An Until Saturday listener submitted a voicemail for the podcast last week simply asking: Who would be on your Mount Rushmore of college football coaches?
Talk about an impossible task. How could anyone whittle down a list from more than a century of greatness to only four people?
David Ubben and Ari Wasserman tried anyway. Our answers are written out here. For full context, you can also listen to us and Mitch Light tackle this question on the latest edition of Until Saturday, which published Friday morning wherever you consume podcasts.
There are multiple ways to answer a question this big. Who is the greatest? Who won the most? Who is the best? Who epitomizes the sport to you individually?
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Here’s who we picked — and our differing criteria:
Ari Wasserman’s list
My approach to the Mount Rushmore prompt was to create a list that I personally identify with. To me, just picking the coaches who won the most games or had the best winning percentage is boring. Anyone can do that. But who were the people that I’ve admired or helped shaped the reason the sport has become my life?
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Like with most things I write, there will be some backlash, and I’m fully prepared for it. Just know that I went into this with the mission of personalizing it and I’d encourage you all to do it that way, too.
1. Nick Saban: I don’t care how funky you want to get with this list, Saban has to be on it. Outside of what Bill Belichick did with the New England Patriots — winning six Super Bowls in a league full of teams with relatively equal talent — there is no coach I admire more. I can list off the win totals and the national championships Saban won or the countless other mind-blowing stats. But Saban is bigger than that. He won during one of the most competitive eras of college football, and he did so by evolving and influencing the sport every step of the way. He’s the epitome of what college football coaching should represent. (Note: Bear Bryant didn’t make my list because I didn’t want two Alabama coaches, though he’s unquestionably worthy.)
2. Pete Carroll: Some may take exception to Carroll making the list because you could make the case he’s more known for what he’s done in the NFL than college football. But I was a West Coast kid and USC’s dynasty under Carroll coincided with my early teens. I can’t picture college football without Carroll’s Trojans. Yes, they won multiple national championships and were dominant on the field. But those USC teams were also so freaking cool. It wasn’t just that they won; it was how they won and with whom they won. Matt Leinart, Reggie Bush and the countless other names will forever be ingrained in my college football fandom. The open practices, the California culture, all of it. In a sport predominately dominated by southern teams, Carroll is the face of West Coast college football to me. There’s a reason nobody has been able to match the bravado and pizazz those USC teams had.
3. Woody Hayes: I’ve been accused by being a prisoner of the moment, which is shining through on my very current list. But during my 10 years on the Ohio State beat, I learned a lot about Hayes, what he stood for, the way he developed men and how he’s the perfect personification of old-school in coaching. Yes, he had a short fuse — which ultimately led to his coaching demise after he threw a punch at an opposing player in the 1978 Gator Bowl — but I never encountered a single person who played for Hayes who didn’t love the man. He also won five national championships during his time at Ohio State and set the foundation for a program that has enjoyed decades of success after his departure. Hayes probably wouldn’t be able to coach in today’s climate — he’d grab a face mask, slap a butt and get into faces in a way that’s frowned on now — but I find myself nostalgic for a period of time I wasn’t around to experience. When I think hard-nosed, old-school college football coach who loved his university and players more than himself, it’s Hayes who comes to mind.
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4. Dabo Swinney: This one is out there. I know it is. And I had a hard time adding him to this list because his inability to adapt in the portal era is leading to a Clemson slide. But how many other coaches in the modern era of college football have taken a solid program and turned it into an absolute juggernaut? Has anyone even come close to doing what he did? Every single coaching hire that’s made in the sport now is done so with the hopes that coach can duplicate what Swinney did with Clemson. There are other coaches out there with more national titles and more wins, sure, but the baseline fact that he accomplished something that nobody else has done recently still blows me away. I’m very opinionated about some of the things he says and how he approaches his job in 2024, but nobody can ever take away what he built at Clemson. I admire him greatly for that.
David Ubben’s list
My approach to this particular Mount Rushmore exercise is tagging the four coaches who represent greatness in college football in all its forms, regions and eras. I wanted it all to be represented — unlike Ari, who wanted to forget college football before the BCS era.
