10 College Football Coaching Showdowns We Can't Wait to See in 2016
From the pregame handshakes near midfield to the in-game chess matches to the postgame comments, coaching showdowns are part of the lifeblood of college football.
Sometimes, when we see two particular teams matched up on a schedule, we see coach vs. coach as much as we do program vs. program.
Throughout the sport's history, fans have been able to enjoy classic coaching showdowns such as Woody Hayes vs. Bo Schembechler, Steve Spurrier vs. Bobby Bowden and, most recently, Nick Saban vs. Urban Meyer.
College football had some great one-off coaching matchups last season as well, including Saban vs. Dabo Swinney in the College Football Playoff National Championship.
Here are 10 college football coaching showdowns that should command a lot of attention during the 2016 season, based on past history, program prestige and the potential for long-term rivalry.
While fans will eagerly await showdowns like the second edition of Meyer vs. Jim Harbaugh, this particular countdown focuses on showdowns that we haven't seen yet thanks to the offseason's coaching changes or ones we haven't seen in a while.
Which new coaching showdowns are you looking forward to seeing the most in the 2016 season? Let us know in the comments below.
Lane Kiffin vs. Clay Helton
1 of 10
Teams: Alabama (Kiffin) vs. USC (Helton)
Date: September 3
Location: Arlington, Texas
Perhaps the most high-profile matchup on what looks to be the best opening weekend of college football in quite some time is defending national champion Alabama's showdown with USC at the Advocare Classic.
Alabama and USC are two names with plenty of national championships, all-time wins and rich history between them, but the one name that stands above the rest in this matchup is Lane Kiffin.
Kiffin was fired as USC's head coach midway through the 2013 season and revived his career by becoming one of the nation's best offensive coordinators for Nick Saban at Alabama. Meanwhile, the Trojans replaced Kiffin with Steve Sarkisian only to replace him last season with Clay Helton—a top offensive assistant under Kiffin and his immediate interim replacement in 2013.
"We were fortunate to be with Coach Kiffin in our years at USC," Helton said last month, per Mark Heim of AL.com. "The first thing you saw was how offensively brilliant the guy is. He does as good a job as anybody in the country creating mismatches, taking his best player and finding a way to put him on your worst player."
The matchup with USC will be a huge one for Kiffin, whose son asked him how many days until the Tide played the Trojans after Alabama's national title win over USC.
Like Knox Kiffin, the rest of us can't wait for this showdown in Arlington.
Dave Aranda vs. Paul Chryst
2 of 10
Teams: LSU (Aranda) vs. Wisconsin (Chryst)
Date: September 3
Location: Green Bay, Wisconsin
The first Saturday of the season will feature another SEC coordinator facing his former school as Dave Aranda opens his LSU tenure with the team he left this offseason—Wisconsin.
Aranda spent three seasons at Wisconsin, first joining the program with former head coach Gary Andersen from Utah State. He stayed on when Andersen left for Oregon State prior to the 2015 season, serving as the defensive coordinator for Paul Chryst.
In his three seasons with the Badgers, Aranda's defenses finished seventh, fourth and second nationally in total yards allowed per game. Now he's in charge of an LSU defense that is filled with some of the highest-rated high school recruits year in and year out.
And as fate would have it, Aranda will get to see his former employer in his first game in charge of that LSU defense.
Aranda will return to the state of Wisconsin—this time at historic Lambeau Field in Green Bay—as a member of Les Miles' coaching staff in a season in which LSU is projected to compete for a College Football Playoff berth.
No other team should know an Aranda defense quite like Wisconsin, and his former players on the defensive side of the ball will be extremely motivated when they square off with the likes of LSU superstar running back Leonard Fournette.
This should be a fun chess match between the Tigers and Badgers.
Tom Herman vs. Bob Stoops
3 of 10
Teams: Houston (Herman) vs. Oklahoma (Stoops)
Date: September 3
Location: Houston, Texas
Houston vs. Oklahoma inside NRG Stadium on kickoff Saturday will pit the hottest young name in coaching against one of the longest-tenured stars of the sport.
Tom Herman took the college football world by storm last season when he took a good Houston team and made it into one that won the American Athletic Conference and the Peach Bowl in just his first year in charge.
He turned down interest from Power Five coaching jobs and landed a killer recruiting class for the Cougars, who now have their sights on bigger and better things.
Bob Stoops knows a thing or two about making a big splash early in your career. Stoops won the national title in just his second season at Oklahoma (2000), and he's won eight other Big 12 Championships since—including last season, when his Sooners rebounded from a down 2014 to make it to the College Football Playoff.
Herman will be looking for the biggest upset of his young coaching career against the winner of the Power Five conference his program wants to join in the future.
Stoops will be looking for a major win to kick off what could be another title-winning campaign at Oklahoma.
This is a classic clash between the new-school power and the established blue blood, from the programs themselves to the head coaches.
