Many sports leagues, sportswriting associations, and other organizations confer "Coach of the Year" awards.

Some of these are:

Josef "Jupp" Heynckes (born 9 May 1945 in Mönchengladbach) is a former football player and manager currently the manager of Bayern Munich of the Fußball-Bundesliga. As player he belonged to the core of the team of Borussia Mönchengladbach in its golden era of the 1960s and 1970s where he won many national championships and the Cup as well as the UEFA Cup. He was a member of the West German national squad that won the European Championship and the World Cup in the first half of the 1970s. As manager he won two German championships with Bayern Munich and the 1997–98 UEFA Champions League with Real Madrid, their first title in the competition in more than thirty years.

Heynckes played 369 matches in the German Bundesliga, scoring 220 goals. His tally is the third highest in this league, after Gerd Müller's 365 goals and Klaus Fischer's 268 goals.

He started his playing career in 1964 with Borussia Mönchengladbach who were in the second division. In 1965 the club, managed by the legendary Hennes Weisweiler, achieved promotion to the Bundesliga. Heynckes stayed on for two more years and then left for Hannover 96, where he spent three years.

Gus Malzahn (born October 28, 1965) is an American football coach and former player. He is the current head football coach at Arkansas State University, a position he assumed in December 2011. From 2009 to 2011, Malzahn served as the offensive coordinator at Auburn University. In 2010, a season in which the Auburn Tigers won the national championship, Malzahn received the Broyles Award, which recognizes the top assistant coach in college football.

Malzahn graduated from Fort Smith Christian High School in Fort Smith, Arkansas in 1984 and was a walk-on receiver at Arkansas under then-head coach Ken Hatfield in 1984 and 1985 before transferring to Henderson State University located in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, where he was a two-year letterman (1988, '89) and earned his bachelor's degree in physical education in 1990.

Malzahn got his start as the defensive coordinator at Hughes High School in 1991. He became head coach in 1992 and in 1994 Hughes reached the state championship game with an upset of Pine Bluff Dollarway. Hughes fell just short in the title game, losing to Lonoke on an interception in the final minute.

George Matthew Karl (born May 12, 1951) is a former National Basketball Association (NBA) and American Basketball Association (ABA) player. He is the current head coach of the Denver Nuggets. On December 10, 2010 he became the seventh coach in NBA history to record 1,000 wins.

Karl was born in Penn Hills, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. After a college career at the University of North Carolina he signed with the ABA's San Antonio Spurs in 1973. When the Spurs joined the NBA in 1976, Karl began his two-year NBA playing career.

After his playing career, Karl became an assistant coach for the Spurs. Karl then moved on to the Continental Basketball Association (CBA) as head coach of the Montana Golden Nuggets (Great Falls). As coach of the Golden Nuggets, Karl won CBA Coach of the Year twice, in 1981 and 1983.

In 1984, Karl became the head coach of the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers, taking them to the playoffs in 1985. He was dismissed by the Cavs in 1986 near the end of the season.

In the 1986-87 season Karl coached the Golden State Warriors and took them from a record of 30-52 the year before, to the playoffs for the first time in ten years. They reached the semi-final round against the Magic Johnson led Los Angeles Lakers, game four of which is still shown on TV in the NBA's Greatest Games series. Eric "Sleepy" Floyd scored 12 straight field goals in the fourth quarter that gave him a still NBA playoff record 29 as well as a still standing record 39 in the second half and finished with 51 points in Golden State's 129-121 win.

Silvia Neid (born 2 May 1964 in Walldürn) is a former professional soccer player, and, since July 2005, has served as the head coach of the Germany women's national football team after having been assistant to Tina Theune-Meyer for some time. Together with Doris Fitschen and Martina Voss, she is considered the most successful German women's soccer player, having won seven national championships and six DFB-Pokal trophies.

Neid's career as a player began at SV Schlierstadt, later renamed to Klinge Seckach. She stayed with the club until 1983 when she signed up with SSG Bergisch Gladbach, then the dominant team in German football. She won the double with SSG in 1984, but moved to TSV Siegen after a titleless 1985 season. The club had its best years in the time Silvia Neid played for Siegen, winning six championships and five cups. When coach Gerd Neuser stopped coaching Siegen in 1994 Neid wanted to leave Siegen for SG Praunheim, but the club did not want to let her. Neid retired after the 1996 season and immediately took a coaching job with the women's national team.