‘EA Sports College Football 26’ coach rankings: How Kirby Smart, Ryan Day and more rate in new video game

It is release week for the second edition of EA Sports’ College Football video game series, and one of the big additions to this year’s game is actual college football coaches being part of it. The ’25 edition had the actual players but didn’t get coaches licensed, but that changed this year with more than 300 coaches and coordinators signing up for the game. 

There are some notable exceptions. Bill Belichick (North Carolina), Deion Sanders (Colorado), Kirk Ferentz (Iowa) and Mario Cristobal (Miami) opted against being part of the game — Steve Belichick, however, is in there as UNC’s defensive coordinator — but aside from the handful of holdouts, the game features the majority of coaches around the country. That means the folks at EA Sports had to hand out ratings and archetypes for each college football coach for the first time, which always leads to some fun debates about what they got right and what they got wrong. 

Three coaches received the “CEO” archetype, which is the top archetype one can reach in the game: Georgia’s Kirby Smart, Clemson’s Dabo Swinney and Ohio State’s Ryan Day. All three have an A+ in coach prestige, with Smart and Swinney topping the “coach level” rankings at an 80, with Day at a 72. In total, 12 real world coaches received an A+ in coach prestige — plus the created stand-ins for Mario Cristobal and Deion Sanders, who each have a coaching level of 40. 

On the other end of the spectrum, Delaware’s Ryan Carty, FAU’s Zach Kittley, Ohio’s Brian Smith and Marshall’s Tony Gibson are the four real world coaches at the bottom of the prestige totem pole at a D- and coaching levels all below a 22. There is only one coach with an F prestige rating: the CPU generated coach for Kent State, whose interim coach, Mark Carney, is not in the game. 

Below you can find the full breakdown of the coach prestige ratings, coach level and archetype for every coach in each conference. CPU coaches are designated by an asterisk.

Big Ten

SEC

ACC

Big 12

Independents

Pac-12

American

Mountain West

MAC

Sun Belt

Conference USA