CBS Sports moved Kirby Smart to No. 2 in its annual top-coach rankings this week and elevated Indiana’s Curt Cignetti to No. 1, ending Smart’s run as the list’s top-ranked coach for the first time since 2023.
The change is stark on the page: Cignetti, who reached a national championship last season with Indiana after being ranked No. 43 among Power Four coaches in 2024, now sits at No. 1. Smart, the coach who delivered Georgia national titles in 2021 and 2022, dropped to No. 2 on the panel’s composite list.
The ranking landed with a clear line of reasoning. As one CBS Sports writer put it, “He’s won two national titles, and every year his program is expected to compete for another. But last year ended on a sour note.” That line accompanies a pointed observation from the same staffer: “The Dawgs won the SEC again but failed to win a playoff game. They have not won a playoff game since winning the national title in 2022.”
Those playoff failures are the immediate context for Smart’s demotion. Georgia closed the last two seasons by losing its first College Football Playoff game in New Orleans — a loss to Notre Dame in the 2024 CFP and a defeat to Ole Miss last season — even as the program continued to collect SEC titles. Cignetti’s rapid rise, from a mid-pack Power Four listing to the top spot, supplied the counterweight that vaulted him over Smart in the aggregate panel vote.
The CBS Sports list also laid out where other high-profile coaches landed: Ryan Day at No. 3, Marcus Freeman No. 4, Dan Lanning No. 5, Steve Sarkisian No. 6, Kalen DeBoer No. 8 and Lane Kiffin No. 9. That ordering underlines the panel’s broader reassessment of coaching stock heading into the 2026 season, with Smart remaining the highest-ranked SEC coach even after the drop.
There is friction beneath the headline, however. Four of the 10 CBS Sports panelists still ranked Smart No. 1 even as the overall ballot placed him second. The split points to an unresolved vote distribution: the panel’s composite moved Smart down, but a substantial minority kept him atop their individual lists. CBS Sports released the aggregate ranking and selected comments; how the other six panelists distributed their top choices beyond those four was not detailed in the published wrap.
Smart himself did not argue that late-season losses tell the whole story. “I think the cream comes to the top,” he said when discussing late-season performance, adding that “The best team comes out and wins. It’s who’s playing the best at the end. It might not be who’s playing the best in the beginning, but that’s who wins the championship.” Those remarks sat alongside the panel’s judgment: championship pedigree matters, but recent playoff outcomes and a surging rival altered the calculus for 2026.
The ranking matters now because it sets the public pecking order as rosters and schedules sharpen into view. Georgia opens its 2026 season against Tennessee State on Sept. 5 at 3 p.m. ET — the first measurable test for Smart to begin answering the lingering question raised by the rankings. The single consequential question left by the CBS Sports reshuffle is simple and direct: can Smart convert another SEC title into a College Football Playoff victory and, in doing so, reclaim the No. 1 spot from Cignetti?
