Useful Notes / Collegiate American Football Non-Player Figures

Head coaches in Collegiate American Football hold a unique role in American sports and society for a few reasons: 1. Unlike their student-athletes (who you can learn more about at Collegiate American Football Names To Know), coaches don't cycle out of their schools nearly as frequently; successful ones may stay with their programs for decades, shaping the public image of the university and their states in the process. 2. Even more than their counterparts in the pros, college HCs wield near-absolute power over their teams and thus carry even more responsibility for the program's long-term success and failure. While pro coaches often have to negotiate and compromise with players with near-equal experience (and paychecks), college coaches recruit unpaid amateurs with no experience, creating a massive power disparity that sometimes leads to problems (see the "Notorious" folder for some examples of that). One more quirk: Due to most of the major football programs belonging to public universities, most football coaches are technically government employees; with annual salaries in the millions, they are the highest paid public employees in almost every state.^note In most states where they're not, it's a college basketball coach. This strikes most non-Americans (and, frankly, many Americans) as very, very strange and another example of how football is incredibly Serious Business.

Coaches who are better known for their contributions to the pros can be found on National Football League Non-Player Figures.

Theodore Roosevelt

• Yes, that Theodore Roosevelt. It is quite likely that without him, college football (and American football in general) would never have made it out of the first few years of the 20th century. Though his near-sightedness prevented him from playing while a student at Harvard, he was an avowed fan of the sport. As more and more institutions banned the sport due to its violence (including spinal cord injuries, fractured skulls, and outright fatalities common in the sport's early years), Roosevelt looked to save it by making it safer. After 19 collegiate players died in 1905 and Roosevelt's own son (a freshman at Harvard) suffered a broken nose in a game, Roosevelt brought together prominent head coaches (including Walter "the Father of Football" Camp, see below) to establish rules for making it safer. Rule changes that were instituted included limiting teams to 11 players on the field at a time, the creation of a "neutral zone" between the offense and defense, and the easing of restrictions on the forward pass. By 1909, fatalities were almost nonexistent and injuries had dropped significantly. The contributions of coaches like Camp, Amos Alonzo Stagg, John Heisman, and Knute Rockne (see below under "Coaches") in the years that followed would make college football America's second most popular sport (behind baseball) in the early half of the 20th century and pave the way for the NFL's rise to dominance in the latter half.

Coaches

A-D

• William Alexander: The longest tenured HC in Georgia Tech history (1920-44). A valedictorian at Tech as a student, Alexander succeeded John Heisman and led the Yellow Jackets from the SIAA to become charter members of SoCon and the SEC while winning a national title in 1928 and making more bowl appearances than any other Tech coach. Tech went on several sustained droughts of mediocrity between those heights, but Alexander's leadership and AD position helped him keep the job as HC until passing them both to protégé Bobby Dodd, who took the program to greater heights; he held the AD job until his death in 1950.
• Stub Allison: After early career gigs at Washington in 1920 and South Dakota from 1922-26, he became the HC for California in 1935. In 1937, he led to the Golden Bears to their last claimed national championship with the "Thunder Team". After leading the program to another 10-win season in 1938, his squads fell into mediocrity before he retired in 1944. He subsequently served as director of industrial relations at the Oakland Naval Supply Center until his death in 1961.
• Barry Alvarez: The HC who put the Wisconsin football program back on the map. After a playing career as a LB at Nebraska in the late '60s, he moved up the assistant coaching ranks until landing the DC job at Notre Dame under Lou Holtz, winning a national championship there in 1988. In 1990, Wisconsin hired him to turn around their program, which had been a Big Ten afterthought since the early '60s and not had a winning season since 1984. By 1993, Alvarez led Wisconsin to a one-loss season and their first of three Big Ten titles and Rose Bowl victories under his reign. The Badgers went to 10 bowl games in his next 12 years as coach, and he became the school's AD in 2004. He stepped down as coach after 2005 but remained AD, during which he stepped back in to coach the school's bowl appearances in 2012 and 2014 after the HCs left the program. Those games came after he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2010. He continued to serve as AD until announcing his retirement in 2021, with Wisconsin naming the playing field at Camp Randall Stadium after him later that year.
• Ike Armstrong: The longest-tenured coach in Utah's history and largely responsible for establishing the school's football culture. He was hired to coach both football and basketball in 1925, and while he lasted only two years at the latter position, he stayed at the former for 25, winning close to 70% of his games and winning his regional conferences' championship in more than half of his seasons. Armstrong has the interesting distinction of having notched both undefeated and winless seasons for the same program; he went unbeaten and untied thrice in the '20s and '30s but 0-7 in 1943 (in fairness, this was only because he insisted on keeping the program running despite losing almost all of his players to WWII service). He left Utah to serve as AD at Minnesota for 13 years and died in 1983.
• Chris Ault: Spent 28 nonconsecutive years as the HC of Nevada. Ault was a respected coach in the region, leading Nevada from D-II all the way to I-A. His career was split into three different tenures: 1976-92, 1994-95, and 2004-12. In between them, he was school's AD; in other words, he hired himself as HC twice when the position became open. In 1994, it was because his handpicked successor Jeff Horton left after one year to become HC at archrival UNLV (a job Ault himself turned down). In 2004, he took over after firing coach Chris Tormey two years after he had been elected to the Hall of Fame under the assumption that his coaching days were behind him. He was Colin Kaepernick's college coach and perfected the trendy Pistol offense (a variation on the Shotgun that mixes in some option elements, where the quarterback lines up a little closer to center and the running back lines up directly behind the QB).
• Frank Beamer: The coach who brought Virginia Tech football to national prominence. A CB for the Hokies in the late 1960s, he moved up the high school and college assistant ranks. His first head coaching gig was at FCS Murray State, and he was hired as HC by his alma mater immediately after leading the Racers to the 1986 OVC title. Beamer started out slow, in part hampered by NCAA sanctions imposed due to violations under his predecessor, bottoming out with a 2–8–1 record in 1992. He didn't have another losing season after that, making bowl games every year, winning three conference titles in the Big East and four more in the ACC, and playing for a national title in 1999 (losing to Florida State). Beamer retired after 2015 as by far the winningest coach in Hokies history; he has a statue at an entrance to their stadium and entered the Hall of Fame in 2018. His son Shane, a long snapper under his father at Tech, was hired as HC at South Carolina for 2021.
• Emory Bellard: An immensely influential coach from an innovation standpoint, being credited with inventing the wishbone offense (or at least introducing it to the college level). A former player at Texas in the '40s before a broken leg derailed his playing career, Bellard transferred schools, entered the high school coaching ranks, then took what he learned back to his former school as Texas' OC, contributing to their back-to-back national titles in 1969-70. In 1972, this success landed him the HC gig at Texas A&M, which had just one winning season in the 15 years since Bear Bryant's departure; Bellard's offense quickly turned the Aggies back into contenders. Despite his success in College Station, he resigned in the middle of the 1978 season after two disappointing losses. He returned as HC the following year at Mississippi State but largely struggled, being fired after 1985. Bellard died from ALS in 2011.
• Mike Bellotti: The winningest coach in Oregon history. A former tight end at UC Davis (where he's celebrated for catching the winning TD in the 1971 "Miracle Game", when the Aggies scored 16 points in the final 20 seconds of the game to beat Cal State Hayward^note now Cal State East Bay 30-29), he got his first HC gig at Chico State (1984-88), putting up a losing record. After serving as OC under Rich Brooks (see below) at Oregon for five seasons, he was promoted to HC and built on the foundation his predecessor laid. From 1995-2008, he guided the Ducks to two conference titles and had only one losing season. He retired in 2009 to become Oregon's AD, resigned in 2010 to become an analyst for ESPN, and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2014.
• Hugo Bezdek: A Hall of Fame coach from the early 20th century who left his mark at Oregon (1906, 1913-17), Arkansas (1908-12), and Penn State (1918-29). Bezdek coined the "Razorback" name for Arkansas after leading them to an undefeated 1909 season and continued to serve as Penn State's AD until 1936. For fans of trivia, he is also the only person to have served as both a manager of an MLB team (Pittsburgh Pirates, 1917-19) and head coach of an NFL team (Cleveland Rams, 1937-38); as you might surmise from the length of those tenures, he wasn't exactly successful at either post. Passed away in 1952.
• Dana X. Bible^note The X stood for Xenophon; his father was a professor who taught ancient Greek literature.: A HC for five different schools^note Mississippi College (1913-15), LSU (1916), Texas A&M (1917, 1919-28), Nebraska (1929-36), and Texas (1937-46) in the first half of the 20th century, putting up a career record of 190-69-22 (.715). His most famous stop was at Texas A&M, where he won two national championships while also serving as head basketball and baseball coach. He holds the distinction of being the only HC in college football history to hold opponents completely scoreless for two full seasons, doing so in 1917 and 1919 at A&M (defeating opponents by a combined 545-0 in those years). The sole reason for the gap in between: he left to serve as a pilot during World War I. Later had successful stints at both Nebraska and Texas, helping to establish the tradition of football excellence at both schools; he stayed on at Texas as AD for a decade after his retirement from coaching, hiring Darrell K Royal (see below) shortly before his final retirement. Also served on the college football rules committee for 25 years, helping to establish many of the rules of the sport as it is known today. Was part of the Hall of Fame's inaugural class in 1951 and passed away in 1980.
• Bernie Bierman: Best known as the HC for Minnesota from 1932-41 and again from 1945-50 after stops at Montana (1919-21), Mississippi State (1925-26), and Tulane (1927-31). During his first tenure at Minnesota, he led the team to five national championships. He was called to coach the team for Iowa's Navy Pre-Flight school in 1942, later returned to Minnesota in 1945 after the team declined to mediocrity, and was never able to return the Gophers to the prominence they enjoyed before WWII. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1955 before passing away in 1977.
• Earl "Red" Blaik: Best known as the HC of Army from 1941-58 after a successful early career gig as the HC of Dartmouth from 1934-40. He put up an impressive record at West Point and won three consecutive national championships from 1944-46; he also served as the academy's AD from 1948-59. He was one of the first coaches to utilize a game play-by-play, charting down his opponents' tendencies on every down with the use of game film. It was also during his tenure that Army developed the Black Knights moniker. He retired after 1958 to take a private sector job. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1964, died in 1989, and the playing surface at Army's stadium was posthumously renamed in his honor in 1999.
• Bobby Bowden: Built Florida State into a national powerhouse during his long tenure (1976–2009) after early-career gigs at his alma mater of Samford^note (back when it was still Howard College) and West Virginia. He won two national titles at FSU, had 14 consecutive double-digit win seasons (1987–2000) won an NCAA record 11 straight bowl games (1985-95), and kicked off the start of their record 36-season bowl appearance streak. Bowden broke Bear Bryant's record for most wins as an FBS HC, ending with 377 (not counting 12 vacated by the NCAA for some academic violations). The playing surface at FSU's stadium was named for him in 2004 and he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2006, both while he was still a coach. FSU installed a three-story stained glass window of him in their stadium, and there's been some pressure in recent years to have "The House That Bobby Built" fully renamed after him, considering he did far more for football than current namesake Doak Campbell and also did not spend his career fighting racial integration. He's a minor character in We Are Marshall (played by Mike Pniewski) as the WVU coach who offers his program's resources to help instate counterpart Marshall get their program back up and running, something Bowden did in fact do in Real Life. Bowden died in 2021 after a battle with pancreatic cancer. Bobby's two sons, Terry and Tommy, also became college head coaches. Neither had the amount of success their dad had: Terry, hired by Louisiana–Monroe shortly after 2020, has had stops at Samford, Auburn^note where he had an undefeated debut season but couldn't compete for a national title due to NCAA sanctions, North Alabama, and Akron, while Tommy had stops at Tulane and Clemson.
• Rich Brooks: A coach known for reviving failing programs at Oregon and Kentucky despite ultimately accruing a sub-.500 record at both schools. A player at Oregon State, he got his first HC gig at Oregon in 1977, taking over a program that hadn't had a winning season since 1969 and dealing with an academic scandal over his first few years on the job. He steadily turned around their fortunes, leading the team to their first bowl game in over two decades in 1989 and the first conference championship in school history in 1994, at which point he left the program, having set the Ducks up for greater heights under his successors. Oregon subsequently renamed their football field in his honor. After a disappointing turn in the NFL and a hiatus from the game, he returned to become the HC for Kentucky in 2003. Taking over a team that was beginning to feel the effects of probation, he ultimately turned them around too and guided them to four straight bowl games before retiring after 2009.
• Mack Brown: The current HC of North Carolina but most famous for his tenure at Texas. A popular coach with players, Brown was initially hired at UNC in 1988 after largely unspectacular runs at Appalachian State and Tulane but helped turn the Tar Heels program around after two 1-10 seasons. He was hired to coach the Longhorns in 1998 and revived the program's prospects over the next 16 seasons, including winning the 2005 BCS Championship in one of the most memorable college games ever. Brown retired after 2013 but returned to North Carolina in 2019, helping to once again revive the program while becoming the only coach ever with 100+ wins at two FBS programs. Mack's older brother Watson Brown was a coach himself, though his most notable accomplishment was being the first NCAA football coach to lose 200 games.
• Frank Broyles: The coach who put Arkansas football on the national map. A QB at Georgia Tech in the '40s who set an Orange Bowl passing record that lasted until Tom Brady broke it in 2000, he was drafted by the Bears but never played in the pros. Instead, he went into coaching, serving as an assistant at Baylor, Florida, and his alma mater before being hired by Missouri as HC in 1957, where he served for one year before getting the call to be HC at Arkansas. Under him, the Razorbacks won seven Southwest Conference titles and a national championship in 1964. In 1974, he became the men's AD at Arkansas (the women's athletic program was then completely separate from the men's). He retired from his coaching role after 1976 with 144 wins, still a school record. His coaching tree includes such names as Hayden Fry, Joe Gibbs, Jimmy Johnson, John Majors, and Barry Switzer, and the most prestigious award for assistant coaches bears his name. During his term as AD, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1983 and oversaw Arkansas' 1991 move to the SEC before retiring in 2007. Broyles died from Alzheimer's complications in 2017.
• Earle Bruce: Best known for his tenure at Ohio State from 1979-87 after successful early career gigs at his Tampa (1972) and Iowa State (1973-78). After being brought in to replace Woody Hayes (see below), Bruce led the Buckeyes to a bowl game in his first eight seasons, going 5-3. He was fired after a disappointing 1987 that saw star receiver Cris Carter get cut for signing with an agent. He had two less successful stops at Northern Iowa in 1988 and at Colorado State from 1989-92, winning the Freedom Bowl in 1990 before being fired for verbally and physically abusing his players and discouraging them from taking classes that conflicted with practice. He was still inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2002 and died in 2018 from complications related to Alzheimer's.
• Paul "Bear" Bryant: Often considered the definitive college football coach. Got his nickname at age 13 when he accepted a traveling carnival's offer to wrestle a bear for a dollar (which they never paid), a testament to his infamously tough attitude. Played for Alabama in the '30s, then spent 25 years as the Crimson Tide's head coach (1958-82) after shorter stints at Maryland (1945), Kentucky (1946-53),^note where his 60 wins were a program record that lasted for nearly 70 years and Texas A&M (1954-57). He won six national titles as Alabama's HC (and AD); this stood as the record for decades until it was surpassed by later Alabama HC Nick Saban in 2020, though they are still tied for most titles at a single school. The state legislature added his name to the school's stadium in 1975, seven years before he retired. His 323 wins were the most ever by a D-I HC when he retired; he died of a heart attack in January 1983, less than a month after his final game.^*After his last game, he was asked what he planned to do after his retirement; he replied, "Probably croak in a week." Famously wore a distinctive black-and-white houndstooth fedora on the sidelines. While he was generally beloved during his career and was responsible for desegregating the Tide in 1971, he has also been criticized for allowing the team to remain all-white essentially up to the moment doing so hurt the team's ability to compete (five SEC teams had already desegregated before Alabama did so). He was also involved in a major court case with The Saturday Evening Post, which alleged he and Wally Butts (see below) were going to fix their 1963 match. Despite this, when celebrating college football's 150th anniversary in 2019, ESPN put Bryant at #1 on their list of the 150 greatest college football coaches of all time, and one of the most esteemed coaching awards bears his name. Subject of a 1984 Biopic, The Bear, where he was played by Gary Busey, and also the central figure of 2002's The Junction Boys (about his Texas A&M years), with Tom Berenger as Bryant.
• Wallace "Wally" Butts: A player at Mercer in the '20s, he became HC for Georgia in 1938. During his tenure there, he led the school to their first national championship in 1942 behind Heisman-winner Frank Sinkwich and Maxwell-winner Charley Trippi. He was also given the role of AD in 1948 and retired from coaching in 1960. He was forced to resign as AD in 1963 after The Saturday Evening Post printed an article alleging he and Bear Bryant (see above) agreed to fix their match that season. He sued the Post and his case (Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts) became a landmark Supreme Court case that further defined "public figures" in libel cases; an eventual settlement of $3.06M was the largest ever at the time and was a contributing factor in the demise of the paper in 1967. He died from a heart attack in 1973 and was posthumously inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1997.
• Walter Camp: Known as the "Father of Football" and one of the early pioneers of the sport, first as a player at Yale and later as a coach at Yale (1888-92) and Stanford (1892^note Yes, he took over at Stanford after Yale's season was over, 1894-95). He codified the early rulebook for the game, including standardizing the number of players on the field at 11, establishing the idea of the line of scrimmage, the snap from the center, the offense getting four downs to convert, and the scoring system still in use today. Won three national championships in the 1890s, and his career coaching record of 79-5-3 makes for the second-best winning percentage of all time (.926), narrowly surpassed by Larry Kehres (see below). He worked closely with Theodore Roosevelt to improve the safety standards of the game and is credited with writing over 30 books on the sport which helped to popularize it. He also introduced the idea of an "All-American" team and published his own list each year until his death in 1925. One of the many annual "player of the year" awards is named after him.
• Lloyd Carr: A longtime assistant at Michigan throughout the '80s and early '90s who was named as the head coach in 1995 after his predecessor, Gary Moeller, resigned following a drunken incident. From 1995-2007, Carr put up a winning record, including winning Michigan's sole post-1950 national title in 1997. He retired in 2007 after seeing the Wolverines collapse late in 2006 and tumble from the top 5 after losing to then-FCS Appalachian State. His last game saw them beat Heisman-winner Tim Tebow and his Florida Gators in the Capital One Bowl. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2011.
• Len Casanova: A key figure in the building of Oregon's program. A player at Santa Clara from 1923-26, he got his first HC job at his alma mater in 1946. During his four years there, he put up a winning record and led the team to an upset victory over Bear Bryant's Kentucky Wildcats in the 1949 Orange Bowl, at which point the school promptly... dissolved the football program. After a disappointing one-year stint with Pittsburgh, he moved on to coach at Oregon from 1951-66, guiding the program to a winning record. He served as the AD of Oregon from 1967-70, overseeing the construction of Autzen Stadium, and sat on the rules committee from 1969-73. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1977, and the athletic department at Oregon was named in his honor in 1991. He died after an extended illness in 2002.
• Frank Cavanaugh: A successful coach at five schools^note Cincinnati, Holy Cross, Dartmouth, Boston College, and Fordham with only two losing seasons. After his time at Dartmouth from 1911-16, he served in WWI, where he suffered wounds to his cheek, nose, and skull that later led to his blindness. He retired from coaching in 1932 and was bankrupt by the time of his death the following year. His life story was told in the 1943 film The Iron Major (where he was portrayed by Pat O'Brien, the same actor who famously portrayed Knute Rockne), and he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1954.
• Bill Clark: The coach who helped bring UAB football back from the dead. One of the few FBS coaches who didn't play college football, thanks to a severe back injury he suffered during high school, he started his coaching career in the high school ranks, mostly in his home state of Alabama with an interlude in Georgia. After winning two state titles as a HC in Alabama's largest high school enrollment class, he became the first DC of South Alabama's program before getting his first college HC gig at his alma mater, FCS Jacksonville State. After an 11-win season and FCS playoff berth in 2013, he was hired by UAB, only to see the program shut down after his first season (see UAB's entry in the "Group of Five Conferences" page for more details). After a firestorm of criticism and a very successful fundraising drive, UAB football was reinstated a few months later, with Clark still under contract, and resumed play in 2017. Cue five straight bowl berths (though one wasn't played due to COVID-19), two Conference USA titles, a new stadium, and a 2023 move to the American Athletic Conference. However, the Blazers made that move without Clark. He retired from UAB shortly before the 2022 season because his back had deteriorated to the point where he needed a spinal fusion, also feeling that he had done all he could at UAB. Clark hasn't ruled out a return to the sidelines at a different school.
• Larry Coker: HC of Miami (FL) from 2001-06 where, after decades as an assistant for various programs, he won the 2001 National Championship in his very first year as a head coach (joining Michigan's Bennie Oosterbaan as the only two top-level coaches to do so). However, his last three years were marked by disappointment, as Miami struggled to adapt to the ACC. He was fired after 2006, largely due to a brawl during a game against FIU and the team's lack of punishment to the parties involved. He resurfaced after a five-year hiatus as the first HC of UTSA in 2011 before retiring after 2015.
• John Cooper: Very successful coach at numerous schools, most prominently Ohio State (1988-2000). A RB and DB at Iowa State from 1959-61, he was known as one of the "Dirty 30", a group of 30 players who survived a grueling 1959 season. His first HC job was at Tulsa (1977-84), which he led to five straight Missouri Valley Conference titles. His next was at Arizona State (1985-87), taking them to a bowl game in all three seasons and winning the 1987 Rose Bowl against Michigan. His last stop was Ohio State, which he led to a share of three Big Ten titles. However, Cooper struggled against his programs' respective rivals, going 0-2-1 against Arizona with ASU and putting up an abysmal 2-10-1 record against Michigan with the Buckeyes. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2008.
• Herbert "Fritz" Crisler^note He earned the Ironic Nickname "Fritz" from Amos Alonzo Stagg, his head coach at Chicago, after legendary violinist Fritz Kreisler. After Crisler fouled up four consecutive plays during a practice session, Stagg used the name to mock his lack of coordination; Crisler appropriated it as a reminder.: A key football innovator best known for pioneering the "two-platoon" system that split up offensive and defensive players. A player at Chicago from 1919-21, he coached Minnesota from 1930-31, then Princeton from 1932-37, winning two national titles at the latter. While at Princeton, he created the winged football helmet design they continue to wear to this day. He then coached Michigan from 1938-47, bringing the winged helmet design to the school and created the iconic maize and blue color scheme the Wolverines also still wear today. Crisler retired after winning another national title in 1947 with his "Mad Magicians", so named because of their use of the new platoon system that soon ended the era of two-way position players. He served as the school's AD from 1941-68, when he retired. He also oversaw the expansion of Michigan's football stadium and is the reason the stadium's official capacity ends in "1", as an extra seat is allegedly reserved for him. Additionally, Michigan's basketball arena, which opened less than a year before his retirement as AD, bears his name. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1954 and passed away in 1982.
• Sylvester Croom: A Hall of Fame player at Alabama who later became a long-time assistant coach in the college and pro ranks from 1976-2003, he got his only HC job in 2004 at Mississippi State. When he took the job, he became the first African-American to be a HC of a SEC school and held the position until 2008, only putting up one winning season. After his HC career, he continued on as an assistant with various NFL teams until officially retiring in 2018.
• David Cutcliffe: One of the prominent "quarterback whisperers" in college football history. He spent nearly two decades as an assistant at Tennessee, where he was instrumental in the development of Peyton Manning. He moved into his first HC job at Ole Miss in 1998, where he recruited and developed Eli Manning. Despite only suffering one losing season in seven years at Ole Miss, he was fired in 2004 and took several years off to recover from heart surgery. He was hired by Duke in 2008 and, despite an overall losing record with the program, is considered one of the greatest coaches in school history. Something of an Almighty Janitor, Cutcliffe repeatedly turned down interviews from schools with stronger football programs and even some NFL teams to stay at Duke, an academically-oriented institution far more famous for its basketball program. After three straight losing seasons, capped off by an eight-loss streak to end 2021, he was let go. Cutcliffe has since been hired by the SEC as a consultant for its football operations.
• Mark Dantonio: The winningest HC in Michigan State's history, working for the school from 2007-19 during which he won three Big Ten championships and secured a CFP berth. Dantonio's abrupt retirement early in 2020 was somewhat controvesial, coming, well after most coaching changes are made, on the heels of a report that the school was facing numerous NCAA violations as well as a $5 million lawsuit for the wrongful termination of a former staffer, and just weeks after accepting a $4.3 million "longevity bonus" from the school and was ironically rehired by MSU in 2023 to serve as an associate head coach after Mel Tucker was suspended pending the outcome of a sexual harassment investigation.
• Duffy Daugherty^*Duffy wasn't a nickname but rather his actual middle name. His first name was Hugh.: A player at Syracuse most famous for his Long Runner tenure at Michigan State, first as line coach under Clarence "Biggie" Munn (see below) from 1947–53 and then as HC from 1954–72. Daugherty was also Munn's main recruiter and was one of the first to heavily recruit African-American players. That strategy paid off, with the Spartans claiming two national titles while Munn was HC and three more under Daugherty. Despite a decline to mediocrity after his last national title team in 1966, he ended his tenure with a 109–69–5 (.609) record, making him the winningest coach in MSU history until being passed by Mark Dantonio (above). Daugherty was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1984 and passed away in 1987. Daugherty is also significant to Nebraska football history; he turned down an offer from the Cornhuskers in 1962 but recommended one of his former assistants, Bob Devaney (also see below).
• Kalen DeBoer: The current HC at Alabama. A former multi-sport athlete at the University of Sioux Falls (then NAIA, now D-II) in his native South Dakota, he stayed in town and coached his alma mater to a 67–3 record and three NAIA national titles from 2005–09 before spending the next decade as an assistant at various schools. He was hired as HC of Fresno State in 2020, then took the reins at Washington in 2022; the Huskies immediately bounced back from a state of disarray to being one of the premier programs in the nation, complete with an undefeated regular season before losing to Michigan in the national championship game. After having lost just three games in two years in Washington, he was hired to succeed the legendary Nick Saban at Bama.
• Fisher DeBerry: The winningest and longest tenured coach in Air Force history, coaching the program from 1984-2006. Picked up the option offense established by his predecessor Ken Hatfield and (literally) ran with it, making Air Force the most dominant service academy during his tenure and coming within a game of playing for a national title in 1985.
• Bob Devaney: While Nebraska had been a Midwest regional power in the decades before World War II, Devaney turned them into a national powerhouse. A player at the small school Alma, he coached high school football in his home state of Michigan until being hired as an assistant by Michigan State in 1953. Four years later, he became head coach at Wyoming, leading the Cowboys to conference titles in the last four of his five seasons in Laramie. He was hired by Nebraska in 1962 after being recommended by his former boss Duffy Daugherty, who believed it had far greater national championship potential than Wyoming. Daugherty was right; Devaney led the Cornhuskers to a Big Eight title in 1963, the first of eight he would win in Lincoln. The next year, he brought in an innovative offensive assistant in his eventual successor Tom Osborne (see below), and things took off from there, capped off by consensus national championships in 1970 and 1971 in the midst of a 32-game unbeaten streak. Devaney, who had become the AD in 1967, left the football program in Osborne's hands after 1972 to concentrate on his AD role. He entered the Hall of Fame in 1981, retired as AD in 1992, and passed away in 1997.
• Dan Devine: A successful coach at multiple colleges, most notably Notre Dame. Began his coaching career at Michigan State as an assistant, helping them win two championships in 1951-52, then got his first HC gig at Arizona State in 1955. Replaced Frank Broyles (see above) at Missouri in 1958 and led the school to great success during his 13-year tenure. From 1971-74, he served as HC of the Green Bay Packers, finding little success and struggling to adapt to the NFL. In 1975, accepted an offer to coach Notre Dame, where he continued building on the success of his predecessor, Ara Parseghian (see below), by winning the 1977 National Championship and the 1979 Cotton Bowl that came to be known as the "Chicken Soup Game". Retired after 1980, was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1985, and passed away in 2001. Was portrayed by Chelcie Ross in the film Rudy.
• Doug Dickey: A QB/DB for Florida in the '50s who found success serving as the head coach of their chief SEC rival Tennessee from 1964-69, leading them to five consecutive bowls starting in 1965 and claiming a national championship in 1967. During his tenure there, he successfully integrated the university and instilled many enduring traditions, including the Power-T decal on the helmet, the orange/white checkerboard end zones, and the team entering the field via running through the "Pride of the Southland" marching band's t-formation. In his last game as coach for Tennessee (the 1969 Gator Bowl), he lost to his alma mater. He then returned to Florida in 1970, taking them to four straight bowls from 1973-76 before being fired in 1978 with the program divided and in dire straits. He suffered from an extreme case of Every Year They Fizzle Out, as he lost his last seven bowl games after starting 2-0. He returned to Tennessee in 1985 to serve as AD, held the position until 2002, and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2003.
• Paul Dietzel: Best known for his tenures at LSU from 1955-61 and South Carolina from 1966-74, serving as AD at the latter. At LSU, he led the program to a national championship in 1958 by instituting a unique three-team platoon system, consisting of a first team offense/defense, second-string offense and the famed "Chinese Bandits" second-string defense. He went to Army from 1962-65, where he was the first non-Army graduate to coach the team (to middling results). At South Carolina, he won the school's only conference championship in 1969 by winning the ACC but lost the Peach Bowl. He also helped the school transition out of the ACC into a D-I independent, designed the current Gamecock logo, and wrote the current South Carolina fight song lyrics. After his career at South Carolina, he served as the commissioner for the Ohio Valley Conference in 1975 and as the AD for Indiana, LSU, and Samford. He passed away in 2013.
• Gil Dobie: One of the giants of early college football, whose career began in astounding fashion. He took his first HC job in 1906 at North Dakota State and did not lose a game until 1917 (the second game of his 12th season) in Washington, marking the longest unbeaten streak for any FBS program and second longest winning steak. He went 8-0 in two years at North Dakota State, followed by 58-0-3 in nine at Washington. Dobie was also one of the true characters in college football history, seemingly ripped straight out of a Charles Dickens novel (one writer even noted amazing similarities to David Copperfield in his life story). Orphaned early in life, he endured a tough childhood at a savage orphanage, which led to a dour, pessimistic outlook on life. He was always so focused on his teams' flaws he earned the nickname "Gloomy Gil" and called one of those undefeated Washington teams "The dumbest, clumsiest, rankest collection of so-called football excuses I have ever seen!" While he eventually accumulated some losses in his later jobs at Navy, Cornell, and Boston College, he still retired after 1938 with a stellar 182-45-15 record, passing away in 1948. Three years after his passing, Dobie was made a charter member of the Hall of Fame.
• Bobby Dodd: The winningest coach in Georgia Tech history, one of a handful of figures enshrined in the Hall of Fame as both a player and coach, and the namesake of one of the most prestigious Coach of the Year awards. After a successful tenure as Tennessee's QB in the late '20s, he served as an assistant to William Alexander for 13 years at Tech before succeeding him and leading the program for 22 seasons (1945-66) and becoming the school's AD in 1950. He was a beloved figure at Tech, where "In Dodd We Trust" was a fan catchphrase. Dodd was unique in the annals of college sports for his laid-back and student-focused approach; he prioritized academic over athletic performance, never recruited more students than could make the final team, and coached each game from a seated position at a card table he posted on the sidelines. This approach brought the team great success, including a national title in 1952. However, it also led to Tech leaving the SEC when Dodd grew frustrated with other programs and coaches (particularly Bear Bryant) who did not follow suit. After he retired as HC in 1966, he spent another ten years as AD, overseeing the program's racial integration. Passed away in 1988.
• "Iron" Mike Donahue: One of the more colorful characters of the sport's early years and the coach responsible for laying the groundwork for football excellence at Auburn. An Irish immigrant known for his short stature (5'4") and bright red hair, Donahue was a backup QB at Yale from 1899-1903 and was hired as Auburn's head football coach straight out of college. His first team won all of its games, which helped him earn the job of Auburn's first head basketball coach the following year; he held both positions until 1922 (save for missing 1907 at football and the last year at basketball). Donahue's team was perfect in 1913 and surrendered just one tie the following year, and his .743 career percentage remains the best of any full-time Auburn coach. Donahue went on to less spectacular coaching and admin seasons at LSU and the small Spring Hill College before fully retiring in the '40s. He was a member of the Hall of Fame's inaugural class and passed away in 1960.
• Terry Donahue: The longest-tenured HC in UCLA history. In his two decades coaching the Bruins (1976-95), Donahue won five conference titles. Most impressively, he was the first coach to lead his team to eight straight bowl wins; this remains the second-longest streak ever for a single coach, behind only Bobby Bowden's 11-win run at Florida State. After retirement, he served as the GM for the 49ers for a few years and passed away in 2021.
• Kevin Donley: The winningest coach in NAIA history and the winningest active coach at any level in college football (348 wins as of the end of the 2023 season, good for fifth all-time). He's coached his entire career at the NAIA and D-II levels, starting at age 26 in 1978, with stops at his alma mater Anderson College (now University) in Indiana, Georgetown College in Kentucky (winning an NAIA D-II championship in 1991) and California University in Pennsylvania. Then he was hired as the first HC at the University of St. Francis, a Catholic university in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1998, and has been the HC for the Cougars' entire football history. He immediately made them a power and won consecutive national championships in 2016-17, making him the only coach to win NAIA titles at two different schools.
• Vince Dooley: After spending ten years at Auburn as a player and assistant, he became HC for Georgia in 1964 and later serving as their AD in 1979. During his 25 seasons, he saw tremendous success and won the national championship in 1980. He briefly pursued a Senate run in 1986 as a Democrat but dropped out due to still being a coach. He retired from coaching in 1988 to focus on his work as AD. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1994 and passed away in 2022. His family also followed him into coaching, with brother Bill posting stints at North Carolina, Virginia Tech, and Wake Forest and son Derek leading at Louisiana Tech and Tennessee.
• Pat Dye: Most famous for his tenure at Auburn from 1981-92. A player at Georgia, he got his first HC gig at East Carolina in 1974, coaching the program to its only Southern Conference title in 1976 before it became a D-I independent. In 1980, he became HC for Wyoming, taking over a program that had one winning season in 10 years and going 6-5. Wyoming failed to have Dye sign his contract, which turned into a blessing for Auburn, who hired him to serve as HC and AD. He coached the Tigers to four SEC titles and a 7-2-1 bowl record; he also moved Auburn's home games in the Iron Bowl out of Legion Field back to Auburn's field in 1989. He was forced to step down as AD in 1991 and HC in 1992 due to Auburn incurring NCAA sanctions. In 2005, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame, and Auburn renamed their playing field in his honor. Dye passed away in 2020 from liver and kidney failure complications possibly brought on by COVID-19.

