Monday Morning QB Special: Coaching Icons

What's an icon? It's a question that merits debate, which means that any attempt to write a new draft of history will be met with appropriate - even necessary - disagreement. One can only scour this list of significant college football coaches and begin to argue.

By Matthew Zemek
 
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What does it mean to be an iconic college football coach? The status of an icon doesn’t automatically confer the highest level of quality or reflect the most elevated level of performance. However, the fact of being an icon usually emerges from a career of considerable consequence. Needless to say, winning big is the most common route to a place of unique influence in the college football community. Winning at a lofty height offers the shortest and most direct line to a favored place in the public memory and the popular imagination. Most of the men called “icons” reached their spot in the college football pantheon by dominating their opponents, but some of these coaches are iconic in a more local or regional sense. All of them, however, did something to make their names eternal in a sport where history breathes deeply and conquests are remembered for generations. There can and should be debate about names left off the list, so with that in mind, here is a not-very-set-in-stone presentation of college football’s coaching icons (among permanently inactive coaches).

BARRY ALVAREZ wasn’t the first man to win consistently at Wisconsin. Phil King put Badger football on the map in the late 1890s and early 1900s. During and just after World War I, J.R. Richards turned in some good work in Madison as well. Milt Bruhn made two Rose Bowls during the Badgers’ brief burst of brilliance in the late 1950s and early ‘60s. However, when Alvarez took over for Don Morton in 1990, the program sat near the bottom of the Big Ten (thank goodness for Northwestern, right?). Wisconsin was a sad-sack outfit bereft of brawn, belief and boldness. Not only did Alvarez undo the days of malaise in Madison, however; he lifted the Badgers to the top tier of the Big Ten and, unlike any of his predecessors, kept them there for at least a full decade. The winner of all three Rose Bowls in which he coached, Alvarez handed off a fully-stocked program to Bret Bielema when he moved to the athletic director’s chair in 2006. His body of work, in and of itself, doesn’t make Barry Alvarez an icon; the timing and thoroughness of his intervention are the things that make him the foremost figure in Wisconsin’s football history.

EARL “RED” BLAIK lost only 33 games in 18 seasons at Army, but that really doesn’t tell the story of a true college football icon. No service academy program ruled college football the way Army did from 1944 through 1946. Blaik coached Doc Blanchard and Glenn Davis, but he also coached a defense that didn’t buckle against Notre Dame and the other great teams of the time. Blaik is, hands down, the greatest coach in service academy history, outdistancing Fisher DeBerry of Air Force and Wayne Hardin of Navy by a comfortable margin. Moreover, Blaik’s central presence in the Notre Dame-Army showdowns of the 1940s, which remain on the short list of college football’s most celebrated games, makes him a figure of supreme importance and stature.

BOBBY BOWDEN grew up in the state of Alabama. Decades later, he is himself a member of college football’s very exclusive 300-win club alongside Bear Bryant, the man who is synonymous with Alabama football. Bowden’s seminal (or Seminole?) accomplishment: It has to be the 13 consecutive finishes in the top four of the national polls from 1987 through 1999. A riverboat gambler and the ultimate program builder, Bowden took Florida State from nothing and molded it into a consistent colossus that ruled the college football world with more regularity than Miami and more bowl-game success than the University of Florida. The last few seasons of his career in Tallahassee will be regarded as a very minor footnote (if anything at all) 20 years from now.

FRANK BROYLES is known by many younger college football fans as one half of the best broadcast duo in the sport’s history. Broyles teamed with Keith Jackson from the late 1970s through the mid-1980s to give ABC viewers the most colorful and richly-accented football analysis ever seen. Yet, as great a broadcaster as Broyles proved to be, he first stamped himself as an iconic coach in the Southwest Conference. Over the course of 20 seasons, Broyles won exactly 70 percent of his games at Arkansas, claiming the 1964 national championship along the way. Broyles’s battles with Darrell Royal at Texas shaped one of college football’s most spirited regional rivalries and gave rise to one of the most remembered games in the sport’s history, the December 1969 one-versus-two showdown against the Longhorns. Broyles will take the 15-14 heartbreaker in “ThatDamnGame” (as it is known in the state of Arkansas) to his grave, but the fact that the Hogs even played on such a stage showed how fully they had hit the big time under the leadership of their coach.

