The “Mount Rushmore” of College Coaches

[Bobref]

In observance of the 94th anniversary of the untimely death of Knute Rockne, I was thinking of the greatest college coaches of all time. Who would be the 4 on your Mt. Rushmore? Try to avoid recency bias.

My 4, in no particular order, are Knute Rockne, Nick Saban, Bud Wilkinson and Bear Bryant.

For those who don’t know the details about Rockne, he coached Notre Dame from 1918-1930, compiling a record of 105-12-5, and winning 3 national championships, before dying in a plane crash on March 31, 1931, at the young age of 43. Rock turned the Irish into a national power with his brilliant offensive innovations. He practically invented the forward pass, and was among the first to use shifting and motion to create an offensive advantage at the point of attack. Who knows how many wins he would have put up, but for his untimely death.

[temptation]

Rockne, Bryant, Hayes, Yost

[Bash Riprock]

16 hours ago, temptation said:

Rockne, Bryant, Hayes, Yost

Coach Yost....finally made it into the Virginia high school football HOF

[Sparty]

Saban, Rockne, Paterno, Bryant

[23andCounting]

On 3/31/2025 at 2:36 PM, temptation said:

Rockne, Bryant, Hayes, Yost

Saban's not on the list because he had an embarrassment of riches that many coaches could have won with?

[Muda69]

There is John Gagliardi and then everyone else.  No question.

[Bobref]

1 hour ago, Muda69 said:

There is John Gagliardi and then everyone else.  No question.

I was the crew chief of an NCAA playoff game at St. John’s in the latter stages of his career. I had quite a bit of “interaction” with him. Not my favorite coach. By that time his son was doing most of the real coaching. His role seemed to more about alienating the officials than anything else.