E-L

• LaVell Edwards: The coach responsible for turning BYU into a football power. A lineman at Utah State in his playing days, Edwards was promoted to the HC position at BYU in 1972. Up to that point in their history, the Cougars were poster children for football mediocrity, having only won a single conference championship, with an all-time winning percentage of just .428, and had only beaten archrival Utah five times in 47 tries. By the time he retired after 2000, he had won 257 games in 28 seasons (6th most all time, 2nd most with a single school), along with 19 conference titles and a national championship in 1984 (the only "mid-major" school to win one in modern college football history), and had gone 22-6 against the Utes. Edwards is credited for jumpstarting the idea of high-volume passing offenses in college football, doing so to gain a competitive edge against other dominant teams who relied much more on power running and stout defenses. In total, he produced nine quarterbacks who led the NCAA in either passing yards, rating, or touchdowns, more than any other college program has ever produced; several of them set NCAA records (including Ty Detmer) or went on to NFL success (Steve Young, Jim McMahon). Edwards likewise mentored several successful NFL coaches (Mike Holmgren, Andy Reid). He also oversaw one of the last racial integrations of any college program in his first season, notably coming several years before the LDS Church disavowed its anti-Black doctrines and practices. BYU's stadium is named in his honor; in fact, it was formally renamed for Edwards immediately before his last home game, making him one of a small number of coaches to lead a team in a stadium named after him. Edwards died in 2016 a few days after breaking a hip.
• Ray "Butch" Eliot: A former guard at Illinois, he got his first head coaching job at Illinois College from 1934-36 before being named HC of his alma mater. During his tenure, he led the Illini to their last claimed national title in 1951 as well as two Rose Bowl victories and three conference championships. He retired from coaching in 1959 and passed away in 1980.
• Charles "Rip" Engle: A Hall of Famer who kept Penn State a contender through his lengthy tenure (1950-65). His legacy was mostly Overshadowed by Awesome by the career of his protégé and successor, Joe Paterno, who he first coached as a player at Brown before bringing him to Penn State as an assistant. Died in 1983.
• Dennis Erickson: After some early success at Idaho, Wyoming, and Washington State (ending a seven-decade bowl win drought in the latter), replaced Jimmy Johnson as HC of Miami (FL) from 1989-94. He led the Hurricanes to a national title in his first year and claimed a second two seasons later after overseeing the team's transition to the Big East. He departed for the NFL to coach the Seahawks from 1995-98, then returned to the college ranks at Oregon State, which hadn't posted a winning record in nearly three decades; he immediately broke that streak and put up arguably the greatest season in the program's history in 2000, with an 11-1 record and the school's sole conference championship since the '60s. He left again for the NFL to coach the 49ers from 2003-04, returned for a lackluster year at Idaho in 2006, and had a last college stop at Arizona State (2007-11 for an even .500 record). He last coached in the AAF's single season for the Salt Lake Stallions. Also of note, he won his first four bowl games as HC before fizzling out and going 1-7 in his last eight.
• Forest "Evy" Evashevski: Hall of Fame coach who claimed three national titles at Iowa during his relatively brief coaching tenure (1952-60). Started out as a star QB at Michigan, where he contributed to Tom Harmon's Heisman win by serving as a skilled blocker. Went into coaching after his WWII military service and created a dynasty with the Hawkeyes, only to retire after his third national title at just 42 years old to take a less stressful job as AD. Unfortunately turned out not to be suited to this role: Iowa's football production cratered, and he was fired a decade later amidst a good deal of controversy and never worked in football again. Despite his career's brevity, was inducted to the Hall of Fame in 2000 before passing away in 2009.
• Don Faurot:^note pronounced "fuh-ROE" Player, coach, and AD at Missouri who built up its football program over four decades. Originally a HB from 1922-24, he first found success as HC of Kirksville State^note Now Truman State, athletically known as just "Truman" from 1926-34, then was named the HC and AD of his alma mater in 1935. He held the HC job until 1956 (save for a stint in the Navy during WWII) and retiring as AD in 1967. When he first arrived at Missouri, the program was in dire straits and had accrued a $500,000 debt. During his tenure, the program had a winning record but went 0-4 in bowl games. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1961, and Missouri's stadium was renamed in his honor in 1972. He passed in 1995, just months after laying the last piece of sod to complete Faurot Field's conversion from OmniTurf back to natural grass.
• Kirk Ferentz: The winningest coach in Iowa history and currently the longest-tenured active coach with a single FBS program, having coached the Hawkeyes since succeeding Hayden Fry (see below) in 1999 after years as an assistant in college and the pros and an unsuccessful HC stint with Maine (1990-92). Ferentz quickly rebuilt Iowa back to its old form and became renowned as one of the best defensive coaches in the nation... at the cost of Iowa regularly having some of the worst offenses in the nation, likely contributing to the program's inability to take the next step and become a real threat to win Big Ten championships (having last won one in 2004). His Ultimate Job Security has also come under scrutiny due to numerous scandals, legal troubles, and the extreme degrees of Nepotism that have followed his tenure. Most notably, his son Brian served as his OC from 2017-23 despite the unit persistently ranking among the worst in the nation.^note This would normally be an NCAA violation, but Iowa skirted the issue by claiming that he reports to the AD rather than the rest of the coaching staff. Brian signed a contract for the 2023 season calling for him to be let go if the Hawkeyes failed to average 24 points per game that season: through 8 weeks, they averaged only 20, and only with the help of numerous defensive and special teams scores, leading the AD to announce his firing before the season had ended.
• Luke Fickell: The current coach of Wisconsin. A nose tackle at Ohio State in the mid-'90s, he went into coaching after a brief NFL career and quickly returned to his alma mater, working up the ranks until abruptly being thrust into an interim HC role in the wake of Jim Tressel's resignation (see his entry for more). After going 6-7 (a terrible record by Buckeye standards, albeit an understandable one given the circumstances), Fickell stepped back into an assistant role under Urban Meyer before taking the HC job at Cincinnati in 2017. Fickell's deep roots in Ohio came in handy in recruiting, and he quickly turned the Bearcats into a dominant power; in 2021, they became the only Group of Five school in the 4-team CFP era to make the playoffs. Fickell took the Wisconsin job after the following season.
• Jimbo Fisher: A protégé of Bobby Bowden and Nick Saban, Fisher was chosen as Bowden's successor at Florida State, continuing the program's success from 2010-16, including a national title in 2013. Fisher attracted some criticism for his lax attitude towards players' academic performance and retired with one game left in 2017 to take the HC job at Texas A&M; FSU fell to its first losing records in four decades immediately after his departure. In 2021, he led A&M to a stunning road upset of top-ranked Alabama, ending two remarkable streaks: 100 straight Bama wins over unranked teams and 24 straight wins for Nick Saban at Alabama when the opposing HC was one of his former assistants.^*Fisher had served under Saban at LSU. That was also the year in which his original 10-year deal at A&M was replaced by a new 10-year deal for $95 million fully guaranteed. However, Fisher would come under increased scrutiny for the Aggies' overall underperformance, as his impressive recruiting never translated to similar excellence on the field. He was fired late in the 2023 season, with A&M swallowing a buyout of about $77 million—nearly three times the highest previous known buyout of a coaching contract at a public school.^note A&M ended up on the hook for more; many if not all of his assistants had their own (much lesser) buyouts, and their eventual HC hire, Duke's Mike Elko, had a more manageable buyout in the $5 million range. He's also at the center of one of the craziest What Could Have Been scenarios in recent history: UAB was set to hire him as HC after the 2006 season, but the University of Alabama System Board of Trustees stepped in and nullified the contract offer, a move widely seen as the Tuscaloosa campus deliberately kneecapping the Birmingham campus' football program.^note It wasn't the first time the system board was accused of this, and was far from the last. See UAB's description in the "Group of Five" page for many more examples.
• Danny Ford: Head coach of Clemson from 1978-89. Previously a player and AC at Alabama under Bear Bryant, Ford became the youngest HC to win a national championship in college football history when he led the Tigers to their first in program history at age 33 in 1981, despite starting the season unranked. Ford completed a revival of the Clemson program started by predecessor Charley Pell (see below under "Notorious"), though he also continued the NCAA recruiting violations started under Pell that led to multiple sanctions. He had a generally less successful tenure at Arkansas from 1993-97 and was inducted to the Hall of Fame in 2017. He was portrayed by MC Gainey in the movie Greater, which detailed Brandon Burlsworth's life.
• James Franklin: HC at Penn State since 2014, where he's helped restore stability and success to the program in the wake of the Sandusky-Paterno crisis. He attained the position after a successful tenure at perennial underachiever Vanderbilt, where he was just the third black head coach in SEC history. His tenure there was unfortunately marked by a controversy of its own when four players recorded themselves sexually assaulting another student.
• Willie Fritz: Current HC at Houston with a career stretching back over 40 years. A two-time NJCAA champion at Blinn Junior College in the '90s, he moved through head coaching positions at Central Missouri (1997–2009), Sam Houston (2010–13), and Georgia Southern (2015–16) before arriving at Tulane. After nearly getting fired following a 2–10 season in 2021, he oversaw the largest single-season turnaround in major college football history as the team went 12–2 in 2022, culminating in a Cotton Bowl berth where they upset USC after a 4th quarter Miracle Rally. His success got him hired by Houston after the 2023 season.
• Scott Frost: Originally a QB who started out at Stanford but transferred to Nebraska after two years, leading the Cornhuskers to their most recent national championship in 1997, he entered into coaching after an unspectacular NFL career and quickly moved up the ranks. In 2016, he was hired by UCF the season after they went completely winless; in just his second season, UCF went completely undefeated and claimed a national championship after they weren't granted a spot in the CFP. Frost collected almost every major Coach of the Year award and was subsequently hired by his alma mater to lead the Cornhuskers back to the glory they hadn't seen since his graduation. Unfortunately, his tenure in Nebraska proved to be a disaster; his four years in Lincoln saw the program only further lose its luster, with four straight losing seasons in which Frost built a reputation for losing almost every game by a single score. Frost was fired early in the 2022 season after losing two games (also by single scores!) in which Nebraska was heavily favored, leaving Lincoln as the first full-time head coach with a losing record since Bob Devaney began his tenure six decades prior.
• Hayden Fry: HC of three schools over his nearly 40-year career, most famously with Iowa (1979-98) after getting started at SMU (1962-72) and North Texas (1973-78). Fry oversaw the racial integration of SMU (the first in the Southwest Conference) and shaped Iowa's football into the program it is today, not just by leading them to three conference titles but by from getting permission from the Pittsburgh Steelers to emulate their uniforms and (infamously) having the visitors' locker room at Iowa's stadium painted pink in hopes of distracting/pacifying opponents. His coaching tree is one of the most expansive in college football, with 13 of his assistants going on to become head coaches themselves, including most famously his successor at Iowa, Kirk Ferentz, as well as the Stoops brothers (Bob, Mike, Mark), and Bill Snyder (see below). Craig T. Nelson's character in the sitcom Coach was named Hayden Fox in Fry's honor. Died in 2019.
• Phillip Fulmer: Now retired from Tennessee, where he was a player, a national championship-winning HC, and AD. He is considered one of the greatest recruiters in college football history (including convincing Peyton Manning to play at Tennessee instead of at his father Archie's alma mater, Ole Miss) and famously never lost to rival Kentucky, going 17-0 against them. He was infamously fired after 2008, just one year after taking the team to 10 wins, after which the Volunteers program went into an epic nosedive for nearly a decade including six straight seasons finishing unranked. He came back as AD in 2017 and retired from that position in 2021.
• John Gagliardi:^note pronounced "guh-LAHR-dee" The winningest coach in college football history by wins, regardless of division. He began his coaching career as the HC of the high school team he played on in Colorado (the coach had been drafted for military service in World War II, and Gagliardi, as the team captain, was chosen to replace him), coached high school teams while attending Colorado College, then moved to the collegiate level when NAIA school Carroll College in Montana hired him as a 22-year-old HC in 1949. He then went to Saint John's of Minnesota, then NAIA and now D-III, in 1953, and stayed there for 60 seasons, finally retiring in 2012 with 489 total wins. He won four national championships during his career (NAIA titles in 1963 and 1965, and the D-III championship in 1976 and 2003) and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2006 while still actively coaching. He was also famous for his unorthodox coaching style: he didn't subject his players to practice staples like full contact, full uniforms, tackling sleds, or wind sprints. He also told his players to call him "John" instead of "Coach". The award for the top D-III player bears his name.^note And was won by a Saint John's player in 2018; sadly, Gagliardi didn't get to see the award come "home", as he passed away just before his 92nd birthday in October of that year.
• Ray Graves: HC and AD of Florida from 1960-69 who elevated the program to national prominence. He is better known for his off-field contributions, as he was one of the people responsible for the creation of Gatorade, using the product to help the Gators earn a comeback win against LSU in 1965 in its first appearance on the field. He also helped kickstart the product's popularity by telling his friend, Kansas City Chiefs coach Hank Stram, about its effectiveness, which eventually helped Gatorade become the official drink of the NFL. After retiring from coaching in 1969, he continued to serve as AD until 1979, helping Florida become a powerhouse in women's athletics. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1990 and passed away in 2015.
• Mike Gundy: The HC of Oklahoma State since 2005, tying him with Utah's Kyle Whittingham as the second longest tenured active FBS HC. His Long Runner tenure at the school goes back further than that, as Gundy had previously served as the school's QB during their run of success in the late 1980s, moving straight into assistant coaching at the school after that. After a brief sojourn to other programs in the late '90s, Gundy returned to the Cowboys and soon took the head role in Stillwater, succeeding Les Miles. While at times controversial due to allegations of misconduct and a notorious temper (most notably visible in a viral video where he lambasted a critical report on his team, yelling "Come after me! I'm a man! I'm forty!"), he has been extremely consistent, finishing above .500 every season since his first.
• Jim Harbaugh: HC at Michigan from 2015-23, where he was first a successful QB before a pretty solid journeyman NFL career.^note He notably is enshrined in the Indianapolis Colts' Ring of Honor for leading them to an unexpected AFC Championship appearance that was the peak of the franchise's success in Indy before Peyton Manning's arrival. He then entered the college coaching ranks, first with FCS San Diego and then with Stanford, which he built up from Pac-12 bottom-feeder into a legitimate title contender from 2007-10. He next experienced great success as an NFL coach with the San Francisco 49ers, making it to the playoffs in three of his four seasons and to the Super Bowl where he lost to his brother John's Ravens. However, conflicts with management and the opportunity to coach his alma mater led him to return to the college ranks. The start of his tenure in Ann Arbor was relatively successful but had a mixed fan reception due to his early struggles against hated rival Ohio State and a disappointing 2-6 bowl game record. After a losing season in 2020 left him on the brink of being fired, Harbaugh overhauled his coaching staff, accepted a massive pay cut, and immediately beat Ohio State and led the Wolverines to their first two CFP berths in back-to-back years. However, Harbaugh's tenure became mired in controversy in 2023 due to credible accusations of Michigan having an extensive sign-stealing program under his watch, leading to a suspension by the Big Ten. Despite this outside noise, Harbaugh still was able to lead the Wolverines to their first national championship in decades to cap the season before returning to the pros.
• Percy Haughton: Another of college football's pioneering coaches, most famous for his nine seasons at Harvard (1908-16) during which he guided his alma mater to four national championships. While "The Game" between Harvard and rival Yale was already one of the biggest and most anticipated in college football, it took on ever more significance during Haughton's tenure, with it alleged that he once strangled a bulldog with his bare hands to motivate his team before the game.^note Yale's mascot is a bulldog. He left Harvard with a 72-7-5 (.887) record and moved onto fellow Ivy League school Columbia in 1923, reestablishing the school's football program after it had been shut down in 1905 over concerns of violence (against humans, not just dogs). Haughton became ill while on the sideline during his second season in Columbia, passing away soon after at just 48. He was posthumously inducted into the Hall of Fame's inaugural class in 1951.
• Woody Hayes: The coach who put Ohio State on the map as a football heavyweight, winning five national championships during his tenure with the school (1951-78). Hayes was also known for his fiery temper (which was possibly aggravated by diabetes in his later years), and he got involved in a number of fights both on and off the field. His most infamous incident happened during the 1978 Gator Bowl against Clemson, when Hayes punched a Clemson defender in the throat after said player had sealed the Tigers' win with a late interception,^note Accounts differ as to whether the defender, substitute nose guard Charlie Bauman, was taunting Hayes. A Clemson defender who was trailing that play claims he heard Hayes yelling at Bauman, "You SOB, I just lost my job!" As for Bauman, he would say that Hayes' punch caused no damage, and they even had a respectful conversation after the game. triggering a bench-clearing brawl. Shortly after, Hayes attacked the referee, drawing multiple Personal Foul penalties. Hayes was fired as HC the next day but remained employed by the school for several more years as a history professor. He died in 1987, the day after insisting on attending a banquet at which he introduced the main speaker, his former assistant and coaching rival Bo Schembechler (see below).
• John Heisman: A college football pioneer, first as a player and later as a coach. He coached for eight schools^note Oberlin (1892, 1894), Buchtel (1893-94), Auburn (1895-99), Clemson (1900-03), Georgia Tech (1904-19), Penn (1920-22), Washington & Jefferson (1923), Rice (1924-27) and won the 1917 national championship at Georgia Tech. Heisman was instrumental in the legalization of the forward pass, forever changing the game of football to what we all recognize today. He's also notable for having been the head coach of Georgia Tech for their infamous 222-0 victory over Cumberland in 1916, and for being an amateur thespian (something that helped with a great Rousing Speech). The Heisman Trophy, detailed above under the "Awards" section, is named after him. (Ironically, Heisman was an offensive lineman in his playing days, a position which in modern times is rarely even considered for the award.^note Since 2000, only Miami OT Bryant McKinnie has finished in the top 10 in voting, placing 8th in 2001.) Passed away in 1936 and was posthumously inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1954.
