WKU’s Helton stands out in ranking
Published 6:00 am Saturday, October 17, 2026
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Western Kentucky Hilltoppers Head Coach Tyson Helton speaks about the upcoming football season during a Football Media Day press conference at Harbaugh Club in Houchens-Smith Stadium on Friday, July 25, 2025.
(GRACE McDOWELL / Daily News)
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Wes Swietek
Western Kentucky University football is in the top 10 — well, sort of.
On a daily basis, my email inbox is flooded with random messages. Many are press releases designed to earn some free publicity for a company or website. Some are more interesting than others.
A recent example from the RotoGrinders sports media website contains a ranking of “the most handsome” college football coaches, with WKU’s Tyson Helton ranked no. 6.
According to a news release, “RotoGrinders analyzed 414 images across all 138 FBS head coaches, using 468 facial landmarks per image and six facial-proportion measures to produce a final score out of 100. … Helton finished No. 6 overall with a score of 69.4/100.”
The ranking used facial measurements that have been tied to perceptions of attractiveness, such as face length to width and eye to mouth distance to face length.
“Helton’s strongest measure was face length relative to width at 9.70/10, followed by nose-to-mouth relative to mouth-to-chin at 8.01/10 and the distance between the eyes relative to face width at 7.70/10,” according to the release.
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So who beat out Helton? Here is the top 10:
1) Manny Diaz, Duke;
2) Curt Cignetti, Indiana;
3) Dabo Swinney, Clemson;
4) Tavita Pritchard, Stanford;
5) Gerad Parker, Troy;
6) Helton, Western Kentucky;
7) Willie Fritz, Houston;
8) Ryan Day, Ohio State;
9) Lane Kiffin, LSU;
10) Jon Sumrall, Florida.
The list resulted in some research about what humans find attractive. According to a National Library of Medicine article, “The quest to define facial beauty either by the size or shape of isolated facial features (e.g., eyes or lips) or by the spatial relations between facial features dates back to antiquity, when the Ancient Greeks believed beauty was represented by a golden ratio of 1:1.618.”
There is some debate about why these proportions are found to be “attractive,” but the ratios seem to indicate a preference for an “average” facial structure.
“At the evolutionary level, it has been suggested that humans prefer to reproduce with other healthy mates … Generations of healthy mate selection may act as an evolutionary ‘averaging’ process,” according to the article. “This process leads to the propagation of healthy individuals with physical characteristics, including faces that approximate the population average. As a result, we are biologically predisposed to find average faces attractive.”
So while it seems odd to equate “average” with superlatives such as “most handsome,” you can be the judge.
—Wes Swietek is the Daily News managing editor.