PAUL “BEAR” BRYANT is rightly thought of as the greatest college football head coach of all time, but as counterintuitive as this statement might seem, it’s not just because of what he did at Alabama. Sure, the Crimson Tide will always represent the crown jewel on the Bear’s resume – a boatload of national championships will serve as a tolerable centerpiece of a legendary profile, to say the least. However, Bryant – like other top-of-the-list coaches in football or any other sport – won in difficult situations as well. Turning the Texas A&M program from nothing into something in the 1950s gave him the springboard to the Alabama job. What’s even more impressive is that Bryant won consistently at Kentucky over eight seasons, and no, not “6-5 winning,” either. Bryant won over 70 percent of his games in Lexington (60-23-5, a .710 winning percentage), making him the best coach Kentucky has ever had. The Bear’s whole career – not just his stay in Tuscaloosa – makes him the best there ever was. If one had to identify the most enduring achievements from his tenure as Bama’s head coach, two answers jump immediately to mind: First, Bryant took the cue from Sam Cunningham of USC in 1970 and integrated the Southeastern Conference. Sure, one could say Bryant reacted instead of being proactive, and there’s merit to that claim, but the point still stands that the Bear was clearheaded and wise enough to know when a change of mind was necessary. Many other human beings throughout the centuries have tried to resist the tide (not the Crimson one) of human events, but Bryant possessed enough wisdom to go with the flow, and that’s part of why Alabama continued to win throughout the 1970s, a fact which stands as the second great tribute to Bryant’s career in Tuscaloosa. He came onto the scene and made Alabama a winner in the early 1960s, but there he was – at the end of the 1970s and the early 1980s – guiding his teams to prestigious January bowl games. The full timeline of his career reflects greatness at every stage. That’s why Bear Bryant owns the foremost place in the college football coaching pantheon.

WALTER CAMP is recognized as “The Father of American Football,” due to the fact that he shaped the rules of the sport, including the system of downs and the two-point safety. Before Amos Alonzo Stagg developed the game in terms of Xs and Os, Camp created the canvas on which Stagg and others such as Pop Warner and Knute Rockne would exhibit their creativity. Camp was the first visionary, the man who gave college football its first true transformation from a crude, rugby-style game into a more structured competition. Rule formation aside, however, Camp could coach the sport he brought into being. How does a 68-2 record in five seasons at Yale sound (from 1888 through 1892)? Go ahead and call Bear Bryant the greatest coach of all time. Just be sure to reserve a prominent place at the table for Camp and the other men who excelled so dramatically from the late 1880s through 1930.

DUFFY DAUGHERTY didn’t crush the opposition at Michigan State – he won only 61 percent of his games – but no man matched his record of excellence in East Lansing. What’s particularly instructive about Daugherty’s career is that he possessed more staying power than all the other Big Ten coaches of his time, with the sole exception of one Woody Hayes. Daugherty’s best MSU teams were worthy of the national stage and eclipsed many of the other Big Ten champions of the 1950s and ‘60s. Ironically, Michigan State’s power was never more apparent than in a game it didn’t win, the infamous 10-10 tie against Notre Dame in 1966. Ara Parseghian’s unwillingness to make a serious attempt to win in the final minutes of regulation made the Spartans look like the true winner in that scoreboard stalemate. On that gray day, Daugherty’s success in one region of the country gave way to a much wider national platform.

BOB DEVANEY and TOM OSBORNE deserve to be recognized as co-icons at Nebraska. Osborne is the bigger name, but without a Bob Devaney, there might not have been a Doctor Tom, later “Congressman Tom.” It was Devaney who built Nebraska into a colossus in the 1960s and early ‘70s. It was Devaney who coached in one of the sport’s “Game of the Century” classics, the 1971 Thanksgiving epic against Oklahoma in which Johnny Rodgers immortalized himself. Osborne took what Devaney did and built on it over a longer period of time. The most stoic football coach this side of Tom Landry made Nebraska relevant and powerful on an annual basis. True, the Huskers were often knocked back by Oklahoma or mashed by Miami and Florida State if they got to the Orange Bowl, but Osborne got his revenge by slashing through Miami and Florida en route to back-to-back national championships in the 1994 and ’95 seasons. The 1995 Nebraska team deserves serious consideration as one of the greatest teams in college football history. Just keep in mind, though: Bob Devaney made Tom Osborne’s career possible. Both men finished with winning percentages above .800 (Devaney at .806 including a stint at Wyoming; Osborne .836, entirely at Nebraska). They can’t be easily separated from each other, and they both cast long shadows of influence over the Great Plains.