• Tom Herman: A longtime assistant coach who worked his way up the ranks as an OC for years, ultimately winning a national title at Ohio State before landing his first HC job at Houston in 2015. His immediate success there helped him to move his way up the state's food chain to become HC of Texas just two years later. Despite delivering winning records and bowl wins in his four seasons with the Longhorns, fan frustration with the team still not competing for conference and national championships led to his firing; he is now HC of FAU.
• Bob Higgins: An early legend at Penn State, first as a player (being named All-American three times from 1914-19, his playing career as an end divided by service in WWI) then as a head coach (1930-48). His sister, Margaret Sanger, was the founder of Planned Parenthood and coined the term "birth control". Died in 1969.
• Babe Hollingberry: Coached Washington State from 1926-42; over seventy years later, still the most successful coach at the long-struggling school, with only Mike Price having come close to his length of tenure and wins. Died in 1974.
• Lou Holtz: Spent nearly 35 years as the head coach of six different schools,^note William & Mary (1969-71), NC State (1972-75), Arkansas (1977-83), Minnesota (1984-85), Notre Dame (1986-96), and South Carolina (1999-2004) most famously for Notre Dame in the late '80s and early '90s, where he led their last National Championship team in 1988. To younger fans, Holtz is likely more famous for his time as an analyst working alongside Mark May for ESPN's various college football shows including Scoreboard, Final, and Live. Holtz went into semi-retirement from broadcasting in 2015, though he and his distinctive voice (caused by his dentures) still make occasional appearances on the network. The less said about his one season in the NFL (going 3-10 with the New York Jets in 1976, with Holtz resigning before season's end to take the Arkansas job), the better. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Donald Trump in 2020, which many connected more to his decades of vocal support for the Republican party (something that had actually cost him his job at Arkansas) than his public service. His son, Skip, has also enjoyed a successful coaching career with collegiate stops at Connecticut, East Carolina, South Florida, and Louisiana Tech and is currently coaching the Birmingham Stallions of the UFL after winning consecutive championships in the USFL.
• Frank Howard: A fixture of Clemson football for 65 years in some capacity from 1931–96. After eight years as line coach from 1931-39, he was named HC and held the job from 1940-69 while also serving as the AD, establishing the Tigers as a football power. He also created one of college football's best-known traditions in 1967, where his players run down the hill overlooking the east end zone and rub "Howard's Rock".^note He was gifted the rock in the early '60s by a friend who was vacationing in Death Valley; it was used a door stop until 1966, when a booster placed the rock over the east end zone. After he retired from coaching, he continued as AD and was assistant to the vice president of the university when he was forced into mandatory retirement in 1971. He officially retired in 1974 but maintained an office at the university and was something of a school ambassador. Clemson renamed their playing surface in his honor after his retirement and he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1989 before passing away in 1996.
• Don James: A successful HC for Kent State from 1971-74 and Washington from 1975-92. During his time at Kent State, he led them to their first (and thus far only) conference championship and second ever bowl in school history in 1972 behind a team led by Jack Lambert, Gary Pinkel, and Nick Saban (see below for the latter two). He then went on to Washington, leading them to an impressive winning record and a share of the 1991 national championship. He retired abruptly after 1992 when his team was hit with sanctions and he had a falling-out with university administration over their handling of the incident.^note The punishment was originally a one-year bowl ban and two-year TV revenue ban, but it got changed to a two-year bowl ban and one-year TV revenue ban He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1997 and died from pancreatic cancer in 2013.
• Willie Jeffries: Hall of Fame HC most notable for his time at HBCU South Carolina State where he won three Black College National Championships (1976-77, 1994) over two stints covering 19 seasons. Originally a center for the school in the early '60s, he moved into high school coaching before getting the job at his alma mater. After his successful first stint at SC State, he was hired by Wichita State in 1979, making him the first black head coach of a 1-A football program in history. His time with the Shockers was significantly less successful, including sanctions by the NCAA for improper recruiting that would contribue to the school closing the football program following his tenure. After five years at Howard, he returned to SC State for another successful stint until retiring in 2001.
• Jimmy Johnson: HC for Oklahoma State from 1979-83 and Miami (FL) from 1984-88 before he became known as the architect of the '90s Dallas Cowboys dynasty. He put up a respectable record at OK State but saw much greater success in Miami, winning back-to-back Orange Bowls in 1988-89 and being crowned the 1988 National Champion before being picked up for the pros. He is one of only two coaches to be enshrined in both the Pro and College Halls of Fame and one of four to win championships at both levels.
• Howard Jones: Put USC on the map as a football powerhouse during his tenure as HC (1925-40). He was first a player and later coach at Yale, where he won a national championship in 1909. Four schools later (Syracuse, Ohio, Iowa, Duke), he went west to USC and won four more championships with his "Thundering Herd"; the span between his first national championship win (1909) and his last (1939) is the longest for any coach with at least two such victories. His coaching style was infamously stoic; he was a terrible public speaker and showed little emotion or humor under any circumstance. His tenure at USC was cut short when he died of a heart attack in 1941. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame's inaugural class in 1951.
• June Jones: Most famous for his time at Hawaii (1999-2007) and SMU (2008-14), where he became one of the propagators of the modern "wide open passing attack" style of offense popular in modern college football. A college and pro QB, he made his way through the NFL coaching ranks with a three-year stint as HC of the Atlanta Falcons before returning to the college ranks to coach at Hawaii. There, he established a pass-heavy "run and shoot" offense on his way to turning around a program that went 0-12 the year before to 9-4 in his first season in the (then) largest single-season turnaround in NCAA football history (now tied for second). Hawaii only suffered two losing seasons during Jones' time with the school while also frequently leading the FBS in passing. QB Timmy Chang became the NCAA all-time leading passer^note since surpassed by Case Keenum while QB Colt Brennan was a Heisman finalist after leading Hawaii to its best season in school history (12-1 with an appearance in the 2008 Sugar Bowl). Jones was then hired by SMU and led another drastic turnaround for the school which had badly struggled since receiving the NCAA "Death Penalty" two decades prior. He resigned two games into the 2014 season (losing both by a combined 88-6 margin), then moved into brief stints in the CFL and XFL. In the latter, he served as head coach and GM of the Houston Roughnecks, leading them to a perfect 5-0 record before COVID-19 cut the season prematurely short.
• Thomas "Tad" Jones: The younger brother of Howard Jones and a Hall of Famer in his own right. A two-time All-American QB at Yale just after the legalization of the forward pass, he moved into coaching first at Syracuse and then at his alma mater. In 1927, he led Yale to a share of the national championship, the school's last. Passed away in 1957 and was posthumously inducted into the Hall a year later.
• Ralph "Shug" Jordan:^note He earned his nickname as a kid because of his love of sorghum sugar cane. Also bear in mind that the correct pronunciation of his last name is JUR-dan. A center for Auburn from 1928-32, he came back to coach his alma mater from 1951-75 and slowly transformed it into an SEC powerhouse, winning the national title in 1957. He is the winningest coach in program history, with a record of 175-83-7 (.674). In 1973, his name was added to the football stadium in his honor, allowing him to join an elite club of coaches who got to lead their team onto the field in a stadium named after them; he died in 1980.
• K. C. Keeler: Currently the HC at Sam Houston, Keeler is the only coach to win FCS national championships at two different schools and the only person to coach in the FCS and D-III championship games. Starting his HC career in 1993, he guided Rowan to the D-III championship game (the Stagg Bowl) in his very first season, losing to Mount Union. That became a familiar refrain for Keeler, as Rowan made 5 Stagg Bowls from 1993-99 but lost all of them, with three of the losses to Mount Union and Keeler's personal Always Someone Better Larry Kehres (see below).^note The coaches that Keeler lost his Stagg Bowls to, Kehres, Wisconsin-La Crosse's Roger Harring, and Pacific Lutheran's Frosty Westering, are all Hall of Famers who combined for almost 900 career wins! In 2002, he took the job at his alma mater Delaware, replacing longtime coach Harold "Tubby" Raymond. He made the (then) I-AA championship game in his second year but this time won it in spectacular fashion, with a 40-0 shutout of Colgate. He took Delaware to two more FCS title games (2007, led by future Super Bowl MVP Joe Flacco, and 2010) but lost them both and was let go after 2012. After working for ESPN in 2013, Keeler took the Sam Houston job the next year, guided the Bearkats to six playoff appearances, and won the championship in the 2020-21 season that saw FCS schools play a spring schedule because of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Sam Houston's FBS move in 2023 means that Keeler has coached at every NCAA level except D-II.
• Larry Kehres:^note pronounced "CARE-es" The winningest coach in college football history by percentage, regardless of division. Coached at D-III Mount Union in Ohio from 1986-2012, also serving as AD in his final years on the sidelines (retiring from that position in 2020). Holds all-division records for winning percentage (.929), national titles (11), unbeaten regular seasons (21), and conference titles (23, with the last 21 of them being in succession). He and his son Vince, who succeeded him as HC, are one of only two father-son head coaching pairs to win national titles and the only one in which both won multiple national titles. Vince went 95–6 (.941)^*He's not the NCAA leader because its official leaderboard only includes those who served as HC for at least 10 seasons. in 7 seasons (2013–19) with 6 conference titles and 2 national titles before leaving to become defensive coordinator at Toledo.
• Brian Kelly: The winningest coach in Notre Dame history. After spending over a decade as HC of D-II Grand Valley State (1991-2003, winning back-to-back D-II national championships in his final two seasons) and a brief tenure at Central Michigan (2004-06), Kelly took the reigns at Cincinnati and immediately took the program to its greatest heights, leading the Bearcats to an undefeated regular season in 2009 before leaving the team prior to their bowl game to accept the Notre Dame job. Kelly's run at Notre Dame brought the school the most success it had seen in decades, including an appearance in the 2013 BCS Championship Game. However, his tenure with the Fighting Irish was also marked with multiple controversies from the beginning; a student videographer (Declan Sullivan) was infamously killed during a practice in his first season after a hydraulic lift was knocked over from high winds (the school was fined for safety violations) and the NCAA officially rescinded all of the school's wins for two seasons, including their failed championship run, due to academic violations. Still, the program remained successful, with Notre Dame later seeing two visits to the CFP under Kelly. However, prior to the school's bowl game in 2021, while they were still potentially eligible for a third CFP run, Kelly took the HC job at LSU. He has the odd distinction of being an active FBS coach who has a D-II stadium named after him (his alma mater Assumption University in Massachusetts plays at Brian Kelly '83 Stadium).
• Roy Kidd: A Hall of Fame coach and true Eastern Kentucky lifer, he spent literally his entire life in that state's eastern half. The star HS QB turned down a scholarship offer from Bear Bryant at Alabama to go up US Route 25 to attend Eastern Kentucky, whose coaches were willing to let him play both football and baseball. He stayed in the region as a high school HC and college assistant before returning to Eastern for good in 1963, first as an assistant and then as head coach. In his 39-year run at EKU (1964–2002), he built the Colonels into a national power in the early days of I-AA, winning 16 OVC titles and making four straight I-AA finals, winning the first and last in '79 and '82. While the Colonels faded slightly in his final years on the sideline, he retired on a streak of 25 winning seasons, ending with 314 overall wins and a then-record 223 wins at the I-AA/FCS level (a record now held by Jimmye Laycock below).^note The NCAA considers the winningest FCS head coach to be Grambling's Eddie Robinson, but it defines an "FCS coach" is anyone who coached for 10 or more seasons at an FCS program, and counts all wins earned by said coaches, even if those wins were at other non-FCS programs or (like Robinson) at the same school when it wasn't FCS. Kidd, and now Laycock, are the winningest under the stricter criterion of wins earned at the FCS level. He was inducted to the Hall of Fame in 2003; EKU's stadium is named after him, the street that the stadium is on is named after him and his wife, and a statue of him stands just off the north end zone. Kidd passed away in 2023.
• Harry Kipke: A nine-time letterman at Michigan in football, baseball, and basketball from 1920-23, Kipke served as HC at Michigan State in 1928 before returning to his alma mater the following year. He restored the team to heights unseen since his departure, winning back-to-back national titles in 1932-33. However, the team fell off one of the steepest cliffs ever seen in college football the following year, just winning one game. Kipke was replaced by Fritz Crisler (above) after 1937 but still entered the Hall of Fame for his playing career. Passed away in 1972.
• Frank Kush: The coach who placed Arizona State on the map, though not without a great deal of controversy. As HC of the program from 1958-79, Kush saw the program grow from an intermittent regional power to a national championship contender, eventually leading to it joining the Pac-10. However, Kush was also infamous for bringing his Army experience to the football field; he was a real Drill Sergeant Nasty, taking full advantage of the scorching Arizona sun to punish players he think needed toughening to the point of abuse. Kush was fired in the midst of the 1979 season due to a scandal involving him punching his own punter in the face, leading to sanctions and punishment against ASU. Kush forayed into pro coaching, where he had some impact on NFL history by being a major reason why John Elway refused to play for him with the Colts, which in turn helped motivate the team's move from Baltimore to Indianapolis. Despite his controversies, Kush still made the Hall of Fame and was welcomed back to ASU prior to his death in 2017.
• Jimmye Laycock: A long-runner at William & Mary from 1980–2018, Laycock made the Tribe a consistent competitor in the Yankee/A-10/CAA despite the school's high academic standards. He's most notable as the head coach with the most wins at the FCS level, with 242 from 1982–2018.^note As with Roy Kidd above, this uses the stricter definition of an "FCS coach" to include only seasons coached at that level, not counting wins at any other level. W&M was in Division I-A, now FBS, when Laycock arrived at W&M, and was bounced to I-AA/FCS after the 1981 season.
• Mike Leach: An offensive innovator known by some as the "mad scientist" of college football (see Clark Shaughnessy below for another coach of that nickname) and by others as "The Pirate" for his affinity for them,^note He even had a life-size statue of a singing pirate in his office at Wazzu, a gift from basketball coaching legend Bob Knight, who coached at Texas Tech when Leach was there coaching football. and also famous for his Deadpan Snarker meets Cloudcuckoolander personality. Like Bill Clark above, he was one of the few FBS coaches who never played college football, playing rugby at BYU instead after an injury ended his own QB prospects. Leach also didn't start his coaching career until after getting a law degree at Pepperdine (a school that last fielded a football team in 1961, the year he was born). He is credited with inventing the "Air Raid" offense while serving as an assistant coach under his mentor, Hal Mumme. Originally seen as a gimmick offense with artificially inflated passing numbers due to its pass-heavy and up-tempo nature, Leach's success at Big 12 bottom-feeder Texas Tech from 2000-09 caused it to proliferate throughout college football. Despite never having a losing season at the school, Texas Tech fired Leach after he was accused of improperly treating RB Adam James' concussion.^note Later revelations showed that Leach may not have knowingly committed any wrongdoing and that his firing came after significant lobbying from Adam's father, former NFL RB and then-ESPN analyst Craig James, who was upset at his son's lack of playing time. Leach took Texas Tech to court, but being a state school, the case was dismissed on the grounds of sovereign immunity. He eventually wound up at typical Pac-12 bottom-feeder Washington State (2012-19), taking them to respectability they hadn't seen since the 1990s. After six bowl appearances in his eight seasons on the Palouse, including five straight from 2015–19, he left for SEC mid-pack fixture Mississippi State in 2020. He died suddenly from a heart attack following the 2022 regular season. While his career coaching record of .596 was two wins shy of the current threshold for Hall of Fame induction, Leach's 18 wins over AP-ranked teams while his own team was unranked are the most in the AP Poll era, and his schemes and extensive coaching tree have left an indelible mark on the game. Despite his acromonious departure from Texas Tech, he was still inducted into the school's Hall of Fame and Hall of Honor.
• Frank Leahy: The second member of the "Holy Trinity" of Notre Dame coaches, along with Knute Rockne and Ara Parseghian. A tackle at Notre Dame from 1928-30 who went into coaching immediately after graduation, with his most notable assistant's position being line coach at Fordham, where he coached the legendary Seven Blocks of Granite—one of them future NFL coaching legend Vince Lombardi. Leahy got his first head coaching job for Boston College in 1939, which he took them to a national title the following season. He was signed to a contract extension but got in hot water when he signed a contract with his alma mater around the same time; he got out of it by calling a press conference to say he been granted his release when he hadn't. The stunt worked in getting him let go, and Leahy turned a school that had been reeling from Rockne's death into a powerhouse once again, leading them to the 1943 National Championship before he took a 3-year leave to serve in WWII. When he returned in 1946, the program picked up right where it left off on his watch, winning national titles in '46, '47, and '49 and producing four Heisman winners (a record for decades before being tied by Nick Saban). The program collapsed soon after Leahy retired in 1953, saying he felt unwanted by the university. Leahy's career win percentage of .864 (107-13-9) remains the best of any coach of a major school besides Rockne. Leahy had one more football claim to fame as the first GM of the NFL's Los Angeles Chargers, serving in that role during their first season in the old AFL in 1960. Leahy then went into the business world, was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1970, and passed in 1973.
• Jack Lengyel: Coach hired in 1971 by Marshall to restart their football program, which had been devastated toward the end of the 1970 season when a plane crash killed most of their players and almost all of their coaching staff. Just 35 at the time, Lengyel had already coached for five seasons at the College of Wooster in Ohio (now a D-III school), also serving as Wooster's lacrosse coach. Before that he'd spent two years as the baseball coach at another small Ohio college, Heidelberg. The original choice for the job, Georgia Tech assistant Dick Bestwick, changed his mind a week after accepting the job, and Marshall athletic director Joe McMullen had to scramble for a replacement, choosing Lengyel, who he'd worked with previously.^note Bestwick later spent six seasons as a HC at Virginia Lengyel only went 9-33 in four years at Marshall, but the enormous struggles he endured to put the Marshall program back together, plus a classic Down to the Last Play win in their first home game (and second overall) back on the field against Xavier in 1971, secured him a place in football history. After Marshall he turned to administration, serving as AD at Fresno State, Missouri and Navy. He's also assisted in grief counseling for other sports teams who've endured tragedies similar to Marshall's. Played by Matthew McConaughey in We Are Marshall.