1. Nick Saban: He’s the single greatest coach in the history of college football. His sustained success at Alabama during the most competitive era of the sport shouldn’t be possible, and he captured national titles at two SEC schools, further validating his status as the all-time great. For all the coaches who preceded him and might have a higher win percentage, none of them did it in an era when it was as difficult as it was for Saban.
2. Bill Snyder: The simplest case for Snyder is this: No other coach in college football history could have been planted in Manhattan, Kan., in 1988 and done what Snyder did. The Hayden Fry disciple made The Little Apple his†mi home. In two separate stints, he turned a program that appeared in one bowl game and never finished ranked prior to his arrival into a conference champion and perennial power, sustaining success at a place where even a single dream year seemed impossible. Go back and read the iconic Sports Illustrated story “Futility U,” penned before his first game. Excellence at K-State is somehow taken for granted, which is the greatest possible compliment to a coach who captured a pair of Big 12 titles and won 11 games in six of seven seasons at one point.
3. Knute Rockne: He’s one of first great coaches in the sport, taking over under less-than-ideal circumstances near the end of World War I. In 13 seasons, he lost more than one game just twice and won three national titles, amassing a 105-12-5 record and turning Notre Dame football into a national phenomenon. The Four Horsemen, immortalized by the great Grantland Rice, is quintessential college football lore.
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4. Eddie Robinson: Robinson took over at Grambling in 1941. He left in 1997. Over those five decades, he persisted and won over and over again, capturing nine HBCU national titles and 17 SWAC titles, earning a status synonymous with HBCU football in a way no other coach has done in his division of football. For much of his career, plenty of the country looked down on Robinson and never considered him for opportunities he likely deserved. He might not have taken them anyway.
He thrived where he was in a way no one has ever done, embracing his own personal philosophy: “Whatever league you’re in, whatever level, win there.”
Honorable mention: Most entertaining
Steve Spurrier: He’s the troll king of college football, poking and prodding anyone and everyone, enraging people in the sport who might take themselves a little too seriously. And he was a man after our own heart with a willingness to always take a breather for a good tee time. He saved the best arrows for his rivals. From telling Tennessee that you can’t spell Citrus without UT to noting he loved to play Georgia early in the season because he could count on a few players being suspended for offseason shenanigans, even the fans who hated Spurrier most had to be smiling in their heart of hearts. Funny is funny. “There are no Vanderbilts in the NFL,” Spurrier said of his failed stint in the nation’s capital.
Barry Switzer: The bootlegger’s boy was the outlaw of the sport throughout his decade and a half of dominance at Oklahoma. He turned the Sooners into a juggernaut on the back of his version of the wishbone. He had his flaws, but his distaste — some might argue disregard — for NCAA rules looks prescient in retrospect. “If we’re going to call a babysitter for my children, they always say, ‘Daddy, call (then-Oklahoma quarterback) J.C. Watts.’ I wonder if the NCAA would frown on paying your babysitter $100 an hour,” Switzer said in 1979. These days, Switzer is still living in Norman, and I can’t help but appreciate his willingness to pick up the phone just about every time I’ve called him over the past 15 years. He’s always got interesting perspective on just about anything.
Mike Leach: The Hal Mumme disciple is almost single handedly responsible for the proliferation of the spread offense in high school and college football. His offense was simple but effective and his coaching tree has all put their own spin on many of those principles as the Air Raid has evolved into something more balanced in many stops under coaches like Lincoln Riley, Sonny Dykes, Dana Holgorsen and Kliff Kingsbury. His penchant for well-considered thoughts on anything from dating advice to mascot brawls and the countless stories of his idiosyncrasies are legendary. And he somehow found time to write a book on Geronimo while being an active college football coach in addition to being an expert on pirates. It’s still crushing he left us too early in 2022 at age 61.
Lee Corso: I’m too young to remember Corso as a college football coach, but he’s still a coach by trade. And no coach has provided more moments of glee and entertainment than Corso, whose love of donning mascot heads to serve as the official kickoff of fall Saturdays is a tradition he made all his own. He’s the biggest legend in college football television history. I can’t condone the language, but it’s hard to imagine one day I will watch this clip of Corso at Houston and not laugh. It’s the Fowler and Herbstreit reactions for me. Of all the coaches on this list, Corso might be the one I truly love most.
(Top photos of Nick Saban and Bill Snyder: Streeter Lecka and Jamie Squire /Getty Images)