Perhaps nothing is more important in college football than getting the right head coach that fits the culture and tradition of the program. Even schools that sell themselves per se can go from conference and national title contenders to teams that simply go to a good bowl on a yearly basis.
In the Big Ten, each school has its own separate history and ways of winning that have to fit the personalities that are hired to be caretakers of what has come before them. In some cases, the coaches hired are brought in to take the school to the next level.
But, no matter how you look at it, each is judged by the job they do with each program in relation to what we’ve seen in past history. Expectations at a place like Ohio State for instance are a lot different than those found at Northwestern or Indiana.
The Big Ten went through an upgrade in its coaches when Urban Meyer arrived on the scene, and it’s still got some pretty good ones now that he rode off into the sunset in Columbus and is now trying his hand at the NFL. Ryan Day has done pretty good picking up where he left off, but what about the rest of the conference?
We decided to rank all fourteen Big Ten head coaches heading into the 2021 season and here’s how we believe things look as they stand today.