M-R

• Johnny Majors: A second-generation college football coach^explanationHis father Shirley Majors spent 21 seasons as the HC at D-III Sewanee, with a decent 93-74-5 record. and a Heisman runner-up (losing to Paul Hornung) as an HB at Tennessee in his playing days, he parlayed his success on the field to the sidelines with stops at Iowa State, Pittsburgh (twice), and Tennessee. During his five seasons at Iowa State (1968-72), he took them to their first two bowl games in school history, losing both. He had two tenures at Pitt (1973-76, 1993-96). His first saw the Panthers win the 1976 National Championship behind Heisman winner Tony Dorsett; his second was nowhere near as successful, putting up four losing seasons. Between those, he coached his alma mater from 1977-92, again seeing general success. He was controversially replaced by Phillip Fulmer (see above) while recovering from heart surgery; some in the fanbase believe Fulmer engineered the removal, others think Majors brought about the end of his tenure by complaining his contract, and the rest believe it was a combination of the two. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame as a player in 1987 and died in 2020. Lee Majors is alleged to have borrowed his stage name from Johnny, as the two were good friends and Lee was a frequent sight on the sideline of games.
• Ron McBride: The coach who began Utah's return to relevance. A linebacker at San Jose State in his playing days, he was a well-traveled assistant (with a couple of stints at Utah) before he was hired to replace Jim Fassel as the Utes' HC in 1990. By his third year, he guided Utah to its first bowl bid in almost three decades, and in 1994, he coached them to their first Top 10 finish in the polls. He also broke BYU's domination of the schools' rivalry (and launched a Friendly Rivalry with BYU's LaVell Edwards, including a series of local TV commercials together). He also hired future Ute HC Kyle Whittingham as an assistant. Regarded as a top-notch recruiter and motivator, McBride's weak spots were playcalling and in-game tactics, with a number of frustrating close losses in his later years, and despite an 88–63 record at Utah he was controversially let go in 2002 (replaced by Urban Meyer). He returned to the HC ranks in the state of Utah on the I-AA/FCS level, coaching Weber State from 2005-11, leading them to back-to-back playoff appearances in 2008-09. He retired with a 131–101 overall record.
• Bill McCartney: HC of Colorado from 1982-94 who brought the program to national prominence in the late '80s, winning the 1990 national championship (albeit with some controversy, as it was aided by the infamous "5th down game"). His off-field ventures have tarnished his reputation somewhat. He founded the controversial Promise Keepers men's ministry in 1990; his retirement from coaching was compelled in part by this and in part to care for his wife, who became suicidal and bulimic after he confessed his former infidelity. In 2008, as part of his ministry, he campaigned for the ratification of Colorado Constitution Amendment 2, which would state that homosexuals were not a protected class. He was still inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2013.
• Dan McGugin: The HC who led Vanderbilt to their greatest run of success by far. During his two tenures from 1904-17 and 1919-34, he led the Commodores to nine SIAA and two SoCon conference championships and only one losing season. His techniques, adapted from his time as a player at Michigan, took Southern football completely off-guard; he remains the only coach to earn his first three victories by 60+ points. He retired from coaching after 1934 to focus on his AD duties, dying from heart failure two years later. He was posthumously inducted into the Hall of Fame as an inaugural member in 1951.
• John McKay: The winningest coach in USC's esteemed history (127-40-8, .749). After being hired in 1960, he narrowly held on to the job after two losing seasons and immediately led the team to an undefeated record and championship in 1962, the first of four national titles he brought the school. His pioneering of the I formation and development of Heisman winners Mike Garrett and O.J. Simpson made USC a powerhouse through the '60s and early '70s, and his teams won five Rose Bowls in eight appearances. For all his on-field accomplishments, McKay is better known as one of the great Deadpan Snarkers in coaching history, with a knack for one-liners that made him a media favorite. After a disappointing 1975 season, he was drawn to the expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers for the largest contract ever offered a coach at the time; the team went 0-26 to start off but did eventually become playoff contenders. He died from diabetes complications in 2001, and his ashes were spread on the field of USC's Coliseum.
• Allyn McKeen: The most successful coach in Mississippi State history. A former player at Tennessee, he first coached at West Tennessee State (now Memphis) from 1937-38; after going undefeated in his second season, he took the job at Mississippi State the following year. He led the team to its only undefeated season (10-0-1) in 1940, then its only SEC championship the next year. He retired from coaching after 1948 (and the Bulldogs immediately went winless) and died in 1978.
• Leo Dutch Meyer: A coach who led TCU on their greatest run of success from 1934-52 and served as the AD from 1950-63. During his tenure, he won two national titles in 1935 and 1938. He is credited with inventing the double-wing formation to suit Sammy Baugh's playing style. He also served as TCU's baseball coach on three separate occasions and served as the basketball coach from 1934-37; TCU's basketball stadium was named Daniel-Meyer Coliseum in his and Milton E. Daniel's honor until 2015. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1956 and passed away in 1982.
• Urban Meyer: An extremely successful coach at the college level, most recently at Ohio State (2012-18) with prior stops at Bowling Green (2001-02), Utah (2003-04), and Florida (2005-10), posting a career winning percentage (187-32, .854) that sits behind only Knute Rockne and Frank Leahy for major school coaches of their career length. Meyer is credited with popularizing the "spread option" offense, which he used to lead drastic turnarounds at each school where he served as HC; Bowling Green went from 2-9 to 8-3 in his first season, Utah went undefeated and became the first BCS Buster in 2004, and Florida and Ohio State became national title-winning juggernauts (with Meyer claiming three). However, Meyer has also been subject of controversies at many of his schools for fostering toxic workplace environments, to the point where him "retiring" due to alleged health issues after a scandal involving players or staff only to return to broadcasting or coaching shortly after almost became a Running Gag. Later served as the HC of the Jacksonville Jaguars for a year that turned out to be a disaster.
• Joe Moglia: The coach who oversaw Coastal Carolina's transition from FCS to FBS, setting the stage for their breakout 2020 season under his successor Jamey Chadwell. Moglia is most notable for his unusual career path. After college, he embarked on the usual path of assistant gigs before he decided to leave football behind for a Wall Street career in 1983. He had spectacular success, becoming CEO of the discount brokerage that eventually became TD Ameritrade in 2001 and growing its client assets and market cap tenfold. Moglia later left to return to football, starting out as an assistant at Nebraska in 2009 and moving to the UFL's Omaha Nighthawks in 2011. With the UFL veering toward collapse, he became Coastal's head coach in 2012, leading the Chanticleers to FCS playoff berths in his first four seasons in charge as well as a 10–2 record in a 2016 season in which they were ineligible for the playoffs due to having begun their FBS transition. He took 2017 off for medical reasons but returned in 2018 before handing the program off to Chadwell. During the second act of his coaching career, he also held the largely ceremonial position of board chairman at TD Ameritrade, stepping down from that role in 2020 after the company was bought by Charles Schwab Corporation.
• Jerry Moore: While probably best known as the winning coach in one of the most famous upsets in college football history, Appalachian State's 2007 win at Michigan, his legacy goes well beyond one game. The former Baylor WR started out as a high school coach, soon moving into the college assistant ranks before his first HC jobs at North Texas and Texas Tech, but saw little success. After a few years out of coaching and an assistant's post at Arkansas, he was hired by App State in 1989. During his 24 seasons in charge, he had only one losing season and turned ASU into an FCS powerhouse, winning at least a share of 10 SoCon titles, making the I-AA/FCS playoffs 17 times, and leading the Mountaineers to three straight FCS titles from 2005–07. He retired after 2012 with App State's program in position to move to FBS, and he entered the Hall of Fame in 2014.
• Clarence "Biggie" Munn: Legendary HC at Michigan State. After playing at Minnesota under Fritz Crisler (see above), he got his first turn at head coaching in 1935 for Albright. He reunited with Crisler in 1938 as an assistant at Michigan, holding that post until 1945, and coached one season at Syracuse in 1946. In 1947, he agreed to become the HC for Michigan State, which he shaped into a powerhouse, leading the Spartans to two national championships and the 1953 Rose Bowl. He fostered a heated rivalry with Notre Dame, becoming the only HC to beat Frank Leahy three years in a row (1950-52). Not long after the Rose Bowl, was promoted to serve as AD, a job he held until 1971 while the school continued to see success under HC Duffy Daugherty (see above). Was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1959 and passed away in 1975.
• Tim Murphy: The HC of Harvard from 1994 to 2023, leading the Crimson to a record-tying nine Ivy League championships. His 200 wins are the most in the program's storied history, and the Crimson put up three undefeated seasons on his watch. Murphy also had a much less successful HC run at Cincinnati from 1989–93, with his only winning season there being his last. Under his leadership, Harvard also became the leading Ivy League school in sending players to the NFL including long-time QB Ryan Fitzpatrick, multi-time Pro Bowlers C Matt Birk and FB Kyle Juzczyk, and Super Bowl LV champion TE Cameron Brate. Former WWE star Christopher Nowinski also played under Murphy at Harvard. Murphy was also elected president of the American Football Coaches Association in 2012.
• Jess Neely: Best known for his 26-year tenure at Rice from 1940-66, easily the height of the program, though he had early coaching jobs at Southwestern^note now called Rhodes College and Clemson, serving as their AD during his time there and leading them to a Cotton Bowl victory in 1939. He led Rice to four SWC titles and six bowl games, going 3-3, including winning the 1954 Cotton Bowl over the vaunted Alabama Tide in dominating fashion. He retired from coaching in 1966 and went back to his alma mater Vanderbilt to serve as their AD, helping save the program that had first made him a football star from insolvency. Was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1971 and passed away in 1983.
• Don Nehlen: The winningest coach in West Virginia history. A QB at Bowling Green, he got his first HC gig at his alma mater in 1968 and became known as the "Master of the Upset", beating teams like Purdue, Syracuse, and BYU. After a three-year stint as Michigan's QB coach, he was named as the HC for West Virginia in 1980. He massively updated the program's identity, introducing its first home and away uniforms, updating the logo to the modern "Flying WV", and taking the Mountaineers from a middling independent to a top 5 program that competed for the '88 championship and became a member of the Big East in 1991. He retired in 2000 and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2005.
• Robert Neyland: HC of Tennessee from 1926-34, 1936-40, and 1946-52, with the interruptions being for military service in the Panama Canal Zone and WWII; in 1946, he retired from military service as a brigadier general. During his time at Tennessee, he never had a losing season and won four national championships in '38, '40, '50, and '51. He was also an innovator of the game of football, being credited as the first coach to use a sideline phone and game film to study opponents. He also wrote the seven Game Maxims that are still recited by Tennessee players before every game and have been used by many football coaches as a teaching method. Finally, he personally designed Tennessee's home stadium, which was renamed in his honor prior to his death in 1962.
• Ken Niumatalolo: The HC of Navy from 2007–22 and the winningest in its long history, having taken over for the last game of the 2007 season after his predecessor was hired away. Prior to coaching, Niumatalolo, a kamaʻāina^*Hawaii-born of Samoan origin, was a successful QB at Hawaii who led the school to its first bowl game in 1989. His hiring at Navy made him the first collegiate HC of Samoan descent on any level and only the second person of Polynesian descent to coach in FBS. He led the Midshipmen to three 10-win seasons, six bowl wins, and 11 wins over Army, but would be shown the door after consecutive 4–8 seasons. After a year as an assistant at UCLA, he was hired as HC at San Jose State. Also notable as one of the six featured individuals in the LDS documentary Meet the Mormons.
• Homer Norton: The last HC to claim a national title at Texas A&M, reviving its prospects after the departure of Dana X. Bible and taking them on an undefeated run for the championship in 1939. His whole tenure at A&M (1934-47) didn't quite measure up to the success of that year, but he landed a spot in the Hall of Fame thanks in part to a much more dominant run at the (currently defunt) Centenary program (1919-21, 1926-33). He died of a heart attack in 1965.
• Tom Nugent: An innovative coaching mind, he began his coaching career with VMI in 1949. During his four seasons, he finished with a winning record and developed the I-formation that became more popular after Frank Leahy and John McKay used it to great success. From 1953-58, was the HC of Florida State, taking the young program to their first bowl appearances and leaving with a winning record. Finished out his coaching career with Maryland, putting up a winning record from 1959-65. His 1961 team became the first to put players' names on the backs of their jerseys and in 1962, he and Lee Corso successfully integrated the program. He passed from congestive heart failure in 2006.
• Bennie Oosterbaan: Coached Michigan from 1948-58 after previously serving as the HC of the school's basketball team (1938-46) and, before that, playing as an end from 1925-27 under Fielding H. Yost (see below), whose coaching style he devoutly imitated. This paid off, as he became the first top-level HC to win a national championship in his first season as a head coach (building off the momentum of predecessor Fritz Crisler, above) and made the Hall of Fame. His #47 is retired by the school; he passed away in 1990.
• Ed Orgeron: A longtime assistant coach through the '80s and '90s whose position on successful teams in Miami (FL) and USC helped him to become HC at Ole Miss from 2005-07. After that stint proved fairly disastrous, he eventually returned to USC, where he briefly served as an interim HC in 2013 after Lane Kiffin's firing. "Coach O" was named HC of LSU in 2015, and his return to his home state was met with general success that peaked with the school's national title win in 2019. However, the program's performance plummeted during the following two seasons after a massive talent drain; this, coupled with numerous off-field behavioral issues, resulted in his firing during the 2021 season, though he stuck out the rest of the regular season. Orgeron is likely most recognizable for his very guttural Cajun accent.
• Tom Osborne: After succeeding the aforementioned Bob Devaney in 1973, he took Nebraska to even greater heights. In his 25 years as HC of the Cornhuskers, Osborne won three national championships, finished in the AP Top 15 24 times, and never posted fewer than nine wins in a season; his career win percentage of .836 (255-49-3) is the greatest for any HC of a major school to win over 200 games. Well known for his I-formation option offense which emphasized a powerful rushing attack and mobile quarterbacks, his Nebraska teams frequently led the NCAA in rushing. Osborne retired from coaching in 1997 and a few years later went into politics, winning election to the U.S. House in 2000 and serving three terms. His political career ended with an unsuccessful run for governor of Nebraska, not making it out of the 2006 Republican primary. The next year, he returned to Lincoln as the Huskers' athletic director, overseeing the school's move from the Big 12 to the Big Ten during his tenure before retiring in 2013.
• Bennie Owen: Best known as the HC of Oklahoma from 1905-26 after early career gigs at smaller schools in Kansas (Washburn and Bethany). During his tenure at OU (which began two years before Oklahoma was even a state), he turned them from a fledgling program with financial issues into a powerhouse (though it wouldn't become a national juggernaut until after WWII under Bud Wilkinson). In the 1910s, the state legislature stepped in and had him dismissed after he lost an arm in a hunting accident as well as believing his $3,500 salary was too expensive for an athletics coach; he was reinstated at the behest of the university's president when he found out about it, and Owen didn't even learn about his dismissal until after he was "rehired". Oklahoma's playing surface was named in his honor, and some Sooner fans still incorrectly refer to the stadium as a whole as Owen Field. Was inducted into the Hall of Fame's inaugural class in 1951 and passed away in 1970.
• Jim Owens: Coach who led Washington to their first claimed national championship. A former player at Oklahoma, he later succeeded his college teammate Darrell Royal as HC at Washington in 1957. During his tenure there, he led the Huskies to a share of the 1960 national title and two Rose Bowl victories. After that peak, his teams slid into mediocrity, and he faced allegations of racism for his treatment of black players before he retired after 1974. He was later inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1982 and apologized for his actions as part of a statue dedication in 2003 before passing in 2009.
• Jack Pardee: One of the famed Junction Boys from the 1954 Texas A&M Aggies squad under Bear Bryant, he went on to a fairly lengthy playing and coaching career in the pros, including NFL HC stints in Chicago and Washington. After seeing success with the USFL's Houston Gamblers, he succeeded Bill Yeoman (see his entry on the Notorious Coaches) at Houston in 1987, enduring the brunt of the punishments handed down by the NCAA from the infractions the previous regime committed. He put up a respectable record for three seasons, including back-to-back 9-win seasons in 1988-89 bolstered by his "Run and Shoot" offense. In 1989, his squad was one of the most prolific offenses ever in college football, allowing Andre Ware to set 26 NCAA records en route to becoming the first black quarterback to win the Heisman; however, nobody got to see Houston play at home that season due to a NCAA ban on television appearances for that season. He then returned to the pros, jumping across town to coach the Oilers, and passed away in 2013.
• Ara Parseghian: The third member of the "Holy Trinity" of Notre Dame coaches (Knute Rockne and Frank Leahy being the other two). Began his coaching career at his alma mater of Miami (OH), succeeding Woody Hayes after he left to go coach at Ohio State. Over his five years at Miami, brought the school two MAC titles. In 1956, he took over a Northwestern team that was in dire straits and restored them to some respectability, including 4 straight wins over Notre Dame from 1959-62. The Notre Dame athletic department was impressed enough to hired him as their HC in 1963, despite Parseghian not being either Catholic or a Notre Dame alum. It didn't matter, because he quickly brought the Fighting Irish back to prominence, winning two national titles in 1966 and 1973. Retired after 1974 with his .836 winning percentage being the third highest in Notre Dame history. One of the first Armenian-Americans to gain national prominence (he was named after ancient Armenian folk hero Ara the Handsome), the popular, charismatic Parseghian was a natural for sportscasting, and immediately moved to the press box after retiring, working for ABC and CBS on their college football coverage. Inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1980 and died in 2017, just weeks after contracting an infection during a surgery to replace a hip.
• Joe Paterno: An institution at Penn State for over 60 years, arriving as an assistant in 1950 and becoming HC in 1966. "JoePa" won two national titles (1982, 1986), had five unbeaten seasons, won a record 24 bowl games (out of an also-record 37 appearances), amassed an FBS record of 409 career wins, was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2007 while still an active coach, and coached for an NCAA record 548 games (over 50 more than second place). However, his once-pristine image was badly tarnished in 2011 with the revelation that the school had covered up the sex crimes of former assistant Jerry Sandusky (see below) for more than a decade. He was fired during the season, died only two months later, and had all 111 wins between 1998 and his firing stricken from the record books by the NCAA. The wins were restored in 2015, again making him the winningest FBS coach, after it came out in court that the NCAA had broke its own rules in the Sandusky investigation. Paterno was portrayed by Al Pacino in a 2018 HBO film about the Sandusky investigation. In 2022, Paterno's image suffered another blow when a survivor of a 1978 sexual assault by suspended Nittany Lions player Todd Hodne (see the "Notorious Players" folder of the "Names to Know" page for more on him) told an ESPN interviewer that JoePa had called her in an attempt to intervene in her case.
• Gary Patterson: The winningest coach in TCU history over his 20-year tenure and the primary architect of the Horned Frogs' revival after decades as a bottom-feeder. Came to TCU as the DC of Dennis Franchione (see above), and when early success in resuscitating the long-suffering program helped his boss land the job at Alabama, was promoted to HC in 2001. Under his tenure, TCU moved from the C-USA to Mountain West and became a regular BCS Buster, including mounting an undefeated 2010 campaign that saw the school earn an unclaimed national title and seal a move to the Big 12, where it continued as a strong program. After a slide into mediocrity at the turn of the 2020s, he was let go in the middle of the 2021 season. He is currently serving as a special assistant to Texas Longhorns HC Steve Sarkisian.
• George Perles: After enjoying immense success as the architect of the Steelers' "Steel Curtain" defense 1972-82, he became HC for Michigan State in 1983. During his career, he led the Spartans to a winning record before being fired in 1994 after an NCAA investigation over tampering led to his last five wins being rescinded. In 1995, he and Ken Hoffman helped create the Motor City Bowl, and he later served a trustee for his alma mater from 2006-18 before passing in 2020.
• Chris Petersen: A highly winning HC with Boise State (2006-13) and Washington (2014-19). Petersen's first year saw the Broncos go undefeated and become the second BCS Buster, memorably defeating Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl off of the "Statue of Liberty" trick play. Boise State remained one of college football's winningest programs and posted another undefeated BCS Buster season in 2009. Petersen continued his success after making the leap to the Power Five, reviving a Washington program that had floundered for over a decade and even earning a CFP berth, but he unexpectedly retired after 2019 due to burnout from the stresses of the occupation.
• Gary Pinkel: A successful HC for both Toledo from 1991-2000 and Missouri from 2001-15, holding the record for victories at both schools. At Toledo, he inherited a team coached by his former Kent State teammate Nick Saban (see below) and guided them to a conference championship and a Las Vegas Bowl victory in 1995. At Missouri, he took over a program that had only seen two winning seasons since 1984 and led a massive turnaround, taking the cellar-dweller program to two Big 12 Championship game appearances in 2007-08 and took them to 10 bowl games, going 6-4. He also helped the school transition into the SEC, going to the SEC Championship game twice in 2013-14. He lost all four conference championship games. He retired in 2015 after a non-Hodgkin's lymphoma diagnosis, wanting to spend the remainder of his life with his family and friends, and entered the Hall of Fame in 2022.
• Tommy Prothro: A successful coach for Oregon State from 1955-64 and UCLA from 1965-70, posting a winning record at both. Guided the Beavers to their most successful run in school history, claiming three conference titles and a win in the Liberty Bowl. His stop at UCLA was less successful, as he made only one bowl game and was a vocal critic of the Pac-8 rules. He went into pro coaching and scouting with the Rams, Chargers, and Browns, seeing the Rams and Chargers teams he built go on to greater success under his successors. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1991 and died in 1995 after a cancer battle. He was known for carrying a mysterious briefcase while donning a fedora and wearing a suit and tie at his college stops.
• John Ralston: A very successful coach at Utah State (1959-62) and Stanford (1963-71). His tenure with Utah State was arguably the program's peak, and he steadily rebuilt a struggling Stanford program before making the leap to a middling NFL career. His collegiate career likely wouldn't be sufficient to earn him a spot on this list were it not for his unique status as one of a handful of figures to coach after being inducted into the College Hall of Fame; a year after his induction in 1992, he came out of his 10-Minute Retirement to coach at San Jose State for four seasons, doing terribly every year and tanking his win record below the .600 threshold normally required for induction. Ralston died in 2019.
• Bob Reade: Coach who guided D-III school Augustana (Illinois)^note There's also D-II Augustana (South Dakota), and confusingly, both schools have the same nickname (Vikings) and colors (blue and gold). Not to mention that both schools were founded in 1860, share a Lutheran affiliation, and were formally named Augustana College until the SD school became a "University" in 2015. to a remarkable run in The '80s, as the Vikings won four consecutive D-III championships (1983-86), becoming the first team on any level to win four consecutive national championships (eventually surpassed by North Dakota State winning five FCS titles in a row from 2011-15). During that stretch, the Vikings also put together a 37-game winning streak and a 60-game unbeaten streak (59 wins and a tie). Reade, who coached from 1979-94, retired with a winning percentage of .862, fourth all-time among coaches in any division with more than 10 seasons. He never had a losing season, and never lost more than 3 games in a season. Inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1998. He died in 2020.
• Lincoln Riley: Ascended to replace Bob Stoops as coach at Oklahoma in 2017 after several years as OC and continued the school's run of success. Seen as an offensive wunderkind, Riley's program produced back-to-back Heisman QBs in Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray and reached the CFP three years straight, though his teams also developed a reputation for poor defenses that ensured they never were able to advance to the championship. After a down year by Oklahoma's standards in 2021 that included a loss of the Bedlam rivalry game, Riley accepted the HC job at USC the day after issuing a Suspiciously Specific Denial of interest in the LSU opening.^note He interrupted a reporter's question about the LSU opening, before the letters "LSU" were even mentioned, to issue this denial. He quickly restored the Trojans' offensive reputation in his very first season at USC, producing his third Heisman QB in Caleb Williams, though continued defensive struggles have so far kept his program from leaping back to national contention.
• Eddie Robinson: Started up the football program at Grambling State, a historically black school in Louisiana, in 1941, and stayed for the next 57 seasons (not counting two years without a team during World War II). He won 17 conference titles and nine black college national titles and ended his career with 408 wins, at the time the most in college history at any level (now third behind Gagliardi and Paterno).^note The NCAA recognizes him as the winningest FCS coach, but most of his wins predated FCS (or I-AA) itself. See the note in Roy Kidd's entry above for more details. Two of the many national coach of the year awards bear his name—one for FBS and the other for Grambling's current level of FCS. He retired in 1997 and passed away in 2007.
• John Robinson: Best known for his two tenures at USC from 1976-82 and 1993-97. In his first tenure, he continued predecessor John McKay's (above) run of success and led the Trojans to a share of the 1978 national title. After spending 1983-91 as HC of the NFL's Los Angeles Rams (posting the longest tenure and most wins in franchise history), he returned to USC and briefly revived the school's prospects. He finished his coaching career at UNLV, only having one winning season from 1999-04. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2009 and currently is a senior consultant as LSU.
• Knute Rockne: A Norwegian immigrant raised in Chicago, Rockne was the main builder of Notre Dame's football tradition, first as a player (with Notre Dame's celebrated 1913 upset of Army centered on Rockne receiving passes from QB Gus Dorais), then leading the Fighting Irish to three national titles in his 13 seasons as HC (1918–30) and relentlessly publicizing Notre Dame football throughout the country. He also popularized the forward pass and is also famous for the "Win one for the Gipper" locker-room Rousing Speech. His winning percentage of .881 (105–12–5) is the highest in major-college history and second only to Kehres among those with at least 10 seasons as a head coach at any level, and it took more than 90 years for his 105 wins at Notre Dame to be surpassed (by Brian Kelly in 2021). Rockne's death in a plane crash in 1931 led to an outpouring of national grief comparable to the death of a U.S. president, with his funeral drawing tens of thousands and being broadcast on radio worldwide. The public reaction to his death was also credited with launching a safety revolution in commercial aviation. A popular biopic about his life, Knute Rockne, All American, starred character actor Pat O'Brien in the title role and featured a young Ronald Reagan as George Gipp, the subject of Rockne's speech (hence him gaining the "Gipper" nickname).
• Dick Romney: Coach at Utah Agricultural (now Utah State) for three decades (1919-48) while also serving as head basketball coach through most of that time. After his coaching career, spent a decade as commissioner of the Skyline conference and passed away in 1969. And yes, he is related to that Romney.^note The Romneys are a very large and influential family in Utah, and many of them have been involved in college football as players and coaches.
• Darrell K Royal: The most successful coach in Texas history. A QB/DB at Oklahoma from 1946-49 (he actually still holds the program record for INTs), he immediately entered coaching and never had a losing season as a HC. After a year in the CFL, his first HC stop at the college level was at Mississippi State from 1954-55, then with Washington in 1956, posting unspectacular records at both. He then became HC for Texas from 1957-76 and transformed the Longhorns into a national powerhouse. Royal won or shared 11 Southwest Conference titles and three national championships in 1963, 1969, and 1970 (going undefeated in the first two). He also oversaw the racial integration of Texas' program. In My All American, a film adaptation of the 1969 season, Royal was portrayed by Aaron Eckhart. Texas renamed their stadium in his honor in 1996; he passed away in 2012.
• Erskine "Erk" Russell: After a 16-year stint as the DC for Georgia from 1964-80, became the HC of Georgia Southern in 1982, taking over a program that had been dormant for over 40 years. Forced to start the program on a slim budget (and at club level; the team didn't gain full varsity status until 1984), the team had to wear their practice uniforms on gameday, used nothing more than a strip of tape on their helmets for decoration, and rode surplus school buses to their games. From 1982-89, he never posted a losing season and won three I-AA championships. He retired in 1989 and died from a stroke in 2006. The area surrounding the stadium and several other athletic facilities was renamed in his honor. Despite building a championship program from practically nothing, Erk has not been enshrined in the Hall of Fame due to its stringent requirement for head coaches to have ten seasons experience to even be considered for candidacy, and Erk only served as HC for eight.