BOBBY DODD won 71.3 percent of his games at Georgia Tech over 22 seasons, but the truest testimony to his place as a college football icon in the South comes from Georgia State coach Bill Curry. The reverence and universal respect accorded Dodd are rare in the sport, and they point to a man whose lasting influence as a coach transcended the ledger sheet of wins and losses.

LaVELL EDWARDS has the kind of face worthy of Mount Rushmore. In the land of the Wasatch Mountains, he left a permanent imprint on Brigham Young University, the Holiday Bowl, and the history of college football West of the Rocky Mountains. Edwards’s BYU teams were fun to watch, but more importantly, they cranked out NFL-caliber quarterbacks, won a boatload of games, turned the Holiday Bowl into the best December bowl of them all… and won the 1984 national championship. Not bad for a team from the (then-)Western Athletic Conference.

HAYDEN FRY is not an icon because he won 61.3 percent of his games at Iowa over 20 seasons. He’s not an icon because he reached multiple Rose Bowls at a program that has found it hard to maintain a foothold in the Big Ten. Fry’s place as a revered and influential figure in the college football world is secure because of all the men he has mentored into top-flight coaches. Bob Stoops, Bill Snyder, Barry Alvarez, Jim Leavitt, and current Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz all worked under Fry, forming one of the best coaching trees in the past third of a century. Few other figures can claim such a list of protégés. Bear Bryant is one name that easily comes to mind, but after that, the chore becomes a lot more difficult.

WOODY HAYES certainly rates as a coach whose iconic status exists most centrally because of what he did on the field. A .761 winning percentage over 28 seasons represents a track record of uncommon excellence. Yet, if Woody’s winning percentage hadn’t been quite so high, he still would have been included in this list. His force of personality, his singular passion for the sport, and his legendary disdain for “The School Up North” coincided with the emergence of Ohio State-Michigan as a national television institution in America. When TV grew up as a medium, Woody Hayes was the man who, though belonging to a black-and-white era, breathed color into college football with his bombast and his love of bellicosity. It was ironic that Hayes left the sidelines because of an act of aggression (against Clemson linebacker Charlie Baumann in the 1978 Gator Bowl), but the intensity that marked his life and career never ebbed… not until his final breath had expired. Woody is admired for his success, but he is loved by Buckeyes because he emptied his soul for the Scarlet and Gray in every waking moment he spent on this planet.

JOHN HEISMAN wasn’t much of a sportsman. His Georgia Tech team once beat little Cumberland College 222-0, in a game that makes Steve Spurrier and Bob Stoops seem like the ultimate Good Samaritans of college football. Fine, so Heisman wasn’t a gentleman – he fielded powerful Georgia Tech teams and established himself as an expert in his field when football was still in its evolutionary stages.

FRANK HOWARD is an icon at Clemson, and he has the “Rock” to prove it. Why, though, is a man with a career .580 winning percentage such a beloved figure? It’s because he stayed at Clemson and loved the place like no other man before or since. A man named John Heisman briefly coached at Clemson but didn’t stick around very long. Danny Ford won big at Clemson but spent a modest 11 years in the Palmetto State, lured away to Arkansas by the siren song of the Southeastern Conference. It was Howard who made Clemson his home for 30 seasons and gave the Tigers the stability they needed. Clemson is by far the most clearly established football school among old-guard ACC institutions. Frank Howard is more responsible for that reality than anyone else.

DON JAMES was brought low by Billy Joe Hobert, but the taint of scandal in Seattle can’t take away what “The Dawgfather” achieved between the painted white lines at the University of Washington. Six Rose Bowls – three of them in succession – are enough to make James one of the five best coaches in the past 50 years of West Coast football. Yet, James did even more than that. He fielded two teams at Washington that ended a college football season with a number two ranking and the strong conviction that they would have been able to slay number one. Debate would probably be split on the 1991 comparison between Washington and Miami, but in 1984, it’s very difficult to deny the notion that Washington would have been a solid favorite against the BYU team that won the national title by skating past Michigan in the Holiday Bowl. Here’s something to consider: In the last 50 years of Pac-8/Pac-10 football, is there a single non-USC coach with a better body of work than James? Not Terry Donahue. Not Mike Bellotti. Frank Kush stood tall at Arizona State, but that’s when the Sun Devils roamed in the Western Athletic Conference. That shows you how enduring Don James’s legacy will prove to be in the history of West Coast football.

