Ranking the Winningest College Football Coaches of All Time
- Joe Paterno and Bobby Bowden are 1-2 in the list of winningest major college football coaches and should be there for a while.
- Nick Saban recently retired just short of 300 career wins.
- Where will Dabo Swinney or other current head coaches finish on the list of the most accomplished head coaches ever?
Successful major college head coaches often have more power than university presidents. It is impossible to think about Penn State or Florida State without mentioning Joe Paterno and Bobby Bowden.
Paterno and Bowden lead the list of the winningest college football coaches. It is unlikely that any current head coaches will approach the gaudy win totals for Paterno and Bowden.
Legendary figures Bear Bryant and Pop Warner set the table for the college football coaches who came after them as they retired with the most wins by a college football coach.
How tough is life as a college head coach? Brian Kelly, Mack Brown, and Dabo Swinney have spent time listed in the first CFB coach fired odds.
Let’s look at the Winningest college football coaches with familiar names leading the way.
Who Is The Winningest Major College Football Coach
Joe Paterno coached the Penn State team from 1966 to 2011. He led the Nittany Lions to 40 winning seasons and five undefeated seasons. His 409 wins are 86 more than the previous record holder, Bear Bryant. Paterno and Bryant are on a short list of the most famous college football coaches.
The NCAA originally vacated 112 wins for Paterno as a result of his looking the other way when his longtime assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, was accused and convicted of child sexual abuse. However, those wins have been added back to Paterno’s record.
Paterno was the first coach to win at least once in the Fiesta, Orange, Rose, and Sugar Bowl games. His 1982 and 1986 Penn State teams won national titles. Paterno pushed for implementing a playoff system, which ironically was implemented three years after his coaching career ended.
Bowden Among the Best College Football Coaches Of All Time
For a brief time, Bobby Bowden was the winningest coach in college football history when the NCAA vacated over 100 of Paterno’s wins. An agreement between the NCAA and Penn State restored those wins, so Bowden slipped back into the No. 2 spot.
Bowden led Florida State to 33 consecutive winning seasons. His first stint as a head coach was at Howard, where he went 31-6 from 1959 to 1962. He won 42 games in six seasons at West Virginia before taking over at Florida State. In his second season, Florida State won 10 games. It was the first of 18 seasons with the Seminoles with at least ten victories.
There was a 14-year stretch when Florida State finished in the top 10 in the two national polls, with the 1993 and 1999 teams winning national titles. His teams went 13-0-1 in bowl games from 1982 to 1995.
Twelve wins were vacated in the 2006 and 2007 seasons due to the use of ineligible players. He still finished with 304 wins at Florida State and 377 overall victories.
Hard to Overlook Bear Bryant’s Legacy
Bear Bryant is still one of the most revered names in college football history. He retired in 1982 as the winningest college football coach, with 323 wins during stints at Texas A&M, Maryland, Kentucky, and Alabama. When making a list of the greatest college football coaches of all time, Bryant has to be near the top if he is not number one.
There is a museum, a hall, a road, and a football stadium named after Bryant.
Bryant won six national titles and 14 SEC titles. Bryant had just one losing season, which came in his first season at Texas A&M. He went 24-5-2 in his final three seasons with the Aggies before returning to his alma mater to coach Alabama in the 1958 season. He coached the Crimson Tide to three national championships in his first eight seasons.
Bryant retired with 232 of his 323 wins coming at Alabama. His record with the Crimson Tide was 232-46-9 and 137-28-5 in the SEC.
Pop Warner Paved The Way For Coaches and Players
The ultimate legacy for Pop Warner was not his 314 wins at Carlisle, Cornell, Iowa State, Pitt, Stanford, and Tulane but a youth football culture bearing his name. Most of the current NFL players got started in the game by playing Pop Warner football.
Warner won more than 60 games at three different schools. His final win total ranges from 314 to 319 based on which database you choose to believe.
Warner had three consecutive undefeated seasons at Pittsburgh, going 26-0 from 1915 to 1917. His Stanford teams lost two games or less seven times in his first eight seasons in Palo Alto. His coaching career ended at Temple in 1938.
Saban Set the Standard While At Alabama
The modern-day coach with the most wins is Nick Saban.
After 15 seasons as a Division I assistant coach and two more in the NFL with the Houston Oilers, Saban was hired as the head coach at Toledo in 1990. A year later, he accepted a defensive coordinator job with the NFL’s Cleveland Browns.
His career changed in 1995 when he returned to the college game as the head coach of Michigan State. He spent five seasons at Michigan State and five more at LSU, where he was 82-40-1. After a failed stint in the NFL with the Miami Dolphins, he returned to the college game at Alabama. There might be some college football coaches in great situations, but none can match what Saban walked into when he took over at Alabama.
Saban’s Crimson Tide won six national titles. In his last 16 seasons, Alabama won at least ten games and finished in the top 10 in the national polls.
He retired after the 2023 season with a record of 201-29 at Alabama and 292-71-1 as a college head coach.
The closest active head coach in terms of wins is North Carolina’s Mack Brown with 280, but Brown’s time at North Carolina could end sooner rather than later. Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz is the only other current Division I head coach with more than 200 wins.
Will any new college football coaches make a run at joining the 200-win club?
Who Has the Best Winning Percentage For College Football Coaches
Legendary Notre Dame head coach Knute Rockne went 102-12-5 for a winning percentage of .881. Frank Leahy, who also coached at Notre Dame, won 86.4 percent of his games.
Urban Meyer had successful stints at Bowling Green, Florida, Ohio State, and Utah, winning 85.4 percent of his games.
When looking at major college football coaches with at least 200 wins, Nebraska’s Tom Osborne leads the way by winning 83.6 percent of his games.
Dabo Swinney of Clemson is the only current major college head coach with at least 10 years at the helm who has won at least 80 percent of his games.
