NCAAF teams
Chris Low, ESPN Senior Writer 9y

The best Group of 5 jobs

College Football, Boise State Broncos, BYU Cougars, Central Florida Knights, Houston Cougars, Marshall Thundering Herd, Cincinnati Bearcats, Colorado State Rams, SMU Mustangs

Our countdown of the top Power 5 head-coaching jobs in college football has already generated plenty of debate.

Who's too high? Who's too low? Where would some of the Group of 5 jobs rank in that countdown?

To the last point, we've come up with the five best Group of 5 head-coaching jobs along with three more that just missed the cut.

We're using roughly the same criteria that were used to rank the Power 5 jobs -- location, facilities, recruiting base, fervor of the fan base, administrative stability/support and tradition.

So, if every Group of 5 job came open tomorrow, which would be most desirable? Here's what we came up with, in alphabetical order:

BOISE STATE 
During the BCS era, no program outside the power conferences came close to matching the success of Boise State. And in the past nine years, the Broncos have won three Fiesta Bowls (under two different head coaches) and 10 or more games eight times.

The Boise State job is attractive enough that many in the profession thought Chris Petersen would never leave. But after eight seasons and 92 wins, he bolted for Washington following the 2013 season. Bryan Harsin took over and promptly guided the Broncos to 12 wins, including a 38-30 victory over Arizona in the Fiesta Bowl, and he was rewarded in February with a new five-year, $6.25 million contract, as well as a $100,000 bonus for him and another $100,000 bonus to spread out among his coaches. The Broncos haven't been shy about spending money. Petersen was set to make $2.3 million when he left.

Granted, the weather in Boise can be frightful, but everything is in place to win and win big. Former head coaches Dirk Koetter and Dan Hawkins both had success before moving on to bigger jobs, and Harsin is well on his way to moving out from under Petersen's enormous shadow as the Broncos enter their fifth season in the Mountain West Conference after previously dominating the Western Athletic Conference.

Albertsons Stadium is probably best known for its blue turf, the kind of enduring symbol that can be handy on the recruiting trail, but it's also grown into one of the best home-field advantages in college football. The Bleymaier Football Center, a $22 million facility completed in 2013, has all the bells and whistles, including a multistory theater.

Boise State's schedule is dotted with big-name opponents. Petersen will make a homecoming when Washington visits Boise to open the 2015 season. Oregon has also played there within the past six years, and the Broncos have been a regular in some of the "kickoff classic" games to open seasons against the likes of Georgia, Ole Miss and Virginia Tech.

Something else that should only help going forward in the world of haves and have-nots in college athletics is that Boise State plans to follow the Power 5 model and offer full cost of attendance to all of its scholarship athletes.

BYU
The storied football tradition BYU enjoys speaks for itself, and the tie to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gives the Cougars a global appeal.

One of the down sides to the job, at least for now, is that BYU is an independent, although athletic director Tom Holmoe said recently he expects BYU to be playing in a Power 5 conference in the "near future." The Big 12 looked like it might be an option when it expanded a few years ago, but it stopped at 10 after adding TCU and West Virginia. Nonetheless, BYU still has the national clout to land marquee games and has a television contract with ESPN for home games. To open the 2017 season, BYU and LSU will play in Houston in the AdvoCare Texas Kickoff, and the Cougars routinely travel all over the country. Next season, they play at Nebraska, at UCLA, at Michigan and face Missouri in Kansas City. That's on top of facing Boise State at home.

Since its expansion in 1982, LaVell Edwards Stadium has consistently ranked among the top 25 nationally in attendance. The 65,000-seat stadium also has a spectacular view of the Wasatch Mountains and is a great setting for football. The Cougars' indoor practice facility is one of the largest in the country.

BYU does have to share the state's football allegiances with Utah and, more recently, Utah State. But BYU's brand has endured, going back to the 1984 national championship. The Cougars have recorded 17 Top 25 finishes since 1974, including four top-10 finishes.

They've also gone to 10 consecutive bowl games under Bronco Mendenhall, who took over for Gary Crowton, who replaced the legendary Edwards. Mendenhall is starting to hear it from the fans after winning just eight games each of the past three seasons, which tells you a little bit about the expectations at BYU. A winning football program is an integral part of the BYU culture, and that's not going to change anytime soon.