RALPH “SHUG” JORDAN made Auburn a national champion, but more than that, he delivered consistent quality to a school that had previously been unable to establish a foothold in Southern football and, more importantly, in the Iron Bowl rivalry with Alabama. Auburn briefly flourished in pre-World War I years under accomplished coach Mike Donahue, but no other man was able to keep the Tigers relevant and respected for any prolonged stretch of time. Jordan changed all that when he came aboard in 1951. Auburn soared to the top of the heap in 1957, and stayed in the upper tier of college football programs. Jordan’s AU teams made seven straight bowl games (1968-’74) at a time when bowl games really were rewards for a good season. Jordan’s career was as relevant near its end (in the 1970s) as it was in its beginning (in the early ‘50s), if not more so. This is why Pat Dye was able to continue what Jordan started, cementing Auburn’s place among the SEC’s established football schools.

FRANK KUSH is a man who has earned the title of “icon” even though Arizona State football has one of the least loyal fan bases in all of college football. So what if Phoenix-area sports fans (I say this as a native of the place) lack that extra fire in the belly? So what if Kush coached ASU while the Sun Devils dwelt in the WAC? So what if Sun Devil Stadium was a comparatively humble venue without the soaring upper deck and press box it has today? Kush took Dan Devine’s three blindingly brilliant ASU seasons in the mid-1950s and ran with them. He took an unheralded program to a No. 2 national ranking at the end of the 1975 season, thanks to an upset of mighty Nebraska in that year’s Fiesta Bowl. Like Woody Hayes, Kush was a crusty, ornery coach who never conveyed anything other than a witheringly fierce intensity. Also like Hayes, Kush’s career came to an abrupt end in the late 1970s for hitting a player, only in Kush’s case, it was a player on his own team. Nevertheless, a 76.4 winning percentage in 22 seasons in Tempe makes Kush one of the giants of the sport in the Western United States.

FRANK LEAHY came to Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, in 1939 and gave Boston College two supremely successful seasons, revealing his expertise to the nation. Notre Dame saw that demonstration of quality and entrusted its program to Leahy, a move that proved to be a home run. The Irish tackled Army in the immortalized matchups of the mid-1940s at Yankee Stadium, adding to their stature and enhancing their legacy under Leahy’s guidance. Notre Dame lost only 11 games in Leahy’s 11 seasons, winning 85.5 percent of the time and cementing its place at the center of the college football universe. After the death of Knute Rockne, the greatest coach in Notre Dame history, the Irish needed someone to maintain the program’s winning ways in the 1930s. One of Rockne’s fabled “Four Horsemen,” Elmer Layden, won 77 percent of his games in seven seasons from 1934 through 1940. At most schools, winning 77 percent of the time is a top-flight football feat. Leahy made that figure look positively pedestrian by comparison. Since Leahy exited South Bend in 1953, only one man – Ara Parseghian – has approached his standard of excellence as a Notre Dame head coach.

JOHN McKAY came within one win of taking the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to the Super Bowl in the franchise’s fourth year of existence. That might tell you more about the man’s coaching acumen than any detail from his USC career. Nevertheless, McKay is the greatest coach the Trojans have ever known. He quickly righted the ship in Los Angeles after taking the helm in 1960. He promptly tended to the business of making and winning Rose Bowls. He was there when the Men of Troy fended off Ron Vander Kelen and Wisconsin in 1963. He was there when SC stuffed Indiana in 1968, there in 1970 to give Bo Schembechler and Michigan the first of many Rose Bowl losses, there in 1975 to turn back Woody Hayes and Ohio State one last time on a two-point conversion in the dying moments of regulation. McKay owned one of the most devastating wits in the history of football. When asked about the execution of his team’s offense, he unforgettably replied, “I’m all in favor of it.” Happily for USC fans, McKay’s coaching ability was just as good as his sense of humor.

