Ranking the top 20 college football coaches for 2021

5. Kirby Smart, Georgia

Some people are definitely going to quibble with the fact that Kirby Smart cracks the top five of these head coach rankings ahead of Brian Kelly and Jimbo Fisher. The reason for that is that Smart has yet to truly get over the hump to this point and, moreover, he’s coming off a year in which the Bulldogs were a bit underwhelming given their talent and failed to win the SEC East after three years atop the division.

Make no mistake, Smart needs to start capitalizing on his talent sooner rather than later. However, it would be unfair to the Georgia head coach to not recognize what he has indeed accomplished over five seasons with the Bulldogs. He has accrued a 52-14 record to this point, has won the SEC Championship Game once, has made four consecutive New Year’s Six games, and was tantalizingly close to winning a National Championship in his second year with the program.

It’s not surprising to see that success either. Georgia has been one of the best recruiting programs in the country since Smart took over and that hasn’t slowed down in the slightest. This is a talent-accumulation business and he’s been elite in that capacity.

The clock is ticking, though. That talent has to produce at the level it’s capable of, namely by bringing Georgia its first title since 1980. And if that doesn’t happen soon, then Smart is going to start dropping in these rankings because, at the end of the day, it’s about the head coach making it happen at full potential on the field.