S-Z

• Nick Saban: The colossus of college coaching in the 21st century, with the most national titles in college football history at seven. After several decades as an assistant at the college and pro levels, Saban turned around Toledo's program in his first and only year as its head coach in 1990. After serving as DC under Bill Belichick with the Cleveland Browns, Saban had a successful run at Michigan State (1995-99) before being hired by LSU, which he led to a national title in 2003. After two middling seasons with the Miami Dolphins from 2005-06, where he insisted he was not going to become coach at Alabama up to two weeks before he returned to college coaching at Alabama. Once there, he asserted himself as one of the greatest coaches in college history by returning the school to its past dominance and leading the Tide to six national titles ('09, '11, '12, '15, '17, '20) and runner-up in three more seasons ('16, '18, '21). As another testament to his coaching and recruiting acumen, his Alabama teams have featured four Heisman winners, the most of any coach at a single program since Frank Leahy. Fun fact: During Saban's first 14 seasons at Alabama, none of his former assistants had won a game against him as the opposing head coach. This streak reached 24 games before ending in 2021 with two such losses, including the national title game. At the time of his retirement after 2023, he held the highest career winning percentage among all active college coaches.
• Red Sanders: An innovative coach who originated the squib kick and the 4-4 defense. His first HC gig was at Vanderbilt from 1940-42 and 1946-48 (with the interruption being a military commitment in WWII), where he guided the Commodores to their first Top 20 ranking. From 1949-57, he was the HC for UCLA, where he found even more success and won a share of the 1954 national championship. Died in 1958 under suspicious circumstances and was posthumously inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1996. He is also the originator of the famous "Winning isn't every thing, it's the only thing" quote that is often misattributed to Vince Lombardi.
• Steve Sarkisian: The current coach of Texas. After initially gaining fame as a QB at BYU who led the nation in passer rating in 1996, "Sark" entered into coaching, serving as an assistant on the USC dynasty of the 2000s before being hired as HC at Washington in 2008. His HC career has largely failed to live up to his initial promise; after a decent stint with the Huskies, he was hired back to USC in 2014 to try to revive the program, only to be fired in the middle of his second season due to struggles with alcohol in the wake of his divorce, including showing up to practices intoxicated. After a few years as an OC with Alabama helped to improve his resume, Sark was hired as HC of Texas in 2021.
• Glenn "Bo" Schembechler: The coach of Michigan during the '70s and '80s, putting the program back on the map after the Audience-Alienating Era of the '50s and '60s. He played and later was an assistant coach under Woody Hayes (see above) at Miami (OH), before the two ended up at hated rival schools. Schembechler's first 10 years at Michigan coincided with Hayes' final 10 at Ohio State; in head-to-head meetings during this "Ten-Year War", Schembechler narrowly won out, compiling a 5-4-1 record against Hayes' Buckeyes. However, he was never able to win a national championship and struggled in bowl games in general (compiling a 5-12 bowl record, including 2-8 in the coveted Rose Bowl.) In 2021, 15 years after his passing, his legacy fell into serious question when hundreds of former patients of Michigan's team doctor, including many UM athletes as well as Schembechler's own stepson, came forward with allegations that the doctor had sexually abused them, with Schembechler accused of either ignoring reports or actively covering the abuse up.^note Said stepson recounted that when he told his stepfather about the doctor abusing him, he was hit so hard that he was knocked across the family kitchen. Additionally, one of Michigan's student trainers under said doctor was one Larry Nassar, who is currently serving effective life imprisonment for sexually abusing hundreds of female athletes while working for Michigan State and the US national gymnastics program. The number of individuals who came forward eventually exceeded 1,000, and UM ended up settling with the survivors for nearly $500 million.
• Francis Schmidt: A HC best known for his tenures at TCU (1929-33) and Ohio State (1934-40), although he had successful early career gigs at Tulsa from 1919-21 and Arkansas from 1922-28 as well as a less successful late career stint at Idaho from 1941-42. A quietly important figure in the sport's history, Schmidt was the first coach to really dig into offensive strategizing, with a vast playbook full of trick plays and audacious gambits, including using the forward pass as a way to move the ball rather than just for long yardage desperation plays, and expanding the role of the QB from mere signal-caller to ball-mover. The sports media used the term "razzle dazzle" to describe his offense. Sid Gillman, who began his career as a Schmidt assistant, credited him as an inspiration for the pass-based offense he introduced into pro football in The '50s. Schmidt's hiring at OSU was a watershed moment for the sport as an early example of a national coaching search; in that era, big-time coaches were almost always either alums of their school or had some other connection to their conference.^note Schmidt played for Nebraska, which is now a Big Ten member. Another Schmidt legacy was the spread of the idiom "Those fellows put their pants on one leg at a time, the same as everyone else", a regional Texas saying he used during a press conference in 1934 about his chances of beating Michigan, which became internationally famous. Schmidt won that game (and was the first Buckeye coach to leave Columbus with a winning record against the Wolverines), and ever since, every time Ohio State beats Michigan, the players receive a pants-shaped lapel pin. Passed away in 1944 and was posthumously inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1971.
• Howard Schnellenberger: HC for Miami (FL) (1979-83), Louisville (1985-94), Oklahoma (1995), and Florida Atlantic (2001-11), putting up a rather pedestrian 158-151-3 record in his storied Long Runner career (though it included a 6-0 bowl game record). After two decades in the college and pro ranks (including a brief stint as HC of the Baltimore Colts), he took a Miami program that was on the brink of either dropping down to Division I-AA or being eliminated altogether and rebuilt them into a powerhouse for the next two decades, including a national championship win in 1983, after which he left the school due to being promised near complete control in a Miami USFL franchise. That deal fell through, so he next returned to his childhood home of Louisville, whose football program also was facing elimination or demoting themselves to Division I-AA. He put up a weaker record there but memorably throttled Alabama in the 1991 Fiesta Bowl. A former Kentucky player, he was largely responsible for reestablishing its football rivalry with Louisville; his last season at U of L in 1994 saw the two schools play one another for the first time in over seven decades. He quit the program due to Louisville wanting to join the newly created C-USA. His brief stint at Oklahoma is one of the most polarizing ever, not just because he put up a 5-5-1 record, but because he ordered the destruction of several program files,^note They were saved without his knowledge. and infuriated fans by saying he would make "Sooner Nation" forget about the likes of Bud Wilkinson and Barry Switzer. He resurfaced as the first head coach for Florida Atlantic, where he built the program from the ground up as a Division I-AA independent that eventually moved into the Sun Belt. He put up a losing record there but was 2-0 in bowl games. Schnellenberger retired after 2011, and Florida Atlantic renamed the playing field of its stadium in his honor in 2014. Passed away in 2021. Like Erk Russell above, Schnellenberger has been snubbed for Hall of Fame induction despite his reputation as a program builder due to his lifetime winning record being .512, well below the .600 record requirement.
• Ben Schwartzwalder: The most acclaimed coach in Syracuse history. The former player from West Virginia coached the Orangemen for 24 seasons from 1949-73, putting up a 153-91-3 record while going 2-5 in bowl games and only having losing seasons in his first and final years. He led the racially integrated Orangemen to a national championship in 1959 after beating an all-white Texas team in the Cotton Bowl and coached Ernie Davis, the first black player to win the Heisman, in 1961. Syracuse's program produced several of the most acclaimed running backs in football history during his tenure, including Jim Brown, Larry Csonka, and Floyd Little. Retired in 1973, was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1982, and passed away in 1993. After his death, West Virginia and Syracuse agreed to play for a trophy named after him, although the series is currently on hiatus due to the teams being in different conferences. Portrayed by Dennis Quaid in the film The Express.
• Clark Shaughnessy: A key innovator who popularized the T formation and one of several to promote the forward pass during his long journeyman coaching career at Tulane (1915-20, 1922-26), Loyola (1927-32), Chicago (1933-39 - he replaced Amos Alonzo Stagg and was the school's final coach before the football program withdrew from the Big Ten), Stanford (1940-41), Maryland (1942, 1946), Pitt (1943-45), and Hawaii (1965). Despite rarely staying in one place long enough to truly cultivate a program, the "mad scientist" of college football (long before Mike Leach was born) helped change the course of football history when his T formation took Stanford's "Wow Boys" to an undefeated season and national title immediately after he took over what had been a one-win team the year prior. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1968 and died two years later.
• David Shaw: The winningest HC in Stanford history. He played WR for the school in the early '90s and then moved into coaching at both the college and pro levels. He returned to his alma mater as OC when Jim Harbaugh (see above) was hired and developed two Heisman finalists (RB Toby Gerhart and QB Andrew Luck) before taking over as HC following Harbaugh's departure to the pros in 2011. Under Shaw, the school made a program-record eight straight bowl appearances,^note Their previous longest streak was three. including three trips to the coveted Rose Bowl (winning two). He also currently serves as the head of the NCAA Rules Committee and masterminded the major overhaul of overtime rules in 2021.^ExplanationStarting in the third overtime, teams only get a single two-point conversion attempt. Shaw's stated goal was to lessen the number of plays run in OT. However, as the 9-OT Illinois-Penn State game demonstrated, this doesn't necessarily stop games from becoming freakishly elongated. However, Stanford's winning streak ended in 2019, in part due to the school's high academic standards making it difficult to attract transfers under the new system, and Shaw resigned after 2022.
• Ed Sherman: A coach at Muskingum from 1945-66, he went 141-43-7 and guided the team to 6 Ohio Athletic Conference^note the conference that Larry and Vince Kehres would dominate decades later titles. After he retired from coaching, he went into an administrative career with the NCAA. He was the head of the committee that created the current nationwide divisional structure (Division I, II, and III). Muskingum renamed their football field in his honor in 1986, and he became the first coach from a D-III school to be inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1996 before passing away in 2009.
• Jackie Sherrill: Something of a journeyman and a colorful character who left an impact at many schools. After playing for two national championship Alabama teams under Bear Bryant, Sherrill entered the coaching ranks, taking the HC gig at Washington State in 1976 before leaving the next year to replace Johnny Majors at Pitt. The Panthers remained very successful under Sherrill, producing Dan Marino and amassing three straight 11-win seasons, but fell short of claiming another national title. Sherrill left for Texas A&M in 1982 and helped to establish several traditions during his mostly successful tenure, but he resigned after 1988 when the program was saddled with NCAA sanctions. His next stop was the long-struggling Mississippi State, where he had more success than any coach had there in half a century. He retired after 2003 as the winningest coach in State history, though not without attracting plenty of controversy for again attracting NCAA sanctions (and for trying to inspire his team to beat Texas by taking them to see a bull get castrated... though the underdog Bulldogs did upset the Longhorns).
• R.C. Slocum: The winningest HC in Texas A&M history, leading the team from 1989-2002. His roots at A&M ran deep; he got his first assistant gig in 1972, shortly before the program recovered from nearly three decades of mediocrity, and served as the Aggies' DC from 1979-88 (save for spending '81 at USC). Slocum never had a losing season as HC and took the Aggies to an unbeaten 10-0-1 season in 1994... that hardly anyone saw, as the school was on a probation and TV ban for paying players.
• Kirby Smart: Despite having only been HC at his alma mater of Georgia since 2016, the longtime Alabama DC (2008-15) has led the Bulldogs to five SEC East titles, two SEC Championships, and back-to-back CFP Championships in 2021-22, quickly shaping the program into Alabama's equal in the SEC East.
• Andy Smith: A legendary HC responsible for the peak of Cal-Berkeley's football success. After stints at his alma mater Penn (1905-08) and Purdue (1913-15), Smith was recruited to head west in 1916 to coach Berkeley's football team, only recently revived after a decade hiatus. He soon became the first coach to find major success on the West Coast by tapping into the abundant athletic talent of the rapidly growing state; from 1920-24, his "Wonder Teams" lost no games and only tied four times, retroactively earning four straight national championships. Many of his innovations and trick plays (most notably lateraling the ball to the running back for a planned deep pass) endure today. He may have had an even greater impact on the history of the game had he not passed away in 1926 at just 42 years old; he was still an inaugural member of the Hall of Fame.
• Bill Snyder: A Long Runner HC for Kansas State, with two tenures going from 1989-2005 and 2009-18. Before he came to K-State, the program was arguably the worst in college football, boasting a woeful 293-510 (.365) record in 93 years of play, only reaching one bowl game in 1982, and having not won a game since 1986. Under his leadership, K-State turned around dramatically, becoming a regular contender for the Big 12 title, which they won in 2003, the school's first conference title since 1934. Two subsequent sub-.500 seasons led Snyder to retire after 2005. The day after his retirement, K-State renamed the stadium in his family's honor. After coming back in 2009, he joined an elite club of coaches to lead a team in a stadium named for him, coaching there for the next decade and being inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2015 while still active. He won 215 games between his two tenures, by far the most wins of any HC in program history, as no other coach has more than 40.
• Steve Spurrier: A Heisman-winning QB at Florida in the '60s who returned as HC during the '90s and led the school to its first national title. Famous for his "Run and Gun" (sometimes "Fun 'n' Gun") offense^note where a receiver goes in motion before the play (the run) and adjusts his route on the fly based on the defensive alignment, while the QB is lined up in the shotgun (the gun), he is one of a handful of figures in the Hall of Fame as both a player and coach and is also the only Heisman-winner to coach a Heisman-winning player (QB Danny Wuerffel, 1996). His time at Florida (1990-2001) was sandwiched between two other reasonably successful HC stints at Duke (1987-89) and South Carolina (2005-15). Like many college coaches, it's best not to bring up his time in the NFL, both as a player and as a coach. He also coached in the USFL and the AAF, leading the Orlando Apollos to an unofficial championship in the latter (the league folded midseason).
• Amos Alonzo Stagg: Another pioneer in college football. First, while a student at Yale, he was a member of Walter Camp's very first All-America team in 1889. He then went into coaching, compiling a 314–199–35 record at three schools: Springfield College (1890-91), the University of Chicago (for 41 seasons, 1892-1932, winning national titles in 1905 and 1913), and College of the Pacific (1933-46). Stagg was responsible, at least in part, for innovations such as the huddle, lateral pass, man in motion, varsity letters, uniform numbers, and, less well-known but very important, football played indoors.^Explanation While at Springfield, he scheduled a game against his alma mater Yale at Madison Square Garden in New York on December 13, 1890, a 16-10 win for Yale. Then in 1893 and 1894 Chicago became the first college team to play home games indoors, when he adopted a place called Tattersall's Riding Academy as the Maroons' home, using tree bark as a playing surface. In all those cases, the field had to be shrunk from regulation size to accommodate the facilities. An 1896 game against Michigan inside Chicago Coliseum was the first indoor game on a regulation sized field. He also invented some equipment, notably the tackling dummy. Even after being forced out at his last HC job at Pacific (at age 84), he still wasn't done with football—he served as top assistant to his son at Susquehanna, a small Pennsylvania school, for five seasons, and after that returned to Pacific's home city of Stockton, California to serve as kicking coach for six seasons at the local junior college until finally retiring at age 96 (he passed away at age 102 in 1965). He was a member of the inaugural class of the Hall of Fame in 1951 as both a player and coach, the only person to be inducted in both roles until the 1990s. The NCAA D-III championship game is named the Stagg Bowl in his honor. Springfield, Chicago, and Susquehanna have all named their home venues Stagg Field in his honor (Chicago has placed his name on two different stadiums; Pacific's stadium was also called Stagg Memorial Stadium, but they dropped football after the 1995 season and demolished it in 2014).
  • Stagg's accomplishments go far beyond football. He also lived to be an inaugural member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1959—the sport of basketball had been invented by Stagg's Springfield colleague James Naismith to help keep his football team in condition during the winter, plus Stagg played in the first public game of basketball in 1892, and was also responsible for fixing the number of players per side at five. In baseball, he invented the batting cage. Stagg also has a footnote in the history of the Atomic Age—in 1942, the first controlled nuclear chain reaction was created under the west stands of Chicago's abandoned football stadium, the original Stagg Field.
• Buddy Stephens: The HC of East Mississippi Community College, which he has turned into the powerhouse school of the NJCAA^note National Junior College Athletic Association while being a key figure in the first two seasons of Netflix's Last Chance U. Stephens has led the program to five NJCAA national championships (2011, 2013, 2014, 2017, 2018), seven division titles, has the highest winning percentage in NJCAA history (.878), and has coached a slew of future NFL talent who have typically failed out/been kicked out of their prior colleges. EMCC was infamously involved a brawl during the 2015 season against rival Mississippi Delta in the final game of the year which got them disqualified from the postseason despite being undefeated. Due to player suspensions from the brawl carrying into the next season, they also dropped their season opener, costing them a chance at the title for a second year in a row.
• Bob Stoops: The HC of Oklahoma from 1998-2016 who helped the program escape the stigma of the sanctions placed on it at the end of the Barry Switzer era and middling play under the previous regimes. He won the 2000 National Championship at OU and was also the only HC in the BCS era to ever win the Rose, Orange, Fiesta, and Sugar Bowls. He retired from Oklahoma in 2017 but quickly returned to coaching in the XFL for the Dallas Renegades. After that league folded mid-season due to COVID, he hopped over to broadcasting, returned to the sidelines in 2021 to coach Oklahoma's bowl game after Lincoln Riley's departure, and returned to the XFL after its revival, leading the now-Arlington Renegades to the league's only championship and staying with the team after the USFL-XFL merger. His brothers, Mark Stoops and Mike Stoops, also became head coaches; while Mike had a pretty mediocre run coaching Arizona from 2004-11, Mark has seen great success at Kentucky since 2013, building the long-struggling program back to consistent contention for the first time in decades, becoming that program's winningest HC by 2022 (though his critics point out that almost all of his SEC wins came against teams that finished with losing conference records).