DON NEHLEN looks better and better with the passage of time. In West Virginia, loyalty – as a value – means more than words can express. Loyalty to West Virginia University is exponentially more important. While Mountaineers of multiple generations reflect upon the inner turmoil their football program has endured over the past four years, they can realize just how stable things were when Don Nehlen patrolled the sidelines in Morgantown. Steering West Virginia through landmines known as Penn State, Boston College, and the Backyard Brawl rivals from Pitt, Nehlen made West Virginia a legitimate part of the national championship chase in a few seasons and breathed sustained prosperity into the program. For two full decades, West Virginia was a regular bowl team. In 1988 and 1993, the Mountaineers ran the table in the regular season and got a chance to either claim or share national hardware. Notre Dame and Florida ruined Nehlen’s dreams, but those appearances on the big stage remain near and dear to the hearts of Mountaineers. Nehlen doesn’t belong to the top tier of college football icons, but he certainly rates as one of several men whose bond with a specific school is closer than one can readily imagine.

GENERAL ROBERT NEYLAND is – if it’s allowable to say so – the prototypical football icon. He was a general, for cryin’ out loud, in a sport whose coaches are easily likened to battlefield tacticians. Neyland preached toughness, discipline and defense, espousing determined, resilient ruggedness as the heart of the sport’s value system. And oh, he won big: He forged an .829 winning percentage in 21 seasons (173-31-12, to be exact). There was a man, college football style.

ARA PARSEGHIAN became a Notre Dame legend and a college football icon in much the same way that Frank Leahy did: He just didn’t lose very much at all. Only 17 losses in 11 seasons at college football’s most famous program will produce a spot on Mount Olympus, in the company of the gods. Parseghian had to deal with John McKay’s USC teams every season, and he faced the best of the best – Darrell Royal’s Texas and Bear Bryant’s Alabama – in bowl games. The Fighting Irish regularly reached the biggest stages in college football and won their share of five-star contests, among the most consequential of the time. The “era of Ara” unquestionably fulfilled every ounce of its promise and potential in South Bend.

KNUTE ROCKNE is the man most deeply and vividly associated with Notre Dame football. That, in itself, says so much about the long and interesting shadow he cast over college football. Like Roberto Clemente, Rockne enthralled audiences with his bearing on the playing field; set the highest standard of excellence as a competitor (he won 88.1 percent of his games at Notre Dame in 13 seasons); and died far before his time in a plane crash. He lived memorably and died heartbreakingly. Many other great coaches have come and gone at Notre Dame. Knute Rockne stands above them all.

DARRELL ROYAL punched his ticket to college football eternity by becoming the greatest coach in the history of an elite college football school, one of the Cadillac “old money” powers in the sport. If you become the greatest to ever walk a sideline at Alabama, Michigan, Notre Dame, USC, or Texas, you rank in the top echelon of college football coaches. Frank Broyles and Arkansas pushed him at times, and other Southwest Conference teams occasionally got a nibble of the apple, but over 20 years in Austin, Royal laid the SWC at his feet. Texas reached 10 Cotton Bowls during Royal’s tenure, including a mind-boggling six in a row starting with the 1968 season and carrying through 1973. There are four states in this nation that cherish football with the utmost reverence: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Alabama, and Texas. If Woody Hayes, JoePa and the Bear owned the first three states, Darrell Royal lays claim to primary possession of the fourth.

BO SCHEMBECHLER had tradition to draw from at Michigan: Yost, Crisler, Oosterbaan. However, when he took over in 1969, the Wolverines were trying to erase the (roughly) break-even tenure of the aptly-named Bump Elliott, who slowed down the program’s momentum in the 1960s. Plunged into the pressure cooker of a big-name program with high expectations, Schembechler didn’t need one season to find his bearings – he struck right away. Indeed, the greatest conquest of his storied career, these many years later, remains Michigan’s 1969 upset of Ohio State, an experienced team that was steamrolling toward a second straight national title until it visited Ann Arbor on that unforgettably emotional afternoon in the Big House. Schembechler promptly guided Michigan to the Rose Bowl, which would become a very familiar place for him over the next two decades. Bo survived a heart attack just before the 1970 Rose Bowl game against USC, and while that kind of a health issue could have caused other men to walk away from the profession (for all the right reasons – this is a business that militates against cardiac health), Bo was able to give his heart so abundantly to Michigan for many more years as both a coach and as an athletic director. Linked forever in history with his friend, Woody Hayes, it’s entirely fitting that Bo will be remembered for his devotion to his school. While Hayes became synonymous with Ohio State, Schembechler created a lasting memory as UM’s athletic director when he prevented basketball coach Bill Frieder – who had just decided to go to Arizona State the following season – to lead Michigan in the 1989 NCAA Tournament. Bo thundered, “A Michigan man will coach Michigan!” With that, Steve Fisher was made the interim coach for the ’89 Dance, and the rest is history. Yes, that’s not a snapshot of Bo Schembechler the coach, but it is the vintage memory of a man whose ticker pumped Maize and Blue blood for many years after that Rose Bowl heart attack on the very first day of the 1970s. A rare level of determination and persistence made Bo Schembechler the legend he was, is, and always will be.

