Ken Sparks of Division II Carson-Newman earned his 323rd coaching victory Saturday, tying legendary coach Bear Bryant for sixth all-time.
When one thinks of legendary coaches in college football, the odds are good that Ken Sparks’ name seldom enters into the conversation.
You might want to rethink that.
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Sparks—in his 35th season at Division II Carson-Newman—earned his 323rd career coaching victory Saturday when his Eagles came back from a 35-27 halftime deficit to beat host Tusculum 55-25 at Greeneville, Tenn.
Sparks, 70, has coached at Carson-Newman since 1980. A graduate of the school in Johnson City, Tenn., Sparks has taken his team to the NAIA or NCAA playoffs 24 times, winning NAIA titles in 1983, 1986, 1988 and 1989 and tying for the NAIA crown in 1984.
The school moved up to NCAA Division II in 1993 and Sparks has taken Carson-Newman to the Division II national championship game three times, losing to Northern Colorado in 1996 and to Northwest Missouri State in both 1998 and 1999.
The Eagles are 5-1 this season and were 10-3 a year ago, advancing to the second round of the NCAA playoffs.
Sparks didn’t want any credit for the milestone.
"“I told (my players) if anybody wanted to talk about the number of victories that I had, you tell them that I didn’t make a play,” Sparks told the Associated Press."
Sparks is the winningest active coach in the nation and is nine wins short of fifth-place Larry Kehres, who won 332 games at Mount Union from 1986-2012.
The top four on the all-time, all-division list are John Gagliardi (489 at St. John’s in Minnesota), Eddie Robinson (408 at Grambling), Bobby Bowden (377 at West Virginia and Florida State) and Pop Warner (336 at six schools in the late 19th and early 20th century).
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