• Kevin Sumlin: Head coach at several schools known for producing some of the most prolific passing performances in college football history. After a playing career as a linebacker at Purdue in the mid-'80s, he moved into coaching, including a stint at his alma mater under offensive innovator Joe Tiller (see below) before getting his first HC job at Houston in 2008. There, he developed QB Case Keenum, who set nearly every standing career NCAA passing record. He moved onto Texas A&M, becoming only the fourth black head coach in SEC history, and guided Johnny Manziel to become the first freshman to win the Heisman. Sumlin never suffered a losing season at A&M but fell to mediocrity after Manziel's departure and was fired in 2017. He was immediately hired by Arizona and seemed to have found his next QB star in Khalil Tate, but he struggled to a losing record in each of his seasons there, including 0-5 in the COVID-shortened 2020 season when he was fired following a 70-7 loss to arch-rival Arizona State. He later served as the head coach and GM of the USFL's Houston Gamblers.
• John "Jock" Sutherland: A player at Pitt from 1915-17, he got his first HC job at Lafayette in 191 and led them to a national championship in 1921. He then went back to Pittsburgh in 1924 to replace his coach and mentor, Pop Warner (see below). He led the program to a 111-20-12 record and had four Rose Bowl appearances (where he went 1-3). He led the school to four national championships in 1929, 1931, and 1936-37 before resigning after 1938 due to the school putting less emphasis on football. He went on to coaching in the NFL with the Brooklyn Dodgers from 1940-41 and the Pittsburgh Steelers from 1946-47. He died from a brain tumor in 1948 and was posthumously inducted in the Hall of Fame's inaugural class in 1951.
• Jim Sweeney: Amassed a 201–153–4 record in 32 total seasons, with stops at Montana State (1963-67), Washington State (1968-75), and Fresno State (1976-77, 1980-96). At Montana State, he convinced Jan Stenerud, a Norwegian member of the school's ski jumping team, to try his hand at placekicking, which led to Stenerud becoming the first pure placekicker to be elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Sweeney struggled at Washington State but managed to lead them to a Top 20 finish in 1972. But his main accomplishment was singlehandedly turning Fresno State into a regional power on the strength of a high-octane offense, guiding the Bulldogs to six PCAA/Big West titles, including an unbeaten 11-0-1 record in 1985. He helped the school get invited to join the Western Athletic Conference in 1992, where they tied for conference titles in their first two seasons. Fresno especially became known as a "QB factory" under Sweeney's guidance, with Jeff Tedford (mentioned below) and Trent Dilfer among the long line of standout QBs Sweeney coached. Sweeney died at age 83 in 2013.
• William "Dabo" Swinney^note Got his nickname as an infant when his older brother mispronounced "that boy".: The current HC of Clemson which, under his leadership, achieved national prominence and was one of the few programs to regularly compete with Alabama under Nick Saban during their 2010s peak. (Swinney played WR at Alabama in the early '90s.) Made the somewhat unprecedented leap from Clemson wide receivers coach straight to HC in 2008 after the previous coach resigned and kept the job after salvaging Clemson's season. To say this promotion worked out would be an understatement; he led the Tigers to national championships in 2016 and 2018, beating Alabama in both instances. Clemson has taken a step back in the early 2020s due in part to Swinney's stubborn refusal to utilize the transfer portal and the mass attrition of assistant coaches getting head coaching jobs elsewhere, most prominently long-time DC Brent Venables.
• Barry Switzer: Center and linebacker at Arkansas from 1956-60 who became the HC of Oklahoma from 1973-88. Known for his eccentric personality and leadership style, he nevertheless led the Sooners to a winning record and won three national titles in 1974, 1975, and 1985. His tenure with the Sooners was marred by controversy in his later seasons, including a player being arrested for soliciting cocaine to undercover FBI agents. He resigned in 1989 and later returned to coaching in the NFL with the Dallas Cowboys, where he became one of three coaches to win both a national championship and a Super Bowl.
• Jim Tatum: HC of Maryland for the peak of the program's success (1947-55), taking them to an undefeated '51 season (in which the Terps beat #1 ranked Tennessee in the Sugar Bowl) and claiming a national title in '53. However, the program collapsed after he left for his alma mater North Carolina, where he had actually been HC for a single season in 1942 before he enlisted in the Army during WWII.^note Between his Army service and Maryland, he also coached a single winning season at Oklahoma; when he left for the (then-better) Maryland job, the assistant coach that he had brought with him from the Army became HC instead. That coach? Bud Wilkinson. Tragically, Tatum died after just three seasons at UNC at just 46 years old, likely from typhus. He was posthumously inducted in the Hall of Fame in 1984.
• Jeff Tedford: HC for California and Fresno State who is best known as a "QB Guru". Originally a QB himself at Cerritos Community College and then Fresno State, he moved into a professional career in the CFL in the '80s before returning to his alma mater as QB coach then OC from 1992-97. He moved to Oregon as OC from '98-'01 and parlayed success in that role into the HC job at Cal from '02-'12. In this span, Tedford became the winningest coach in school history and had six of his quarterbacks selected in the 1st round of the NFL Draft. Unfortunately, the first five are all considered draft busts, but the sixth (and ironically last) was Aaron Rodgers. After being fired from Cal, he spent several seasons as an assistant in the NFL and CFL before returning to his alma mater as head coach. He seemed to be turning the program around but regressed in his final year before retiring due to health concerns. His retirement didn't stick, as he returned to Fresno State in 2022, though he had to take another leave of absence the following year.
• Eugene "Buddy" Teevens: HC most famous for his time at Dartmouth, where he played in the late '70s as a QB, winning Ivy League Player of the Year and an Ivy League championship in 1978. He is the winningest coach in Big Green history (117-101-2) and won five Ivy League championships during his two tenures ('87-'91 and '05-'23). He began his HC career at age 29 at Maine in 1985 (one of the youngest head coaches in modern D-I history), then had much less successful stops on the FBS level at Tulane and Stanford after his first Dartmouth stint, though he was widely regarded for his professionalism and class—he even appeared at the Stanford press conference announcing his firing! He was a notable leader in the push for player safety at all levels of football, becoming the first major college head coach to ban tackling in practice in 2011, then helping to develop safer robotic tackling dummies that have since become widespread. He has also been a pioneer in hiring female coaches, two of whom ultimately went on to the NFL. Sadly, he was badly injured in a bicycle accident in March 2023 and passed away in September that year.
• Frank Thomas: Successful coach at Alabama. Played QB for Knute Rockne (see above) at Notre Dame and got his first HC gig in 1925 at Chattanooga, guiding the Mocs to 3 SIAA titles in his four-season tenure. In 1931, he became the HC for Alabama, succeeding Wallace Wade (see below), and became the AD in 1940. During his tenure at Alabama, he put up a record of 115-24-7 (.812) and won two national championships. His win percentage and total currently rank third in Alabama history, behind Nick Saban and his former player Bear Bryant (see both above). He retired from coaching in 1946 due to heart and lung disease and being too physically weak to care for his mentally ill sister, although he remained AD until 1952. Was inducted in the Hall of Fame's inaugural class in 1951 and passed away in 1954.
• Joe Tiller: The most profilic coach in Purdue history who began his career at Wyoming with his innovative spread offense. During his tenure there from 1991-96, he put up a winning record and guided the Cowboys to a berth in the inaugural WAC Championship game in 1996 and despite winning 10 games and being ranked, they were controversially left out of a bowl game. After his success at Wyoming, he was hired by Purdue and managed to turn a team that had five winning seasons in the previous 18 and five bowl appearances prior to his arrival into a consistent winner, including their first Big 10 title in 33 years. In the process, he became the first HC to use a spread offense in the historically "three yards and a cloud of dust" Big Ten, setting numerous conference passing records with Drew Brees at QB (since surpassed). He retired in 2008 and passed away in 2017.
• Tommy Tuberville: A successful coach before he became the current U.S. Senator for Alabama. Began his HC career with Ole Miss in 1995. His first two seasons were marred by NCAA sanctions, barring postseason play and TV games, but he soon righted the ship. After saying he wouldn't leave Ole Miss unless he was "carried out in a pine box", he left to go coach at fellow SEC school Auburn, where he had his greatest run of success. At Auburn, his teams made a bowl game every season from 2000-07, including finishing #2 in the 2004 BCS rankings and enjoying a 6-game winning streak over Alabama in the Iron Bowl rivalry. His run of success came crashing down in 2008, as the team finished 5-7, including a miserable shutout loss to Alabama to end the season. He resigned and spent the next season working as a broadcaster for ESPN before replacing Mike Leach at Texas Tech, which he infamously departed during a recruiting dinner in 2012 to go coach at Cincinnati. His first seasons in Cincy saw general success, but the program lost all its bowl games and collapsed in his fourth and final season before he retired from coaching. Tuberville moved back to Alabama, riding the endorsement of Donald Trump and his enduring football popularity to win the open Senate seat despite a lack of political experience.
• Johnny Vaught: The most successful coach in Ole Miss history who coached the Rebels for 25 seasons. A former lineman at TCU (1930–32), his run from 1947-70 saw Ole Miss earn their only SEC titles and three national championships to boot. He retired after a heart attack during the 1970 season, only to come back for One Last Job to finish the 1973 season after the program sharply receded in his absence. His name was added to Ole Miss's stadium in 1982, and he passed away in 2006.
• Wallace Wade: The HC of Alabama from 1923-30, responsible for leading the Tide to their first three national titles in 1925, 1926, and 1930. From 1927-29, his Alabama teams disappointed, resulting in him resigning after 1930. He then became the coach of Duke to the surprise of many, as Duke didn't have a prestigious football program. He held the Duke job from 1931-41 and 1946-50, with the gap being for his military service in WWII. He coached what was Duke's greatest run of success to that point, as the school had never been to a bowl game, although he lost all the bowls he led them to, including a hard-fought loss in the 1942 Rose Bowl on Duke's home field.^note The game was held at Duke's stadium, as the Pearl Harbor attack had been a few weeks prior and the US military was afraid of an enemy attack striking the Rose Bowl with 90,000+ in attendance.. After his retirement from Duke, he became the commissioner of the Southern Conference until 1960. Duke renamed the football stadium in his honor in 1967, and he enjoyed a long retirement, passing away at age 94 in 1986.
• Lynn "Pappy" Waldorf: A well-traveled Hall of Famer who got his first HC and AD job at Oklahoma A&M (1929-33) at 26 years old, bringing the program its longest run of success to that point, though the school was forced to let him go due to financial difficulties. After a year at Kansas State, he had a lengthy tenure at Northwestern (1935-46) before being offered a gig at California, which he immediately restored to prominence after years of underperformance. Unfortunately, his success gradually declined over the next decade, in part due to due punitive measures from the NCAA for recruiting violations that led Cal to deemphasize its football program. He was pushed out after 1957, entered into pro scouting, and passed away in 1981.
• Murray Warmath: After an early gig at Mississippi State from 1952-53, the former Tennessee player took over at Minnesota in 1954. During his tenure, led the Gophers to their last national title in 1960 and two shared conference titles before leaving in 1971. He was also instrumental in integrating Minnesota and helped eliminate the negative perception the university endured after the death of Iowa State player Jack Trice. He passed away in 2011.
• Glen "Pop" Warner: An innovative coach at eight different schools^note Georgia (1895-96), Iowa State (1895-99), Cornell (1897-98, 1904-06), Carlisle (1899-1903, 1907-14), Pittsburgh (1915-23), Stanford (1924-32), Temple (1933-38), San Jose State (1938, technically as an associate) for over 40 years from 1895 to 1939, winning four national championships (three in Pittsburgh in 1915-16 and 1918 and one in Stanford in 1926). Among his many inventions are the three-point stance (making him a quasi-Trope Maker), the single and double wing formations that are the precursors of the modern game's pistol and shotgun, and body blocking (as opposed to shoulders). He is most notable for his time with the legendary Carlisle Indian School, the most successful defunct program in NCAA history which competed with the elite programs of the Ivy League, where he coached College and Pro Hall of Famer Jim Thorpe. He retired as the winningest coach in college football history with 319 wins (still ranking in the top 10)^note though it wasn't until 1993 that it was established that Warner had 319 wins. Amos Alonzo Stagg had long been regarded as the win leader with 314 wins, and Warner in second place at 313, but a Warner biographer dug up 6 additional victories from early in his career and the NCAA gave him credit for them and passed away in 1954. Today, he is most famous for founding the Pop Warner Little Scholars, now simply known as Pop Warner Football, the largest organization in the US for youth football.
• George Welsh: The biggest name in Virginia football in the modern era. After a serviceable run as HC at Navy, Welsh got the HC job in Virginia in 1982. The program had only three winning seasons in the past three decades; they only dipped under .500 twice in his 19 seasons at the school, going 134-86-3 overall and 5-8 in bowl games before he retired due to poor health after 2000. He died in 2019.
• Kyle Whittingham: The current HC of Utah and the winningest coach in Utah history, having held the job since the departure of Urban Meyer in 2005 after a decade as an assistant at the school. A star linebacker at BYU at the same time Jim McMahon was setting records on the offensive side of the ball (and Andy Reid was guarding him on the O-line) and part of a deep BYU football legacy (his father was a longtime assistant to LaVell Edwards and two of his brothers also played for the Cougars), Whittingham moved to their fierce rival Utah as an AC in 1994, and was convinced by Meyer to stick around even though he was one of the candidates the Utes turned down in favor of Meyer in 2002. Whittingham kept the program a BCS Buster in Meyer's absence, leading them to an undefeated 2008 season and an unclaimed national title. This success helped the Utes make the jump to the Pac-12 a few seasons later and steadily built the program into a regular conference champion.
• Bud Wilkinson: While Bennie Owen brought Oklahoma its first taste of success, Wilkinson truly launched the Sooners to national prominence. After helping lead Minnesota to three straight national titles as a QB in the 1930s, he became a college assistant in 1938 and became OU's HC/AD in 1947. Wilkinson immediately led the Sooners to the Big Six title—the first of 13 straight titles in the conference that was known as the Big Eight by the time he retired from coaching in 1963 (he stayed on as AD for one more year). In his second season, the Sooners started a 31-game winning streak that included their first national title in 1950. That proved to be just the prelude to a record 47-game winning streak from 1954–57, including two more national titles in 1955-56. OU went unbeaten in conference play (with two ties) until 1959. Left Oklahoma with a 145–29–4 record. Dabbled in politics, unsuccessfully running for a US Senate seat in 1964. Joined ABC as its lead college football color commentator in 1965, later returned to coaching in 1978 as HC of the NFL's St. Louis Cardinals but was fired during the 1979 season and returned to broadcasting. Was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1969 and died in 1994.
• Henry L. Williams: The first salaried coach at Minnesota, where he served for 22 seasons (1900-21). Played for Walter Camp at Yale and developed the "Minnesota shift" that helped the Gophers go undefeated for 35 straight games and win a national title in 1904. Still the winningest coach in school history (both in total wins and percentage) and a charter Hall of Famer. Was also a medical doctor. Died in 1931.
• George Washington Woodruff: An extremely winning coach from the game's early years, serving a decade at Penn (1892-1901) before single seasons at Illinois (1903) and Carlisle (1905). His .846 win percentage remains the fourth highest ever at a major school, and he retroactively won three national championships with the Quakers. After coaching, he became a prominent Republican politician, briefly serving in Theodore Roosevelt's Cabinet and later being appointed Attorney General of Pennsylvania in the 1920s. Died in 1934.
• Warren B. Woodson: A well-traveled Hall of Fame coach most well known for being the most successful HC in New Mexico State history, with two bowl wins, a winning record, and an undefeated 1960 season during his tenure (1958-67); since then, the Aggies have had exactly five winning seasons. Prior to NMSU, he had winning runs at Arkansas State Teachers (now Central Arkansas, 1935-40), Hardin-Simmons (1941-51), and Arizona (1952-56). Died in 1998.
• Bowden Wyatt: One of a handful of people in the Hall of Fame as both a player and coach, Wyatt was a successful end at Tennessee (1936-38) who entered coaching after serving as a lieutenant in the Navy during WWII. He started his career at Wyoming (1947-52), taking a program that had three winning seasons in the prior four decades to an undefeated record by his fourth season. After a brief stint at Arkansas (1953-54), he served a solid eight-year stretch at his alma mater. He died of pneumonia in 1969 at just 51 years old.
• Fielding H. Yost: A charter member of the Hall of Fame who set up Michigan for decades of football success. Played at West Virginia (and a single game at Lafayette) from 1894-96 before one-year stints at Ohio Wesleyan, Nebraska, Kansas, and Stanford (and one game at San Jose State) before landing at Michigan in 1901, where he went unbeaten through his first 56 games. During his Long Runner tenure (1901-23 and again from 1925-26), Yost's Wolverines posted a 165-29-10 record and won ten Western and Big Ten conference titles and six national championships. He was a major innovator in the development of football as one of the parties responsible for creating what later became known as the Rose Bowl in 1902, creating the position of linebacker when his center (Germany Schulz) started playing off the line of scrimmage on defense, developing the hurry up offense, and even initiating the concept of coaching as a profession when Michigan started paying him as much as their professors. He stayed on as AD until 1940, only stepping down to convince Fritz Crisler (above) to come to the school; he passed away in 1946. Michigan's ice hockey arena, built during his tenure as AD, bears his name.
• Bob Zuppke: A native of Germany who moved to America with his family as a child, Zuppke was the head coach of Illinois for 29 seasons from 1913-41, responsible for four national championships. He is credited with introducing the concept of a huddle and the flea flicker, as well as the reintroduction of the I-Formation in 1914. He was also a landscape painter who had several exhibits devoted to his work. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame's inaugural class in 1951 and passed away in 1957. The field at Illinois' Memorial Stadium is named in his honor.