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Bret Bielema vs. Gary Patterson
4 of 10
Teams: Arkansas (Bielema) vs. TCU (Patterson)
Date: September 10
Location: Fort Worth, Texas
Things have changed quite a bit for both Bret Bielema and Gary Patterson since their meeting at the 2011 Rose Bowl. Bielema was the head coach at Wisconsin, and Patterson was leading a mid-major TCU team that made an undefeated run through the Mountain West.
Now, five years later, Bielema is the head coach at Arkansas, while Patterson has led TCU into a new era of football as a strong member of the Big 12.
In an interesting twist, Pete Roussel of CoachingSearch.com (h/t SBNation's Jason Kirk) reported that Patterson was the "leading candidate" for the Arkansas job Bielema took prior to the start of the 2013 season.
Both Bielema and Patterson's teams have gone through some style changes since they last squared off in Pasadena, California.
Patterson, who made a name for himself with punishing defense at TCU, had a top-10 offense in the last two seasons with dual-threat quarterback Trevone Boykin and plenty of speed on the edges.
Meanwhile, Bielema's offense has opened things up more from the traditional power-running scheme, as the Razorbacks threw for at least 300 yards in four of their final six games of 2015—including a pair of 400-yard SEC games that each finished with more than 100 combined points.
The last time these two coaches met, Patterson edged Bielema in a 21-19 defensive slugfest.
They both have to replace several key starters on their new-look offenses, but this one could be higher-scoring than many would have expected several years ago.
Urban Meyer vs. Bob Stoops
5 of 10
Teams: Ohio State (Meyer) vs. Oklahoma (Stoops)
Date: September 17
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
Two of the biggest names in college football will go toe to toe in Week 3 when Urban Meyer brings his Ohio State Buckeyes into Norman, Oklahoma, to face Bob Stoops' Sooners.
In the world of college football, this is a true heavyweight bout.
"Two of college football’s storied programs will be meeting in a nonconference game that wouldn’t look out of place on the College Football Playoff bracket once the regular season comes to a close," Brandon Chatmon of ESPN.com wrote. "Great players, great coaches and two programs that are willing to take on anyone, anywhere."
On the field, Meyer and Stoops famously met in the 2009 BCS National Championship Game, where Meyer's Florida Gators defeated the Sooners by a score of 24-14 in South Florida.
Much like their meeting several years ago, both coaches' recent teams have boasted some of the best offensive firepower in all of college football.
Off the field, Meyer and Stoops are good friends. According to a 2012 piece by Wright Thompson of ESPN the Magazine, Stoops met with Meyer after the former Florida coach left the Gators and talked to him about balancing work and family.
On a more lighthearted note, Stoops also convinced Meyer, now at Ohio State, to join Twitter in 2013.
This one has the makings of a potential classic as two coaches who will go down in college football history meet in a can't-miss, early-season showdown.
Mark Richt vs. Jimbo Fisher
6 of 10
Teams: Florida State (Fisher) vs. Miami (Richt)
Date: October 8
Location: Miami, Florida
This year's rivalry matchup between Miami and Florida State will get an extra element of intrigue, as it will be Mark Richt's first ACC home game as the head coach of the Hurricanes.
In the last several years, Jimbo Fisher has made Florida State the premier championship-winning program in the Sunshine State while Miami slumped down to average-at-best seasons. The Seminoles have been able to go into Miami's fertile recruiting grounds and snag some elite talent, including star running back Dalvin Cook.
Miami hired Richt this offseason to get the Hurricanes back to that level in both the ACC and the national landscape. Richt churned out plenty of double-digit-win seasons during his tenure at Georgia, and "The U" wants him to replicate that success.
This first matchup with Fisher's FSU could be the start of a long coaching rivalry.
"You knew they were going to get somebody good," Fisher said in December, per Tom D'Angelo of the Palm Beach Post. "[Recruiting the Miami area is] going to get tough. Mark’s a great coach, a great person, a great play-caller. ... It’s been tough anyway."
Florida State has won the last six games in this series, but Miami only lost by a single possession in its last two meetings. This is the perfect opportunity for these two head coaches to pick up a statement victory in the changing landscape of college football in the state of Florida.
Will Muschamp vs. Jim McElwain
7 of 10
Teams: South Carolina (Muschamp) vs. Florida (McElwain)
Date: November 12
Location: Gainesville, Florida
Welcome back to Gainesville, Will Muschamp.
Almost exactly two years after Muschamp was dismissed as head coach of Florida—following a loss to South Carolina, no less—he will lead that same Gamecock program into the Swamp for a November matchup.
Muschamp made a big-money move to become Auburn's defensive coordinator after leaving Florida, but he only stayed for one season, as the opportunity to become a head coach again opened up in Columbia. Now Muschamp, the full-time replacement for Florida legend Steve Spurrier at South Carolina, will look to make his mark again in the SEC East.