CINCINNATI
Just look at the coaches who've come through Cincinnati in the past decade. Mark Dantonio made a stopover before going to Michigan State. Brian Kelly was at Cincinnati before taking the Notre Dame job, and Butch Jones followed Kelly before heading off to Tennessee. The Bearcats then lured Tommy Tuberville away from Texas Tech and are paying him $2.2 million per year, which tops all non-Power 5 schools.

Now a member of the American Athletic Conference, Cincinnati might be viewed as a stepping-stone job, but that's not always a bad thing when you look at the caliber of coaches who've guided the program. 

Tuberville, entering this third season, has won nine games each of the past two seasons. Jones won 10 games each of his last two seasons, in 2011 and 2012, and Kelly took the Bearcats to the Orange Bowl and the Sugar Bowl and won 23 games his last two seasons. Cincinnati has won or shared a conference title five times in the past seven seasons.

Nippert Stadium just underwent an $86 million renovation that will raise capacity from 35,000 to 40,000. The Bearcats played their home games last season at the Bengals' Paul Brown Stadium. With two professional franchises in the city (the Bengals and Reds), UC football can get swallowed up at times, especially with Ohio State being just up the road. But there are excellent football players in the state, and the Bearcats are going to get their share.

Sure, it's not a destination job, but it is a job that continues to attract first-rate coaches and continues to produce winning seasons.

HOUSTON
The recruiting base is phenomenal. The Houston area is overflowing with talent every year, and Texas, Texas A&M and all of the other Power 5 schools in the state can't get all of the players. There's a ton of talent to go around, and Houston has cashed in over the years to build rosters that are reflective of that talent.

Tom Herman, the hottest assistant coach in college football last season, left Ohio State to take the Houston job. Tony Levine was fired after he didn't win enough (21-17 over the past three seasons), and the Cougars are paying Herman $1.35 million per year.

It's definitely a program with New Year's Six potential. The Cougars were one win away from going to the Sugar Bowl in 2011 under Kevin Sumlin, who won 12 games that season before landing the Texas A&M job. (The team won 13, but Sumlin departed before the bowl game.) Art Briles won 18 games in his last two seasons before leaving for Baylor.

A current member of the American Athletic Conference, Houston would be a natural candidate if the Big 12 decides to expand. It's a huge school with nearly 50,000 students, and being a part of the Houston television market is never a bad thing. Moreover, Houston just finished its first season in its new, $128 million, on-campus TDECU Stadium, which seats 40,000 and replaced the old Robertson Stadium.

The Cougars have gone to bowl games in eight of the past 10 years, and they've been a pipeline for outstanding quarterbacks, which is a major selling point on the recruiting trail. Players want to follow in the footsteps of Andre Ware, Case Keenum, Kevin Kolb and David Klingler.

UCF
Without question, the new kid on the block among the top non-Power 5 jobs is UCF, which has taken off under George O'Leary.

The Knights are still very young as an FBS program, and the future looks extremely bright. When O'Leary was hired in 2004, UCF had been an FBS program for less than a decade. The Knights were 0-11 in his first season but have gone 21-4 over the past two seasons and beat Baylor in the Fiesta Bowl two years ago.

Here's the other thing: UCF doesn't have to go far to recruit. Within three hours of the Orlando-area campus, there are great football players everywhere you look. Orlando is a huge market without an NFL team, and UCF's student enrollment is larger than both Florida and Florida State.

Fan attendance hasn't been great, but UCF built 45,323-seat Bright House Networks Stadium in 2007 and is adding a beach-themed bar area to the stadium in 2015. There's a separate football complex by the stadium and an indoor practice facility. It's a program that has come a long way since its Mid-American Conference days and playing its home games at the Citrus Bowl in downtown Orlando.

The truth is that UCF is always going to play in the shadow of Florida and Florida State, but the upside for the UCF program is tremendous when you consider the financial commitment that's being made to football, not to mention the climate in Central Florida and fertile recruiting base that goes with it. There's a chance a Power 5 conference could come calling if there's another round of expansion.

JUST MISSED THE CUT

Colorado State
The Rams had fallen on hard times before Jim McElwain took over, but he turned that program around. And with a new on-campus stadium coming in 2017, first-year coach Mike Bobo is set up to continue that success.

Marshall
Going back to the tragic plane crash in 1970, no college football program in the country means more to its fans than Marshall's program. The Herd have great tradition, die-hard fans and a brand-new indoor practice facility.

SMU
It took SMU 20 years to make another bowl game following the death penalty handed down by the NCAA in 1987, but it's a program under first-year coach Chad Morris that's showing real signs of coming back to life in the talent-rich state of Texas.

^ Back to Top ^