Notorious Coaches

• Gary Barnett: A coach at Northwestern (1992-98) and Colorado (1999-2005) who contributed to the latter program's fall from grace. Barnett made a tremendous splash on the college football scene when he helped to turn Northwestern around from one of the absolute worst programs in the nation into a Rose Bowl contender in 1995. Despite collecting most of the Coach of the Year awards for that season, Northwestern's performance fell back off fairly soon after. His next coaching stop in Colorado saw more sustained on-field success. Off the field, however, his tenure was dogged by controversies. These included recruiting violations, behavior concerns, and—perhaps most troubling—his dismissal of former kicker Katie Hnida's testimony of being sexually assaulted by a Colorado teammate. Barnett was suspended by the school for his comments about Hnida, and he was later forced to resign shortly before the school incurred multiple NCAA penalties that contributed to the program enduring a full decade of losing seasons.
• Art Briles: One of the most successful high school head coaches in Texas during the '90s before moving into the college ranks, first as the HC of Houston (2003-07) and later Baylor (2008-15), which he took from Big 12 bottom-feeder into a perennial contender with one of the top offenses in the NCAA. However, both the program and Briles' NCAA coaching career imploded when it was revealed that Briles conspired with local police and university officials to cover up allegations of rape and other sexual assaults by players on his team. After failing to land a job in the CFL and spending a season in the Italian Federation of American Football, Briles returned to the high school coaching ranks. He had been announced as the new OC at the FCS HBCU Grambling State in 2022, but after huge criticism from media, alums, and fans^note notably, Doug Williams, a former Grambling and NFL QB and also a former Grambling HC, said that Eddie Robinson was "turning over in his grave" over the hire he decided not to take the job.
• Thurmon "Bobby" Collins: The HC at SMU when the school received the NCAA "death penalty" in 1987. After a number of recruiting violations dating back to the 1970s, it was revealed that SMU recruits were being paid thousands of dollars out of a "slush fund" provided by a booster in order to get them to play at the school. Collins was not directly penalized by the NCAA but still never returned to coaching in college football in any capacity before passing away in 2021.
• Paul "Butch" Davis: Hired as HC of Miami (FL) in 1995 following two Super Bowl wins as the DC of the Dallas Cowboys, Davis continued the Hurricanes' success in spite of heavy sanctions. He made the leap to the NFL with the Cleveland Browns in 2001 as HC and GM; like all coaches since that franchise's rebirth, he largely struggled and was gone before four seasons. Davis returned to the college ranks in 2007 as HC at North Carolina, which is how he lands in this section; the school fired him after 2010 amid a scandal where it came out that multiple Tar Heel players had hired tutors to do their schoolwork, "attended" classes that barely existed, and committed a host of other academic violations. Davis returned to college football at FIU from 2017-21, where he publicly feuded with the administration before being fired after winning just one game in his last two seasons.
• Mike DuBose: Succeeded Gene Stallings (below) as coach of Alabama in 1997 after his predecessor incurred a host of NCAA probations. DuBose opened his coaching tenure at his alma mater with a rare losing season but built the program back up to the top of the SEC in two years... only for the team to totally collapse in 2000, posting a 3-8 record that ranked as the worst since Bear Bryant arrived in Tuscaloosa over four decades prior. This alone would have been enough to get him fired, but DuBose also racked up a whole new list of NCAA violations and punishments on his way out that extended Bama's worst Audience-Alienating Era (see Dennis Franchione below).
• D.J. Durkin: Head coach at Maryland from 2016-17 who was fired following the death of o-lineman Jordan McNair from heat stroke suffered during a summer practice, resulting in an investigation into a toxic program culture. Despite being fired due to heavy protests, has remained an assistant coach and is currently the DC at Texas A&M.
• Tommy Elrod: A player and later assistant coach for Wake Forest in the '90s/'00s who became the school's radio broadcast analyst in 2014 after new HC Dave Clawson chose not to retain him as an assistant. He was at the center of what came to be known as the "Wakey Leaks" scandal when, after observing the team's practices, sold gameplan information to Wake's opponents including Louisville, Virginia Tech, and Army. Each of the schools fined/suspended their staff members who accepted the information (most notably Virginia Tech's Shane Beamer, son of then-head coach Frank Beamer) while Elrod was fired. Ironically, the scandal was arguably the catalyst for Wake's later success—Clawson's OC Warren Ruggiero responded by devising the "slow mesh" offense that powered the Deacons to said run.
• Pat Fitzgerald: All-American LB for Northwestern and a key piece of the Wildcat team that broke a 48-year bowl drought in their Cinderella 1995 Big Ten champion season. The first player to win the Bronko Nagurski Award twice, but still went undrafted and entered into coaching. Became his alma mater's HC in 2006 at just 31 years old after the death of his predecessor, broke their 65-year bowl win drought, and became the winningest coach in school history. However, his tenure came to an end in 2023 when allegations of severe player hazing within the program were exposed following a one-win season.
• Dennis Franchione: One of the most-traveled coaches in college history, having coached at seven different schools at every level except D-III—Southwestern College of Kansas (NAIA), Pittsburg State (D-II), Southwest Texas State/Texas State (at both the FCS and FBS levels), and New Mexico, TCU, Alabama, and Texas A&M (FBS). Franchione is credited with turning around the New Mexico program from 1992-97 and igniting the resurgence of TCU football from 1998-2000, but his tenures at the big-time level were disappointing and filled with controversy. Hired to clean up an Alabama program on probation in 2001, he refused a contract extension to take the Texas A&M job in 2003, where he endured a 2007 scandal when it was discovered that he was sending a private e-mail newsletter to team boosters willing to fork out $1,200 a year for a subscription. This contributed to his resignation at the end of the season. He retired from coaching for good after 2015.
• Hugh Freeze: The current HC at Auburn most (in)famous for his time at Ole Miss from 2012-16. After early career success as an offensive innovator at Lambuth (a Tennessee NAIA school that has since closed) and Arkansas State, he was hired by Ole Miss and led the program to a bowl appearance in each of his first four years with the school. However, after posting his first losing season in 2016, an NCAA investigation found that Freeze and his staff had committed a litany of recruiting and benefit violations, including having his assistants outright paying players in cash. Freeze initially survived the controversy, passing the blame onto his assistants and his predecessor, Houston Nutt. Nutt sued the school to clear his name. As part of discovery for the lawsuit, Freeze's school-issued cell phone records were turned over, which revealed that he was actively attempting to smear Nutt (and had also frequently called an escort service with the school's property). Freeze resigned, the NCAA vacated 27 of his wins with the school, and Nutt's suit was settled with Ole Miss putting most of the blame on Freeze. Controversially, Freeze was hired by Liberty in 2019 despite protests over his past conduct violating the conservative evangelical Christian school's honor code. Freeze successfully raised the program's ceiling and landed the Auburn job in 2023.
• Todd Graham: HC whose career started with a bang in 2006, leading Rice to its first bowl appearance in 45 years. He left the Owls after that one season, spending four years at Tulsa and one at Pittsburgh before taking the Arizona State job starting in 2012. He guided the Sun Devils to the 2013 Pac-12 championship game but failed to build on that success and was let go after 2017. In 2020, he was hired to replace Nick Rolovich (below) at Hawaii. While he compiled a decent record in Honolulu, things quickly entered meltdown mode for Graham at the end of 2021, with several current and former players accusing him of Drill Sergeant Nasty levels of verbal abuse. 14 Hawaii players eventually left the team, including Graham's own son. Things got so bad that the Hawaii State Senate held a hearing to investigate Graham, where players and their families made lots of specific allegations about Graham's Hair-Trigger Temper, including his calling ukuleles "fucking annoying" and slurring Hawaii as a "third world country" because a vending machine didn't have Dr Pepper. Graham resigned soon after.
• Michael Haywood: Coached at Miami (OH) from 2009-10, going 1-11 in his first and 9-4 in his second season. He rode the success of the latter season to be hired for a HC job at Pittsburgh in 2010. Before he could begin his coaching career at Pitt, he was arrested for felony domestic violence and fired the next day; his 16-day tenure as a HC is the second shortest ever (see George O'Leary below). After the Pitt fiasco, he served as HC for Texas Southern from 2016-18, putting up abysmal numbers.
• Mark Hudspeth: Once considered a rising talent after successful HC tenures at North Alabama (then D-II, now FCS) from 2002-08 and at Louisiana-Lafayette^note now called Louisiana from 2011-17, his star dimmed when revelations came forward of violations involving an assistant, causing parts of the 2011-14 seasons to be vacated. In 2019, he was hired to be HC of Austin Peay and seemed to right the ship, as he led the program to its first 11-win season, first appearance in the FCS playoffs, and first conference championship in 42 years. However, he was suspended by the program in 2020 for conduct unbecoming of his position and subsequently resigned, though the university has never explained exactly what he did wrong, and Hudspeth insists that he left on his volition to "spend more time with my family." He is currently coaching high school football in Alabama.
• Rich Johanningmeier: A player and later HC at Southwest Missouri State^note now just Missouri State, he achieved notoriety by becoming an investigator for the NCAA. During his tenure as an investigator, he became known for underhanded tactics that later resulted in multi-million dollar lawsuits being filed against the NCAA, most notably in 2000 by former Alabama coaches who discovered shady dealings between him and Tennessee's Phillip Fulmer, as well as a 2003 investigation into Mississippi State that led to him being sued by HC, Jackie Sherrill (see above), who alleged Johanningmeier and the NCAA were acting on shady tips from an Ole Miss booster. The former lawsuit cleared the plaintiffs of wrongdoing in 2005 but effectively ended their careers, and the latter was settled out of court in 2019, long after Sherrill's career and reputation were irreparably damaged.
• Mark Mangino: HC of Kansas from 2002–09, his tenure was highlighted by a 2007 season that saw his long underperforming program claim a share of the Big 12 North and win the Orange Bowl against Virginia Tech. However, his career was marred by controversy, as he drew a fine for criticizing Big 12 officials after his team lost a matchup versus Texas, saying the game was rigged. But what ended his tenure at Kansas (and ultimately his head coaching career) was a combination of the NCAA punishing Kansas for recruiting violations, his belittling of players to the point they threatened to transfer, and a collection of unpaid parking tickets on campus (and his subsequent abuse of the school's staff for issuing them).
• Les Miles: Famous for his time at Oklahoma State (2001-04) and LSU (2005-16), where he won a national title in '07. His reputation was tarnished somewhat following the the rise of Nick Saban at conference (and division) rival Alabama. Miles was shown the door during the 2016 season after going just 3-7 against Saban, including an ugly shutout loss in the first ever all-SEC national championship game in 2012, combined with a general decline in the LSU program. Kansas, arguably the football Butt-Monkey of the Power Five conferences, hired him in 2019, but he wasn't able to revive the Jayhawks, going 3–9 in his first season and 0–9 in the COVID-shortened 2020 season. After that season, numerous reports came out that Miles had a long record of inappropriate behavior with female students while at LSU (with LSU's AD having recommended in 2013 that he be fired over it). Another report detailed systemic failures by LSU to report and deal with sexual misconduct and abuse by players during Miles' tenure and that the president that LSU had hired in 2013 knew about the allegations. Miles was let go shortly thereafter, with Kansas' AD (an old personal friend)^*who had previously been the Arkansas AD who fired Bobby Petrino (also below) after Petrino's extramarital escapades became public resigning a couple of days later. Said former LSU president, who had moved on to become Oregon State's, resigned from that post under pressure. Miles is also known for his unusual habit of chewing on grass from the playing field, one of many behaviors that earned him the nickname "The Mad Hatter".
• Gary Moeller: Longtime assistant coach at Miami (OH) and Michigan under Bo Schembechler from 1967-76 and again from 1980-90, the interruption being a forgettable HC gig at Illinois. He occasionally filled in for Schembechler when he experienced health issues and took over as HC after he retired in 1990. Moeller led the Wolverines to a 4-1 bowl record and either a share of or outright winning the Big Ten in his first three seasons. His tenure came to an abrupt end after a bizarre drunken incident at a restaurant forced him to resign in 1995. He spent the remainder of his coaching career in the NFL, including a brief stint as the Detroit Lions interim HC in 2000 where he went 4-3 and just missed out on the playoffs. After leaving his last assistant's gig in 2003, Moeller never coached again until his passing in 2022.
• Hal Mumme^note Last name pronounced "mummy": Maverick HC with a long career and a very checkered legacy, but still considered an important figure in the modern game as the inventor of the Air Raid offense. A receiver at Tarleton in his college playing days, he perfected his record-setting pass offense on the NAIA (Iowa Wesleyan) and D-II (Valdosta State) levels, then made the unlikely leap to the SEC when Kentucky hired him as HC in 1997. Despite relative success, he resigned in early 2001 amid an extensive NCAA investigation that found dozens of recruiting violations, including player payments and academic fraud, as Kentucky was hit with a postseason ban and scholarship reductions. After restarting the program at FCS Southeastern Louisiana, Mumme returned to the FBS ranks at New Mexico State in 2004. While he managed to squeeze out some decent play from the school's traditionally dreary football program, NMSU ended up getting sued by four Muslim players who alleged religious discrimination on Mumme's part, resulting in a financial settlement. After NMSU fired Mumme in 2008, he went back to the small college level with stints at D-III schools McMurry and Belhaven. He's bounced around various assistant roles since then, finishing his college HC career with a mediocre 142-152-1 mark. Despite that, he was the subject of an acclaimed biography (S.C. Gwynne's The Perfect Pass), and Mumme protégés like Mike Leach, Guy Morriss, and Dana Holgorsen enjoyed success with the Air Raid system.
• George O'Leary: A HC for 20 seasons at both Georgia Tech (1995-2001) and Central Florida (2004-15) where he was considered a strong program builder. His notoriety, however, comes from a five-day stint at Notre Dame in 2001 between his stops at those schools. A media investigation found discrepancies on O'Leary's resume after he was hired, including O'Leary claiming that he was a three-time letterman at New Hampshire (he never even saw the field) and that he received a master's degree from "NYU-Stony Brook University", a non-existent institution named after two separate schools over 50 miles apart. (He had taken only two courses at Stony Brook and never graduated.) The incident was incredibly embarrassing for Notre Dame, while O'Leary detoured for several seasons as a NFL assistant before landing the UCF job.
• Charley Pell: Best known for his tenure at Florida from 1979-84 after a successful early career gig at Jacksonville State from 1969-73 and a mildly successful tenure at Clemson from 1977-78. He led a massive turnaround for Florida, going from 0-10-1 in his first season to 9-2-1 in 1983 with a win in the Gator Bowl. He was fired three games into the 1984 season after the NCAA accused Florida of 107 infractions. ^note The final number was found to be 59; it also came out that he was involved with other infractions involving player recruiting while at Clemson. Although his replacement led Florida to their first SEC championship that same season, they were banned from playing in the Sugar Bowl by the conference and the title was retroactively revoked. The violations committed under his tenure rippled throughout the rest of the '80s, as Florida was barred from appearing in bowls and on live TV for the 1985-86 seasons as well as received reduced scholarships. Pell is a source of controversy for fans of Florida, as some like him for rebuilding the program's finances and improving the athletic facilities but some hate him for the sanctions that harmed the team. He became an advocate for depression awareness after he tried to commit suicide in 1994 and passed away in 2001 from lung cancer.
• Bobby Petrino: The current OC at Arkansas, whose 35+ year career has spanned over a dozen different college and pro programs. Petrino originally had a reputation as an outstanding offensive mind, but to most fans developed a bigger reputation of being an opportunist who would abandon programs at the first sign of trouble or a better contract somewhere else, including abandoning his first head coaching job at Louisville for a job in the NFL right after signing a long-term contract. That turned out to be a disaster in more ways than one (more on that on his entry on the NFL's Notorious page), and he returned to college football as the HC of Arkansas. After his fourth year, Petrino got into a motorcycle accident. After giving a press conference in a neck brace and with his face still red from scrapes insisting he was the only one on the motorcycle, it came out that he did have a passenger: a mistress half his age whom he had given a job in the program. Petrino was fired and spent a year away from coaching while on an apology tour, got a job at Western Kentucky for one year, and returned to Louisville, where he again saw success with QB Lamar Jackson... only for the program to slump after Jackson's departure, with Petrino losing the locker room and getting fired again. He later moved to FCS Missouri State in 2020, seeing some success before returning to FBS as a coordinator in 2023. Echoing his itinerant history, he was first announced as the new OC at UNLV but left within weeks for the same position at Texas A&M. He lasted only a year, but amazingly, Petrino ended up back at the very same school from which he'd been fired for cause a decade-plus earlier, this time as OC.
• Mike Price: After a decent tenure at Weber State (1981-88), including the first I-AA playoff berth in school history in 1987, he led his alma mater Washington State from 1989-2002, bringing the program back to national prominence with QBs Drew Bledsoe and Ryan Leaf despite struggling to string together consecutive winning seasons. As soon as he finally did, the somewhat eccentric Price became the next member of a carousel of HCs brought in to try to rehab the Alabama program. However, he never coached a single game for the Tide, being fired during spring training after reports came out of him attending strip clubs and bringing back women to his hotel room. He eventually wound up as HC at UTEP, where he coached from 2004-12, putting up winning records only in his first two seasons before retiring (and coming back briefly as interim HC in 2017).
• Rich Rodriguez: A Long Runner hired as HC by Jacksonville State in 2022, where he's overseeing the Gamecocks' move from FCS to FBS. After serving as head coach at Salem (a small school one county south of his West Virginia hometown) for that program's final season in 1988, "Rich Rod" returned to his alma mater of West Virginia for a season as LB coach until becoming HC at another small WV school, Glenville State, in 1990. During his successful tenure there, he helped pioneer a run-oriented, no-huddle version of the spread offense. After he left Glenville State in 1997 to serve as OC under Tommy Bowden at Tulane and Clemson, he became HC at WVU in 2001 and had a great run of success. He agreed to coach for Michigan in 2008, but West Virginia sued when he failed to pay for his $4M buyout, with Michigan eventually having to cover part of the bill. The endeavor proved pointless for Michigan, as his tenure was abysmal with a 15-22 record, ending a 33-year bowl streak by going 3-9 in his first season, and losing their only bowl appearance in his third year. He also got the program into major trouble with the NCAA for the first time in its history, which led to his firing in 2010. He resurfaced in 2012 as HC for Arizona and found some success, only to be fired in 2018 after admitting to an extramarital affair with an administrative assistant who alleged she had been sexually harassed by him. Rodriguez bounced around the sidelines at a few schools before taking the JSU job.
• Nick Rolovich: A QB at Hawaii who bounced around the Arena Football League and NFL Europe for a few years after failed tryouts with the NFL. After a few years as an assistant, Rolovich was hired as Hawaii's HC in 2016, which he guided to some success by running the pass-happy Run-and-Shoot offense. In 2020, he replaced Mike Leach as HC at Washington State, which made sense given the wide-open offensive philosophies and offbeat personalities of both men. But he started courting controversy in 2021 when he became outspoken regarding his refusal to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. After the state of Washington set an October 2021 deadline for all state employees to get vaccinated unless they had a valid medical or religious exemption, Rolovich tried and failed to obtain a religious exemption.^note Rolovich is Catholic; while the church has announced ethical concerns with stem cells from aborted fetuses being used in vaccines, not all COVID vaccines use them. Once the deadline hit, Rolovich and several of his assistants were ultimately fired in the middle of the season.
• Jerry Sandusky: One of the most reviled names in all of sports. An assistant defensive coach at Penn State under Joe Paterno for 30 years, including as DC for both of Paterno's national championship teams. He retired in 1999 but continued to use Penn St. facilities as part of his "The Second Mile" charity which served Pennsylvania's underprivileged and at-risk youth. In 2011, following a two-year grand jury investigation, Sandusky was arrested and charged with 52 counts of sexual abuse of young boys, most of whom participated in his charity. A follow-up report implicated Paterno and university leadership in covering up Sandusky's crimes, leading to their firings. (That report was later challenged in court, forcing the NCAA to restore Paterno's vacated wins and remove the remaining sanctions on the school.) Sandusky himself is now serving 30-60 years in prison for his crimes.
• Gene Stallings: One of the Junction Boys from the 1954 Texas A&M team, he later became HC at his alma mater from 1965-71, where he achieved only one winning season in 1967. After a lengthy NFL coaching career, mostly as an assistant, he became the HC of Alabama from 1990-96 and led them to a national title in '92. A subsequent three-year investigation found that he knew Alabama fielded an ineligible player in '93, resulting in Alabama forfeiting all victories from that season outside of the bowl game, being put on a postseason ban for '95, and losing a total of 30 scholarships from 1995-98, beginning a Audience-Alienating Era for Alabama that lasted until Nick Saban's hiring; were it not for this derailing, the colossus of college football programs would likely hold even more D-I records than it already does.
• Jim Tressel: The only coach to win national championships at the FCS and FBS levels and part of the first father-and-son pair to win national championships.^note His father Lee Tressel won the 1978 D-III title at Baldwin Wallace University (then a "College") in Ohio. The other father-and-son national championship coaching pair is at D-III powerhouse Mount Union, where Larry Kehres and his son Vince, who succeeded him, both won multiple titles. He first made his name at Youngstown State, guiding the Penguins to four I-AA national titles from 1991-97. In 2000, Ohio State hired him from YSU, and he brought immediate success to the program, winning the BCS Championship in 2002 and turning around the school's fortunes against archrival Michigan. However, his tenure ended after a 2010 investigation found his players sold memorabilia to a drug dealer. As a result of the investigation, he was fired, the Buckeyes were banned from the 2012 postseason, and all victories from 2010 were vacated, including the Sugar Bowl victory. He returned to the college ranks in 2012 as an administrator, having been barred from athletic department positions until 2016. He eventually returned to Youngstown State as the school's president in 2014, serving in that post despite protests over his lack of qualifications until retiring in January 2024.
• Mel Tucker: Originally a DB at Wisconsin in the early '90s, Tucker moved into a career as an assistant coach, bouncing around power college programs like Ohio State (where he won the 2002 national title), Alabama, and Georgia, and throughout the NFL, including a stint as interim HC of the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2011. His success landed him the Colorado HC position in 2019. After a tepid 5-7 season with the Buffaloes, the sudden and controversial resignation of long-time HC Mark Dantonio from Michigan State very late in the "coaching carousel" process (see his entry above) left Tucker one of the few available candidates for the position. He went just 2-5 in the COVID-shortened 2020 season with the Spartans but exploded to 11-2 in his second season, tying the (then) largest win total turnaround in FBS history. With rumors swirling that LSU was considering Tucker for their vacant HC position, Michigan State acted quickly and offered him a 10-year, $95 million fully guaranteed extention, the then-largest for a HC in NCAA history and a shocking total for someone with just 20 games at the school to that point. The Spartans fell back down to earth the next season, and Tucker was suspended and fired just two games into the 2023 season pending the results of a sexual harassment investigation, likely voiding his guarantees.
• Bill Yeoman: Head coach of the Houston Cougars from 1962-86. He was one of the biggest advocates of racial integration at the predominantly white school and helped Houston transition from a middling independent team to a powerhouse in the Southwest Conference (SWC), winning 4 titles from 1976-86. However, his tenure was marred by illegal recruitment inducements and extra benefits tendered to players that amounted to payments, and was forced into retirement by the university after 1986. Because of his actions, Houston had some of the harshest sanctions the NCAA has ever handed down, being barred from bowl games in 1989-90, barred from appearing on TV in 1989 (costing Heisman-winner Andre Ware's record-shattering performance some national recognition), and being limited to 15 scholarships for 1989. The NCAA said the punishments would have been more severe if he remained the HC. He was still inducted into Houston's Hall of Honor in 1998 and the Hall of Fame in 2001 before passing away in 2020.