AMOS ALONZO STAGG might not have invented everything he claimed to have invented, but he definitely mainstreamed and standardized a lot of football’s basic components in a Division I-A career that spanned 42 seasons, 41 of them at the University of Chicago from 1892 through 1932. The huddle, the man in motion, and the lateral are just some of the inventions Stagg brought to the sport we see today. Stagg’s professional life coincided with the embryonic stages of the three team sports Americans love so fervently – football, baseball and basketball. It’s hard to find a man who left more of a collective imprint on all three sports than Stagg did. He used his place and time to be an innovator, leaving all of us richer as a result. Stagg’s first season as a football coach came at Springfield College (Massachusetts) in 1891, the year before he embarked on his four-decade tenure at Chicago. One of Stagg’s players was a fellow named James Naismith. Yes, Stagg – a 1951 inductee into the College Football Hall of Fame – was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame (in Springfield, remember) just eight years later in 1959. He is credited with developing basketball as a five-player sport. The highest football tribute paid to Stagg came from none other than Knute Rockne. The brilliant Notre Dame coach, who mastered his craft when football was still developing into a more sophisticated sport, said that “All football comes from Stagg.” Again, maybe not “all football,” but when Knute Rockne says something like that, it’s worth realizing just how much of a mark Amos Alonzo Stagg left on the autumnal Saturdays we enjoy in the 21st century.

GRANT TEAFF was a precursor to what Bill Snyder became at Kansas State roughly two decades later. Teaff made Baylor a winner in 21 years of hard work. Teaff put in the hard yards and succeeded at a place where few other had ever been able to generate any sustained prosperity. Morley Jennings won 57.7 percent of his games at Baylor from 1926-1940, but no other man had been able to last at least a decade at Baylor with comparable results until Teaff came along. From 1972 to 1992, Teaff brought Baylor to the big time in college football. The Baptist school in Waco, Texas, competed against Joe Paterno and Penn State in the 1975 Cotton Bowl, and it faced Bear Bryant and Alabama in the 1981 Cotton classic. A few weeks ago, Baylor revealed just how desperate and insecure it is in response to the conference realignment dramas enfolding the Big 12 Conference. That level of panic would not have been possible if Teaff had been coaching the Bears.

JOHNNY VAUGHT is yet another coach who won big – over an extended period of time – at a place that has confounded most other men. Ole Miss football has been nothing less than dysfunctional over the past several years, making the locals yearn for the quarter of a century when the Rebels were a full-fledged college football power. Archie Manning had something to do with the success of Vaught, but the Rebels became a major player in the SEC long before the late 1960s. From 1954 through 1970, a period of 17 seasons, Ole Miss reached 16 bowl games and eight Sugar Bowls. The Rebels fought Alabama for SEC supremacy, as Vaught matched wits with Bear Bryant in what is arguably the league’s best-ever matchup of two coaching contemporaries. (Other candidates in that category: Frank Thomas versus General Bob Neyland in the 1930s and ‘40s when Alabama played Tennessee; Urban Meyer versus Nick Saban when Florida and Alabama competed for recent SEC titles.) Among permanently inactive coaches, Vaught is, without question, one of the five best in SEC history. Ten, after all, casts too wide a net – Vaught would easily make the top five alongside Bryant, Thomas, Neyland, and John Heisman. (When today’s coaches permanently hang up their whistles, Saban, Meyer, and Steve Spurrier would definitely have a place in the conversation.) Vaught’s body of work will stand the test of time… in the SEC and all other places where college football is the lingua franca.

