College football third-year coach grades: Deion Sanders gets ‘C+’ at Colorado

In modern college football, coaches have less time than ever to prove they are the man for the job. The pressures for instant success have only heightened with the introduction of the transfer portal, and examples like Curt Cignetti winning a national championship in Year 2 have led many to believe that turnaround jobs should take less time than ever. So after three years on the job, schools should have a good feel for a program’s direction. 

The 2022-23 coaching carousel did not provide the landscape-shifting changes of other cycles, but it has produced plenty of hires who have already had their judgements rendered. Of the 24 FBS hires made in the cycle, a third of them never even got to Week 1 of Year 3. Seven coaches were fired after Year 2 — five of them for performance and two for off-field related issues — while former UNLV coach Barry Odom did such a good job with the Rebels he was hired away by Purdue to replace one of those coaches (Ryan Walters), who was fired after just two seasons. 

But for the 16 coaches from the cycle who made it to at least Game 1 of the 2025 season, now is the time to render judgements and grades. The standard for these grades will shift depending on job and situation, but mostly focuses on how much high-level success has been achieved in three years and how each team has performed against its peers. And while we have grades for all 16, not all of them are going to make it to Year 4 at their current post. Among this group we have three coaches who were fired during the 2025 cycle and two others who were hired away to other jobs.  

So let’s break it down, starting with one of the youngest coaches of the group who in three short years has already brought some hardware home to his alma mater.