Other Non-Player Figures

Administrators

• Bob Bowlsby: Big 12 commissioner from 2012–22 who arguably saved the conference when it was rocked by the 2021 announcement that its biggest schools, Oklahoma and Texas, would leave for the SEC. A former AD at FCS Northern Iowa, Iowa, and Stanford, Bowlsby joined the Big 12 just as the conference had barely survived the early-2010s realignment. He managed to keep the conference together, and when the conference's two tentpole programs announced their departure, first sought a merger with the Pac-12 before pivoting to replenish the Big 12's numbers by luring three of the most prominent American Conference programs (Cincinnati, Houston, UCF) and giving BYU its long-sought Power Five invite. Bowlsby left the conference in a position for his successor Brett Yormark (see below) to make even bolder moves.
• Jim Delany: A name little-known except to the most dedicated college sports geeks, but along with Roy Kramer and Mike Slive (also listed below) he arguably had more impact on the 21st-century college sports scene (not just football) than any other single individual.^*The word "single" is advised here because another candidate for the biggest impact is a group of seven Supreme Court justices who made up the majority in a 1984 ruling that stripped the NCAA of its control over televised college football, with impacts that continue to this day. After playing basketball at North Carolina, he went to law school and later took a position with the NCAA. He became commissioner of the FCS-level Ohio Valley Conference in 1979, and then in 1989 moved to the position where he made his true mark: Big Ten commissioner. He oversaw Penn State's entry into the conference, teamed up with Kramer to create the the Bowl Championship Series, and was a major behind-the-scenes opponent of the playoff system championed by Slive (which became today's College Football Playoff). He was also the main force behind the creation of the Big Ten Network in 2007; though not the Ur-Example of conference-specific cable networks (that would be the Mountain West Conference's now-defunct MountainWest Sports Network), it was the Trope Maker and Trope Codifier for future efforts of that type and eventually became a major cash cow for the already-wealthy conference. Delany also helped to trigger the seismic conference realignments of the early 2010s, with the Big Ten bringing in Nebraska in 2011 and Maryland and Rutgers in 2014. He retired at the end of 2019 and has since experienced the other side of conference realignment as a consultant to Conference USA.
• Tod Eberle and Dick Yoder: Possibly the greatest examples of Small Role, Big Impact in college football history. In 1986, Eberle was commissioner of the D-II Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference, and Yoder was the AD at PSAC member West Chester and a member of the D-II council. At the time, the PSAC faced a football scheduling conundrum—it had 14 members, and its two divisional winners played a championship game. However, NCAA limits on regular-season games meant that every PSAC team had to leave a schedule slot open, and only the two divisional winners got to play all of their allowed regular-season games. Eberle asked Yoder to draft NCAA legislation to allow the PSAC to stage a championship game that didn't count against scheduling limits. Yoder's original draft required a league have 14 members, with the PSAC then being the only league in any NCAA division with that many football members. However, before Yoder brought the proposal up for a vote, another D-II conference with 12 football members asked him to change his draft to reduce the required number of teams to 12. He did just that, and the NCAA passed this rule with little fanfare.^note At the time, such changes had to be voted on by the entire NCAA membership, but it was a non-issue for Division I-A (now FBS) conferences, none of which had more than 10 members. This rule ended up setting the terms of FBS conference realignment for the next three decades, because the first conference to actually take advantage of it was the SEC (see Roy Kramer below).^note Ironically, the PSAC abolished its championship game immediately after this rule change passed. The NCAA expanded the D-II playoffs from 8 to 16 teams in 1988, and the PSAC feared that the result of a title game could cost the conference a potential at-large playoff berth. The title game wasn't reinstated until 2008.
• Keith Gill: A former RB at Duke, Gill is most notable as the first African American to become commissioner of an FBS conference, taking over the Sun Belt Conference in 2019. Gill spent much of his early administrative career with the NCAA office before becoming an associate AD at Oklahoma, followed by AD gigs with non-football American and FCS Richmond. He then moved on to become second-in-command at the non-football Atlantic 10 Conference before taking the SBC position in 2019, where he oversaw that league's early-2020s raid of Conference USA.
• Teresa Gould: Upon taking over from George Kliavkoff (below) as Pac-12 commissioner on March 1, 2024, Gould became the first woman to head a power conference... for a few months, as the Pac will be reduced from 12 members to 2 later that year. She came to the job after more than three decades in college sports, most recently as Kliavkoff's deputy with past stints at UC Davis, Cal, and the West Coast Conference. Gould likely has the hardest job of any conference commissioner in modern times, as she'll have to find a way for the surviving members (Oregon State and Washington State) to find a viable conference home, whether by expanding the Pac or merging it with another conference.
• George Kliavkoff: Pac-12 commissioner from 2021 to February 29, 2024, a few months before the conference's effective demise, he's received a good deal of blame for the conference's collapse, though by many reports his immediate predecessor Larry Scott (below) left him in a no-win situation. Like Scott, Kliavkoff came from outside college sports, instead working in pro sports and entertainment with (among others) Major League Baseball, NBCUniversal, Hulu, Hearst, and most recently MGM Resorts before taking on the Pac-12 job. When Kliavkoff came on, the Big 12 was vulnerable to poaching after the announcement that Oklahoma and Texas would leave for the SEC, but he was unable to convince the conference presidents and chancellors to expand. More significantly, he allowed the Big 12 to jump ahead of the Pac in media negotiations. After the announcement that UCLA and USC would leave for the Big Ten, he failed to convince the remaining university suits to sign off on a lesser media deal, leading to the mass exodus that effectively killed the conference (and left his deputy Teresa Gould to try to pick up whatever pieces she can).
• Roy Kramer: A former player at the small Tennessee school Maryville, Kramer had significant success as HC at Central Michigan, leading the Chippewas to a D-II national title in 1974, but made his greatest impact on the sport as commissioner of the SEC from 1990–2002. Coming to the SEC office from a 12-year run as AD at Vanderbilt, he noticed the then little-known rule change championed by the aforementioned Tod Eberle and Dick Yoder that would allow the SEC to stage a title game... if it expanded. Cue the 1991 addition of Arkansas and South Carolina, bringing the SEC to 12 members and allowing the launch of a championship game in 1992. This game proved lucrative enough that all other FBS conferences eventually followed suit. Kramer also played a major role in the creation of the BCS, which arguably turned college football into a truly national sport. He retired in 2002; his successor Mike Slive (below) would also have a great impact on the sport.
• Judy MacLeod:^note pronounced "McCloud" Commissioner of Conference USA since 2015 and most notable as the first woman to hold said position in an FBS conference. A former basketball player at D-III Puget Sound, she spent a few years as an assistant coach at then-NAIA Seattle before going to grad school at Tulsa, eventually becoming AD in 1995. MacLeod presided over Tulsa's sequential moves to the WAC and CUSA before joining the latter's staff in 2005. She became commissioner in 2015, after CUSA had lost much of its pre-2013 membership to what is now The American. She kept things stable for a time, but was faced by the raiding of the conference in the early 2020s, successfully navigating it by bringing in new schools.
• Lloyd Olds: A longtime fixture for the Eastern Michigan Eagles as an intramural director and track and field coach, he earns his notoriety for being an official of basketball and football games. During a matchup in a 1920 game, a pass was thrown to what was presumed to be a wide open player, but it was in actuality Olds, whose white outfit matched that of one of the participants. He went to a knitting concern, who made up a shirt with the black and white stripes that have since become commonplace on basketball and football referees.
• Tony Petitti: Current Big Ten commissioner, making him one of the biggest power brokers in college sports. He's another in the recent wave of conference admins whose background was outside of college sports administration, although he had a long career as a sports TV executive. Petitti spent considerable time with ABC, CBS (where he oversaw the network's NFL telecasts), and MLB (where he headed the MLB Network before being promoted to COO), as well as a brief stint with gaming giant Activision Blizzard. After taking over from Kevin Warren (below) as Big Ten head in May 2023, he managed to smooth over ruffled feathers among the conference's football giants, and continued with the expansion that Warren started by poaching Oregon and Washington from the Pac-12.
• Greg Sankey: Current SEC commissioner and another major college sports power broker. The upstate New York native had a modest start to his career as director of intramural sports at the small Utica College, but moved south to become compliance director at Northwestern State, a I-AA/FCS school in Louisiana. From there, he moved on to the Southland Conference in 1992, becoming that league's commissioner in 1996. When the SEC had compliance issues at the turn of the century, Mike Slive (below) brought him in to address them, and he rose through the ranks until becoming Slive's successor in 2015. He's been intimately involved with the two most recent major realignment cycles, first as Slive's deputy when the SEC brought in Missouri and Texas A&M and then as commissioner with the impending arrival of Oklahoma and Texas. Sankey also pushed for the expansion to the College Football Playoff from its original four teams to 12, now set for the 2024 season.
• Larry Scott: Commissioner of the Pac-12 from 2009–21 and widely blamed for the impending demise of that conference (though he's far from the only culprit). Scott was one of the first in a wave of conference admins whose background was outside of college sports; he was a former pro tennis player with little on-court success who made a major mark in that sport on the business side, increasing revenue and narrowing the gender pay gap. Scott's tenure saw the Pac-12 court much of the Big 12 but eventually pick up only Colorado (plus Utah from the Mountain West). He also launched the Pac-12's own Network in 2012, with a lucrative side deal with ESPN and Fox for football and men's basketball that ran through 2023–24. Unfortunately, the Pac-12 Network proved to be a disaster, thanks in no small part to Scott being unable to reach a carriage deal with satellite TV providers, and the Pac was financially left in the dust by the SEC and Big Ten. Making matters worse, Scott had by far the largest salary of any conference commissioner and moved the Pac-12 HQ into a ludicrously expensive downtown San Francisco building that cost millions more than any other conference. By his departure in 2021, many Pac members—especially the tentpole programs of UCLA and USC—were looking for a way out, which would soon come.
• Mike Slive: Along with the aforementioned Jim Delany, an administrator little-known to the general sporting public who had a huge impact on the 21st-century college sports scene. While Slive had several admin gigs in his earlier career, including being the inaugural commissioner of two D-I leagues (the non-football Great Midwest Conference and its successor Conference USA^note CUSA was formed by a merger between the Great Midwest and Metro Conferences), he truly made his mark while commissioner of the SEC from 2002-15. First, he cleansed some of the stench around the SEC by telling league members who had complaints about other members' recruiting practices to take them to the league offices instead of the NCAA. The number of SEC schools facing sanctions dropped, though it's unclear whether it actually changed their practices. Next, he was the main architect of today's College Football Playoff. Slive had proposed a similar system as early as 2004 but faced opposition from the Big 12 and Big East. The SEC's dominance on and off the football field strengthened Slive's leverage, the Big 12 came on board in 2012, and the Big East (at least in its original form) imploded the next year, paving the way for the CFP to start in 2014. Slive also lured Texas A&M and Missouri into the SEC in 2012, which helped pave the way for his final great accomplishment: the SEC Network, which helped make the already ridiculously-wealthy SEC even more so; its 2014 launch was arguably the most successful for any US cable network (not just in sports!), with virtually every cable and satellite provider offering the service to viewers within the conference footprint. Retired in 2015 and passed away in 2018.
• Jon Steinbrecher: Commissioner of the MAC since 2009, making him the longest-tenured of the current FBS commissioners. While the rest of FBS has been rocked by conference realignment during this century, the MAC has been an oasis of stability during his tenure—the arrival of UMass as a full member in 2025 will be the first change in its core membership since 2005 (though it's had a couple of football-only changes, one being the brief tenure of UMass in the Tens). This stability has enabled him to take the lead on many initiatives to improve student-athlete wellness. For better or worse, he's also partly responsible for the MAC's #MACtion branding. Before taking on the MAC job, the former Valparaiso football and tennis player had been the commissioner of the non-football Mid-Continent Conference (now the Summit League) from 1994–2003 and the OVC from 2003–2009, making him the only person to have been a conference commissioner in all three subgroups of Division I (non-football, FCS, FBS).
• John Swofford: A former QB and DB at North Carolina, Swofford made his mark in the sport as ACC commissioner from 1997–2021 after 17 years as the Tar Heels' AD. Under his watch, the ACC kicked off the first major conference realignment of the current century by poaching Boston College, Miami, and Virginia Tech from the Big East in 2004 and 2005. The ACC expanded even further during his tenure, bringing in Pitt and Syracuse in all sports and Notre Dame in non-football sports in 2013 and Louisville the following year (though the conference did lose Maryland to the Big Ten), and Swofford also oversaw the creation of the ACC Network. However, the media deal that allowed for the creation of the ACC Network would come back to bite the conference in the early 2020s, as it left the ACC enormously behind the Big Ten and SEC in revenue, with no apparent hope of change until well into the 2030s.^note Said media deal was originally for 15 years from 2012–2027. It was extended in 2016 to a 20-year deal. Both deals included a "grant of rights" (GOR) stating that if a school leaves the ACC during the contract term, all remaining broadcast revenue during the contract goes to the conference. Not to mention that the ACC's exit fee was reported in 2023 to be about $120 million (to be precise, three times the conference's annual operating budget). Several schools have lawyered up in an attempt to find a way out of the GOR; none have yet been able to, though Florida State sued the ACC in December 2023 in an attempt to get out of it (the ACC responded with a countersuit). On top of that, the Big Ten and SEC deals that start in 2024 will end before the ACC's deal, giving those conferences a chance to cash in even more. As an aside, his older brother was the late singer Oliver.
• Kevin Warren: Became the first African-American commissioner of a Power Five conference, taking over from the aforementioned Jim Delany as Big Ten commissioner in January 2020 (a few months after Keith Gill, also mentioned above, became the first black commissioner of an FBS conference). A former college basketball player at Penn and Grand Canyon, he spent a few years in law before moving into front-office jobs in the NFL. After a two-year interlude with a law firm, where he brokered the most recent sale of the Minnesota Vikings, he joined the Vikings front office, eventually rising to chief operating officer before taking the Big Ten job. Warren's Big Ten tenure was eventful, first with the impending addition of UCLA and USC and then with the conference reaching a 7-year, $7 billion media deal with Fox, CBS, and NBC that starts in 2023. However, even with all this, the Big Ten didn't extend his contract, and he announced his departure in January 2023 effective that April, returning to the NFL as the Chicago Bears' new president and CEO.
• Brett Yormark: Current Big 12 commissioner, who took over from the aforementioned Bob Bowlsby in 2022. Like an increasing number of conference admins in recent years, Yormark didn't come from a college athletics background—but so far has proven far more successful than most such admins (Larry Scott and George Kliavkoff, anyone?). Instead, he came from a sports marketing environment, with past stints with the Detroit Pistons, NASCAR, the Brooklyn Nets, and Jay-Z's entertainment agency Roc Nation. Yormark began his tenure saying the Big 12 was "open for business" and immediately entered into negotiations for a new conference media deal, jumping past the Pac-12, who was next due for renewal. He got a solid media deal from ESPN and Fox, putting the Big 12 as a strong #3 behind the Big Ten and SEC and making it the only power conference with football games on both networks. He also led the Big 12 side of the buyout negotiations with Oklahoma and Texas, letting them leave a year before the then-current Big 12 media deal expired in exchange for a healthy payment. He then took advantage of the new media deal and the subsequent troubles that the Pac-12 had reaching its own to poach several Pac-12 schools: Colorado (a founding Big 12 member) and its "Four Corners" compatriots of Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah. Yormark is reportedly seeking to sell the conference's basketball media rights separately from those for football when the Big 12 media deal is next up for bids in 2031—which, if it comes to pass, will be unprecedented in US college sports.

Broadcasters and Analysts

• Carroll "Beano" Cook: Prolific studio commentator, first on ABC (1983-85), then on ESPN starting in 1986, where the soft-spoken, serious (though also dryly witty) Cook was the Blue Oni to Lee Corso's Red Oni. Cook specialized in "big picture" analysis of game results and things like the Heisman race, with an extensive knowledge of college football history (and a very pronounced bias towards Big Ten and Rust Belt teams, like his alma mater Pittsburgh). Rather than a former player or coach, Cook's background was in sports management and public relations. His elder statesman demeanor earned him the nickname "The Pope (or Cardinal) of College Football". He died in 2012 at the age of 81.
• Lee Corso: A featured analyst for ESPN's College GameDay, where he has served since that program's inception in 1987. Before that, he had a rather mediocre career as a head coach for several schools and before that, was a QB at Florida State (where he was famously the roommate of actor Burt Reynolds). As a colorful, outspoken former coach, Corso was clearly intended by ESPN as a football equivalent to their mainstay college basketball analyst Dick Vitale, with Corso being similarly Catchphrase-happy, most famously saying "not so fast, my friend!" after another analyst or guest on the show gives an opinion or makes a prediction with which Corso disagrees. He also loves donning the headgear of the school he predicts to win the game at the host site of College GameDay.
• Gary Danielson: A former QB at Purdue, he went on to have a mildly successful career with the Detroit Lions and Cleveland Browns. After his playing career was over, he went to work at ABC/ESPN as a college football analyst. He currently serves as a commentator (alongside Brad Nessler and formerly Verne Lundquist) for CBS coverage of the SEC, Army-Navy game, and the Sun Bowl, a role he's held since 2006.
• Chris Fowler: Host of College GameDay' from 1990-2014 before transitioning to become ESPN's current #1 play-by-play announcer.
• Kirk Herbstreit: Serves as Lee Corso's co-analyst on ESPN's College GameDay, a role he has been in since 1996. A former Ohio State QB, he typically pulls double duty as the color commentator of ESPN's Saturday night college football games, which aren't always in the same location of the GameDay site, meaning he sometimes has to fly cross-country trips in between the programs; his schedule got even busier in 2022 when he also signed on to launch Amazon Prime Video's NFL coverage as the platform's first color commentator.
• Keith Jackson: The voice of college football for over 50 years, starting in the 1950s before being hired by ABC in 1966, where he served until his retirement in 2005. He was known for his deep-but-soft soothing voice, homespun phrases (including most famously "Whoa, Nelly!"), and his genuine passion for the sport. He popularized the idea of television play-by-play announcers being joined by color commentators (typically former players or coaches) during broadcasts, which was not common early in his career but has since become ubiquitous. Unfortunately, the College Hall of Fame does not recognize journalists or broadcasters (unlike the Pro Hall of Fame, which includes them in its "contributor" category), though every few years there is a push for their inclusion to recognize their contributions. Passed away in 2018.
• Gus Johnson: Lead college football play-by-play announcer for FOX since 2011 after previously serving at CBS since 1995. Known for his exuberant style, is widely beloved by fans of college football (and a variety of other sports) for elevating even the most mundane games into spectacles.
• Joel Klatt: Set (since surpassed) program passing records for Colorado from 2003-05 but had any slim chance of a pro career shattered by a severe concussion in the Big 12 Championship Game that left him hospitalized for weeks. Arguably left a much greater impact on college football as an analyst and color commentator, now serving as FOX's #1 in the booth next to Gus Johnson.
• Brent Musburger: An immensely prolific broadcaster for countless sports, first at CBS (1973-89) and then ABC/ESPN (1990-2017). Known for his "folksy" style, he was a pioneering NFL broadcaster at CBS (hosting the network's studio coverage, including the trendsetting pregame show The NFL Today) but shifted his focus to the college level for his second employer, replacing Keith Jackson as the lead announcer after his retirement.
• Petros Papadakis: A former tailback for USC and a popular SoCal radio host, his enthusiastic Cloudcuckoolander style helped him become the lead color commentator for FOX Sports' late-night broadcasts of West Coast games, making him an unofficial mascot of sorts for the "Pac-12 After Dark".