WALLACE WADE is the football equivalent to Mike Krzyzewski at Duke. Much as other basketball coaches enjoyed modest success in Durham, North Carolina, but never unlocked the full potential of the Blue Devil program, no football man has ever been able to deliver the goods at Duke the way Wade did. Sure, Steve Spurrier parachuted in to win an ACC title, and Bill Murray kept the Blue Devils relevant in the 1950s and ‘60s, but it was Wade who – after a solid run at Alabama – made magic on the gridirons of Tobacco Road. One of the great trivia questions in college football history has an answer connected to the Duke program Wade established in the 1930s and ‘40s. Durham is the only city other than Pasadena, California, to host the Rose Bowl game. The 1942 event against Oregon State was played on the Duke campus, a lasting testament to the strides the Blue Devils made under Wade. To put Wade’s Duke career in perspective, consider this: Wade lost roughly as many games in 16 seasons (36) as the Blue Devils have dropped in their last four seasons (35).

GLENN “POP” WARNER developed the screen pass, the single- and double-wing formations, and the safety-enhancing products known as the shoulder pad and the thigh pad. He also traveled to many different locales across the United States to both spread the gospel of football and win a truckload of games. Almost all of college football’s most iconic coaches – the ones who have left the deepest impressions on the public memory – excelled at one school. A few others maxed out at two. Pop Warner proved to be an elite coach at four schools, winning at least 71.3 percent of his games at Cornell AND Carlisle AND Pittsburgh AND Stanford. At Temple, a program that has never known extreme wealth or glory, Warner won “only” 61.2 percent of the time in a 58-game stint. Not since John the Baptist has a nomadic figure been this influential in the world. (That one-liner was brought to you by the spirit of Beano Cook.)

BUD WILKINSON doesn’t need an elaborate description of his excellence as a college football coach. The number “47” should suffice. It was and is truly remarkable that USC and Miami authored 34-game winning streaks in the early years of the 21st century; Wilkinson’s Oklahoma teams of the mid-1950s licked the Trojans and Hurricanes by 13 games. One could make the case that OU’s 47-game streak is the 56-game hitting streak of college football, a mark that won’t soon be broken. That’s a particularly fitting comparison: Wilkinson carried himself in the competitive arena with a studied grace every bit as pronounced as that of Joe DiMaggio. How’s that for “iconic”?

HENRY WILLIAMS has a “Barn” named after him. Why? Minnesota – for the young whippersnappers out there – was the best Big Ten program not named Michigan in the first 40 years of the 20th century. Illinois and Chicago had their moments, and Ohio State left an indelible mark on the 1930s. Wisconsin proved to be quite formidable in the first few decades of the Western Conference (as it was known from the 1890s through the first half of the 20th century). However, no school threw down with Michigan the way Minnesota could or did. Williams proved to be a very worthy competitor and foil for Michigan coach Fielding Yost. The first few years of the 20th century were marked by the ability of Michigan and Minnesota to trade punches in the college football world. Michigan annihilated Stanford in the first-ever Rose Bowl in 1902. Had the game been continuously staged over the next 13 years (it was discontinued before returning to the scene in 1916), Williams and Minnesota would have made frequent trips to Pasadena. The truly Golden Gophers went 14-0-1 in 1903, 13-0 in 1904, and 10-1 in 1905. Williams recorded 6-0-1 seasons in 1911 and 1915 before his career finally lost steam in 1920 and 1921. It is fair to say that Williams laid the groundwork for the Gopher teams of the 1930s and very early ‘40s. Taking the baton from Williams, head coach Bernie Bierman posted four separate unbeaten, untied seasons (all 8-0) to maintain Minnesota’s very lofty place in the Western Conference. Willams’s final numbers at Minnesota: 136-33-1 (.786) in 22 very distinguished seasons.

FIELDING YOST was, and still is, the leader and best of “The Leaders And Best.” Everything achieved by Yost’s formidable contemporary, Henry Williams of Minnesota, only magnifies what Yost himself accomplished on the sidelines. If Williams made Minnesota the second-best Western Conference program of the early 1900s with a .786 winning percentage in 22 seasons, Yost threw down an .833 mark in 25 to become number one. Almost untouchable, Yost lost just 29 games in those 25 seasons, striking fear into the hearts of opponents and doing more than anyone else to elevate Michigan’s standing on various all-time college football achievement lists.