In the month May, two national sports outlets have released rankings of football head coaches. Athlon has a Mountain West-specific ranking by Steven Lassan while Sporting News ranked every head coach from all 136 FBS teams for the 2025 season.
Let’s have a look at those rankings and see how the 12 coaches of the Mountain West stack up based on the national perspective. We’ll go in order of the average rank between Athlon and Sporting News’ publications.
T-1 — Troy Calhoun (Air Force)
- Athlon MW Rank: 2nd
- Sporting News National Rank: 69th (2nd in MW)
- Coaching Record: 135-89
- Record at Current School: 135-89 (19th year)
Calhoun has been around nearly as long as the Mountain West itself (or at least it kind of feels like that since he didn’t start at Air Force until 2007, eight years after the MW got started). He’s been a model for consistency with only two of his 18 seasons having less than five wins (one of those was when the Falcons went 3-3 in the COVID-19 shortened 2020 season). Perhaps the onset of NIL and the transfer portal will find a way to slow Calhoun down, but until then, Air Force will be a bastion of classic college football.
T-1 — Dan Mullen (UNLV)
- Athlon MW Rank: 1st
- Sporting News National Rank: 70th (3rd in MW)
- Coaching Record: 103-61
- Record at Current School: 0-0 (1st Year)
The former Mississippi State and Florida head coach ranked first according to Athlon and third by Sporting News. He’ll be in his first year at UNLV with his $3.5 million salary being a massive indicator of the success the Rebels expect Mullen to bring to the program. UNLV is coming off the best two-year stretch in program history and just their second 11-wins season ever. Mullen isn’t rebuilding anything, he’s reloading.
3 — Spencer Danielson (Boise State)
- Athlon MW Rank: 4th
- Sporting News National Rank: 33rd (1st in MW)
- Coaching Record: 15-3
- Record at Current School: 15-3 (3rd Year)
Athlon may have done Danielson dirty with their ranking, placing the man that got Boise State to the College Football Playoff and coached a Heisman runner-up as the fourth-best coach in the league. Danielson has done quite a lot with the Broncos in less than two full seasons as head coach, but it includes two Mountain West titles.
4 — Bronco Mendenhall (Utah State)
- Athlon MW Rank: 3rd
- Sporting News National Rank: 74th (5th in MW)
- Coaching Record: 140-88
- Record at Current School: 0-0 (1st Year)
After one year of relatively solid success at New Mexico, Mendenhall looking to rebuild a Utah State program that’s struggled for three seasons. Mendenhall has an extensive history of success, largely at USU’s in-state rival BYU, but he hasn’t coached a team with a winning record since 2019, a time that pre-dates the transfer portal and NIL. It remains to be seen whether he is still a high-level coach, but for now he retains his well-earned respect.
5 — Ken Niumatalolo (San Jose State)
- Athlon MW Rank: 5th
- Sporting News National Rank: 86th (6th in MW)
- Coaching Record: 116-89
- Record at Current School: 7-6 (2nd Year)
Year one of Niumatalolo’s tenure went relatively well. The Spartans didn’t fall back into the rut they were in during the 2010s and are now an a bowl streak of three years, the longest in program history. SJSU has built a solid foundation to build further success upon and Niumatalolo has every chance to continue building that.
6 — Matt Entz (Fresno State)
- Athlon MW Rank: 8th
- Sporting News National Rank: 71st (4th in MW)
- Coaching Record: 60-11
- Record at Current School: 0-0 (1st Year)
Entz is one of two former FCS head coaches to join the Mountain West this year. Entz has a very robust resume in a relatively short time as a head coach. He made three FCS championship games, winning two, with a dominant 60-11 winning record. Athlon didn’t appreciate those fact, but Sporting News certainly did.
7 — Jay Norvell (Colorado State)
- Athlon MW Rank: 6th
- Sporting News National Rank: 95th (7th in MW)
- Coaching Record: 49-47
- Record at Current School: 16-21 (4th year)
Last year was the first in which Norvell began showing the ability to have the success he’d had at Nevada. It took going 3-9 in year one and 5-7 in year two, but a solid eight-win campaign last year has the Rams on a clear upward trajectory.
8 — Sean Lewis (San Diego State)
- Athlon MW Rank: 7th
- Sporting News National Rank: 119th (10th in MW)
- Coaching Record: 27-40
- Record at Current School: 3-9 (2nd Year)
The Aztecs brought in Lewis to be a culture shift from the old days of tough-nosed defense and elite rushing attacks to one of higher powered offense. To put it bluntly, that didn’t happen in year one. But it’s not terribly uncommon for coaches that rebuild programs to have a bad year one and go on to have success. There’s a precedent for Lewis to still be a great coach at SDSU.
9 — Timmy Chang (Hawaii)
- Athlon MW Rank: 10th
- Sporting News National Rank: 106th (8th in MW)
- Coaching Record: 13-25
- Record at Current School: 13-25 (4th year)
Chang’s time hasn’t been disastrous, but none would really call it good. He’s had three losing years in a row and his coaching tenure may not survive another one.
10 — Jeff Choate (Nevada)
- Athlon MW Rank: 9th
- Sporting News National Rank: 118th (9th in MW)
- Coaching Record: 3-10
- Record at Current School: 3-10 (2nd year)
Choate didn’t bring about a turnaround for Nevada’s program that feels like it’s starting to drown after three consecutive seasons of three or fewer wins. The post-Jay Norvell era has been a disaster, but so long as Choate doesn’t do what Ken Wilson did and win just four games in two years, he should have enough time to try and build something.
11 — Jay Sawvel (Wyoming)
- Athlon MW Rank: 12th
- Sporting News National Rank: 121st (11th in MW)
- Coaching Record: 3-9
- Record at Current School: 3-9 (2nd Year)
Sawvel was the anointed successor to Craig Bohl but Sawvel did not manage to retain the level of success that Bohl was consistently able to have. Bohl had one non-COVID season in which he won less than four games. Sawvel did that in year one. Luckily, if he wants to follow in the steps of his predecessor, Sawvel can keep in mind that Bohl went 4-8 in his first year at Wyoming before the rest of his relatively successful tenure.
12 — Jason Eck (New Mexico)
- Athlon MW Rank: 11th
- Sporting News National Rank: 124th (12th in MW)
- Coaching Record: 26-13
- Record at Current School: 0-0 (1st year)
Coming from FCS isn’t going to earn you a whole lot of respect in these national rankings, much less having only been a head coach in the FCS for three seasons. But those three seasons were pretty solid as Eck led Idaho to a 26-13 record and a 2-3 mark in FCS playoff games.