In his return to Gainesville, Muschamp will face Jim McElwain, who took the Gators to the SEC Championship Game in his first season with the program. A former offensive coordinator, he helped Florida turn things around on that side of the ball from the Muschamp era and got the Gators back to Atlanta.
It's going to take time for Muschamp to build South Carolina back up to a contender in the SEC East, but similar things were said about McElwain when he arrived at Florida in 2015.
This late-season matchup will be a great test of how far the Gamecocks have developed in Muschamp's first season in charge.
No matter the records, Muschamp's return to Gainesville to face his successor—who quickly led his former team to a 10-win campaign—will have a ton of drama and buildup.
Gus Malzahn vs. Kirby Smart
8 of 10
Teams: Auburn (Malzahn) vs. Georgia (Smart)
Date: November 12
Location: Athens, Georgia
Gus Malzahn and Kirby Smart have battled on the gridiron several times in their coaching careers, but not as a pair of head coaches in one of college football's most historic rivalries.
This year's edition of the "Deep South's Oldest Rivalry" will pit Malzahn's Auburn team against a Georgia team in its first season under Smart. The two coaches went head-to-head several times in the Iron Bowl rivalry, with Malzahn serving as both an Auburn assistant and head man as Smart led Nick Saban's Alabama defense.
In addition to their prior meetings and strategic strengths as coaches—Malzahn as the no-huddle offensive innovator, Smart as the seasoned defensive mastermind—these two also have some history on the coaching carousel.
In 2012, Joel A. Erickson of AL.com listed both Smart and Malzahn as candidates for the Auburn head coaching job.
Auburn decided to go with Malzahn, who led the Tigers to a legendary upset over Alabama in the 2013 Iron Bowl, an SEC Championship and a berth in the final BCS National Championship Game. Georgia would love to see that kind of first-year success under Smart, and this November matchup against Auburn could have SEC title game implications.
Auburn vs. Georgia is already a great rivalry in the SEC, and this year's matchup will be the next chapter of the growing coaching rivalry between the offensive-minded Malzahn and the defensive-minded Smart.
Jim Harbaugh vs. Kirk Ferentz
9 of 10
Teams: Michigan (Harbaugh) vs. Iowa (Ferentz)
Date: November 12
Location: Iowa City, Iowa
Two of the biggest breakout seasons in all of college football from last season happened in the Big Ten, where Jim Harbaugh won 10 games in his first season at Michigan and Kirk Ferentz led Iowa to a surprising undefeated regular-season run.
Harbaugh and Ferentz are polar opposites when it comes to building their respective programs.
While Harbaugh was making headlines for his recruiting methods in the last couple of months, 247Sports indicates that Ferentz signed a class of nothing but 3-star prospects with little fanfare. And Ferentz is going to keep it that way.
"If I gotta stand on my head to get a guy or tell a funny story, we're in big trouble," Ferentz said, per Mitch Sherman of ESPN.com. "And once we get them here, I feel like we’ve got a really good chance without any fancy gymnastics, hopefully, because I’m not the most entertaining guy in the world."
While they have differing personalities, Harbaugh and Ferentz have similar teams on the field heading into the 2016 season. Both of them return a similar number of starters from their breakout 2015 campaigns, and they'll be among the front-runners to make to the Big Ten Championship Game later this year.
This cross-divisional game could be a preview to a championship showdown in Indianapolis or it could be an elimination game between Big Ten powers.
If anything else, the dueling sideline shots of the energetic Harbaugh and the stoic Ferentz should make for entertaining TV.
Bronco Mendenhall vs. Justin Fuente
10 of 10
Teams: Virginia (Mendenhall) vs. Virginia Tech (Fuente)
Date: November 26
Location: Blacksburg, Virginia
The last coaching matchup on this countdown might not have the star power of others on this list, but the first edition of the rivalry between Bronco Mendenhall's Virginia Cavaliers and Justin Fuente's Virginia Tech Hokies will be one to watch in a strengthening ACC Coastal.
Virginia Tech wasted no time in tabbing Fuente, one of the hottest names in coaching last season, to replace legendary head coach Frank Beamer.
Fuente turned Memphis into a "Group of Five" force during his tenure there, and he was a perfect choice to bring the Hokies into a new era that they hope will include a return to championship contention.
Virginia, on the other hand, pulled off the surprise hire of the coaching carousel by getting veteran BYU coach Bronco Mendenhall to come to the Cavaliers. Mendenhall had been the head coach of the Cougars since 2005, but now he's a key figure in the arms race of coaching prestige in the ACC.
But the 2016 matchup for the Commonwealth Cup won't be the first meeting between Fuente and Mendenhall. In the 2014 Miami Beach Bowl, some bad blood between Fuente's Memphis team and Mendenhall's BYU team boiled over as they clashed in a postgame brawl.
Hopefully, the rivalry rematch between the two first-year head coaches won't lead to an actual fight between their teams. But there's sure to be plenty of emotion attached to this all-Virginia showdown.
Justin Ferguson is a college football writer at Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @JFergusonBR.
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