back here again next year.’ ”
The stage is set, the opportunity ripe for each of the four. Ohio State looks like the hottest team in college football, but Texas has the best playcaller. Notre Dame’s got the most suffocating defense left in the Playoff, but Penn State has the biggest X-factor in its do-everything tight end Tyler Warren. There are so many different prisms in which to view the matchups within each of the national semifinals, and it’s easy to talk yourself into picking any of the four teams to win it all.
There’s always a ton at stake for head coaches when they reach this part of the season. Legacies can be cemented or narratives flipped. And the opportunity to become a national champion for the first time is a particularly fascinating dynamic exactly one year after Nick Saban, the greatest college football coach of all time, retired. Then Jim Harbaugh, fresh off his first national title, left for the NFL. And just a few weeks ago, Mack Brown was forced out at UNC. And there went all of the other national championship-winning coaches.
So, here’s a blank space, as Taylor Swift would say. It’s time for one of these coaches to write his name … and perhaps change the trajectory of a career.
There is an added layer of significance for the two coaches that will prowl the sidelines Thursday night at the Orange Bowl. Because Freeman and Franklin face each other in a semifinal, it guarantees that there will be a Black head coach in the national championship game for the first time.
“It just kind of makes me think of when Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith played in Super Bowl XXXXI in 2007 — that was the first Super Bowl featuring a Black head coach at all, let alone two,” Franklin said. “I remember thinking that as a coach, how significant that was in the profession and how significant that was for young coaches coming up in the profession to see those guys in that role.”
Franklin remembers working as an offensive coordinator under Kansas State head coach Ron Prince in the mid 2000s, wondering if there could be more opportunities for Black coaches to become head coaches. At the time, there were only six Black head coaches out of 127 FBS schools. One was Sylvester Croom, the first African-American head coach to work in the SEC. He can rattle off the rest easily: Prince, Karl Dorrell, Randy Shannon, Turner Gill, Randy Shannon and Tyrone Willingham.
“Now there are 16 coaches of color in these positions,” Franklin said. “I hope a game like ours could have an impact, really just looking for opportunities for guys to be able to get in front of some search firms and (athletic directors) and get opportunities that they earned.
“I don’t take it lightly. I really don’t. I’ve gotten a ton of messages from people all over the country that I’ve worked with or know.”
Freeman said he is grateful to be part of something historic like this moment, and that it took a special team to bring him to the precipice of the title game. And it took other Black coaches before him to lay the groundwork for an opportunity like the one he got from former Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick, who hired Freeman to the role when he was just 35 years old with zero head-coaching experience.
“It’s a reminder that you are a representation for many others and many of our players that look the same way I do, (that) your color shouldn’t matter,” Freeman said. “The evidence of your work should. But it takes everybody. And that’s what I continue to remind myself. When people will try to point the finger at you, it’s a great reminder of you’re not in this position without everybody, without all these guys.”
It is, indeed, a cool moment for all four of these coaches, individually, and their programs, collectively. They’re all in uncharted territory (even though Texas was one of the four teams in the four-team CFP last year), traversing a new expanded Playoff format for the first time and leading teams through a potential 17-game season. Whoever lifts that trophy as the confetti falls on that Monday night in Atlanta will certainly have earned it.
And that’s the point. It’s supposed to be hard, joining that fraternity of championship-winning coaches. These four know that better than most, as they sit here so very close to the mountaintop.
