With less than two months around the corner before the 2026 college football season, Ari Wasserman apparently had a lot of time to spare. The On3 analyst decided to create his annual preseason Big Ten college football head coach rankings. Rather than going purely on the basis of more wins, and championships, the analyst weighed metrics like recent performance, quality of coach’s work, career achievement, roster building, pound for pound value for money, and other things like overall market value. What many folks found surprising is that, when every factor is considered, Indiana Hoosiers head coach Curt Cignetti comes out on top of Ohio State Buckeyes head coach Ryan Day.

In his “Where All 18 Coaches Rank Before the 2026 Season Kicks Off” Big Ten edition, he shocked the college football world with his rankings. He had Curt Cignetti at the pinnacle and Ryan Day at No. 2. That naturally raised some questions considering Ryan Day has posted double-digit wins for almost a decade now.

The debate over Ari Wasserman’s preseason rankings boils down to a classic sports argument: do you prefer regular-season consistency, or do you crown the guy who actually won the biggest trophy?

He is rewarding a coach who pulled off an impossible championship run while penalizing a coach who has all the talent in the world but just can’t seem to win the ultimate prize more than twice in about seven years.

Curt Cignetti earned that top spot by pulling off what many people thought was the most impossible turnaround in modern sports history. Before he got to Bloomington, the Hoosiers were barely a football school. Before him, Indiana had never had a double-digit-win season in 139 years of football. The closest they came was in 1967, when they went 9-2 and shared the Big Ten title with Purdue and Minnesota. Not to mention, they were 3-9 in 2024. In just two years, Cignetti completely changed the trajectory of not just Indiana, but college football as a whole. In his two seasons, he led the Hoosiers to 27 wins, which has to be the most victories over the last two seasons among Power Four programs.

The “Google me” man shocked the world by delivering the Hoosiers’ first-ever national championship with an undefeated 16-0 run this past season.

The odd thing is, he didn’t have a single five-star recruit on the roster, unlike the other coach. But his elite mastery of the transfer portal allowed him to bring in 31 new players, completely changing how people view the sport. Even if you say, “Well, they had more than a handful of 24-year-old grown men on the squad,” who stopped other teams from getting them?

Wasserman’s claim makes total sense when you look at how hard it is to win at a historic basketball school compared to a football blue-blood.

Cignetti built a national champion from the absolute rubble, sweeping consecutive Big Ten Coach of the Year honors. Winning a title at Indiana, where the football team had zero double-digit win seasons in its entire 136-year history before his arrival, is vastly more impressive than taking over a powerhouse that practically runs on autopilot. Cignetti proved his system can beat anyone, anywhere, with less, which is exactly why he has been awarded 14 out of 17 eligible national coach of the year awards over his first two seasons.

Ryan Day’s got work cut out for him

On the flip side, Ryan Day drops to No. 2 because his incredibly resume is dragged down by some massive postseason underachievement. Even though they got their monkey off their back with Ryan Day’s 1st natty in 2024, some skeptics believes he should’ve had a couple more.

On paper, Day looks unstoppable with an 82-12 career record and an 87.2 percent winning percentage that ranks among the best in the sport. He has consistently kept Ohio State in the playoff hunt. But he also has the luxury of infinite money, elite facilities, and a roster overflowing with top-5 recruiting classes year after year.

The problem is that despite having every advantage, Day’s Buckeyes suffered a painful four-game losing streak against arch-rival Michigan till last season and finished their recent campaign at 12-2 after blowing late fourth-quarter comebacks against Miami team.

Ultimately, this ranking is completely fair because college football is a what have you done for me lately sport where rings matter most. Make no mistake, like Wasserman said, the coaching ranking business is interchangeable.

Ryan Day is a fantastic CEO who inherited an already elite program from Urban Meyer and kept it running at a high level. But Cignetti is a true program-changer who reached the absolute peak of the mountain with a fraction of the resources. Until Day can consistently conquer his postseason slumps and bring multiple national championship trophies back to Columbus, he simply can’t sit above the defending national champion.