The assignment is to pick the best collection of head coaches in college football. The answer is easy: The last time Eddie Robinson dined alone.

If you insist, however, then let's consider the best active coaches, which begs one question: What about Mack Brown?

But we digress. The rankings are:

11. Sun Belt: Largely a proving ground for new coaches.

10. Mid-American Conference: Ditto, although anyone who pays attention understands the MAC has a history of producing great coaches.

9. Western Athletic Conference: The only reason the WAC ranks ahead of the other two is Rice's Ken Hatfield, who has won everywhere he has been, with the exception of last year's foray into sexual politics. Just a guess, but Hatfield won't be speechifying again on the morality of gay life anytime.

8. Conference USA: Three new coaches, or else the grade might be higher. Unlike the BCS coaches, guys like Jeff Bower of Southern Miss and Gary Patterson of TCU know how to produce a lot with a little.

	USC"s Pete Carroll is very good, but there's not much coaching depth in the Pac-10.

7. Pacific-10: After USC's Pete Carroll and Oregon's Mike Bellotti, who? The Pac-10 has four new coaches, Arizona's John Mackovic is looking more and more like a former Cy Young winner trying to regain his stuff and Dirk Koetter of Arizona State and Jeff Tedford of Cal are still longer on potential than they are on production.

6. Mountain West: You could take Air Force's Fisher DeBerry, Colorado State's Sonny Lubick, UNLV's John Robinson and five girls from the Wyoming chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma and have a league filled with great coaches.

5. Big East: Virginia Tech's Frank Beamer, Pitt's Walt Harris and BC's Tom O'Brien have built winning programs from nothing and in a couple of years, you'll be able to say the same about West Virginia's Rich Rodriguez. Paul Pasqualoni is respected as a winner everywhere outside of Syracuse. Other head coaches understand that no one could wring more out of Temple than Bobby Wallace has.

Of course, Miami's Larry Coker is in a league of his own.

4. Southeastern Conference: In the last two years, look at the coaches that the SEC has lost: Steve Spurrier, who won a national championship and seven league titles at Florida; Dennis Franchione, who pulled Bama out of a deep hole, won a few games, and then replaced the Tide where he found them; and Mike Price, who won two Pac-10 titles, then came to Tuscaloosa and never lost a game.

That doesn't count South Carolina's Lou Holtz, whose attention span seems to be waning.

3. Big 12: If the South Division were its own league, it would rank higher than third. Throw in newcomers Franchione at Texas A&M and Guy Morriss at Baylor, and all six coaches in the South won enough games to go to a bowl last season. Cheap joke aside, Brown has won 69 games in his last seven seasons at Texas and North Carolina. Oklahoma's Bob Stoops made the short list of best coaches in the game a long time ago.

Then there's the North Division. After K-State's Bill Snyder and Colorado's Gary Barnett, there's Nebraska's Frank Solich, who has also won a conference title, yet after five seasons, the jury has yet to render a verdict. Dan McCarney is just now getting over the hump at Iowa State, but Mark Mangino looks overmatched at Kansas.

2. Atlantic Coast Conference: Four reasons to rank the ACC this high -- FSU's Bobby Bowden, Maryland's Ralph Friedgen, Virginia's Al Groh and NC State's Chuck Amato. If you need a starting five, you could easily toss in Jim Grobe of Wake Forest. The only thing that prevents the ACC from being at the top of the ballot is depth.

	Jim Tressel and Ohio State's repeat bid begins against Washington.

1. Big Ten: The evidence is overwhelming. The Big Ten is the only league with three coaches who have won a national championship: Jim Tressel at Ohio State, Lloyd Carr at Michigan and Joe Paterno at Penn State.

The Big Ten is the only league with Joe Paterno (that bears repeating).

The Big Ten is the only league with eight coaches who have won the conference: Tressel, Carr, Paterno, Barry Alvarez (Wisconsin), Joe Tiller (Purdue), Ron Turner (Illinois), Randy Walker (Northwestern) and Kirk Ferentz (Iowa). Two of the three coaches who haven't won the conference -- Minnesota's Glen Mason and league rookie John L. Smith at Michigan State -- are proven winners, and Indiana's Gerry DiNardo knew how to win once upon a time, too.

Some people may see the spread of winning coaches as a sign that none of them are good enough to dominate the league the way Spurrier dominated the SEC or the way Stoops has made Oklahoma the top dog in the Big 12. But the majority of these guys have set down roots and built programs for the long term. The Big Ten has a lot of excellent coaches, more so than any other conference. This season, when the league looks as if it will produce the most exciting conference race in college football, is the prefect time to recognize them.

Ivan Maisel is a senior writer for ESPN.com. He can be reached at ivan.maisel@espn3.com.