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Athlon's list of top college football coaches has a glaring omission in the Top 5

This doesn't make a lot of sense.

When trying to answer the question of "who is the best coach in college football", there is generally one consensus answer that we have all grown to accept: Alabama's Nick Saban.

As for ranking a Top 5 or even Top 10, there are plenty of ways to go, but a few coaches are generally expected to be in certain spots. Well, unless you are Athlon Sports apparently.

Athlon released a full ranking of all 128 FBS coaches, and it is a pretty good list overall. However, we do have some major questions about how the top coaches ranked out, particularly in the Top 5. Let's take a look at that part of the list:

Harbaugh at No. 3? Bob Stoops at No. 5? And what the heck is Dabo Swinney doing all the way down at No. 9?

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By Athlon's own admission, these rankings are not supposed to be just a list of who has the most accomplishments; they are actually trying to figure out the quality of the coaching if each coach were to be presented with a "blank slate" scenario.

If that's the case, then why is Swinney so far behind Meyer at Ohio State, Harbaugh at Michigan, and Stoops at Oklahoma? The coach has single-handedly killed the word "Clemsoning", yet he's behind all of these guys at historically significant powerhouses? Doesn't quite seem right.

I guess time will tell, but for now, it looks like they got this one wrong.