25 best college football coaches never to win a national title
- Head Coaching Record: 202-128-8 at Bowling Green 1968-76, and West Virginia 1980-2000
- Closest He Came to Winning a National Championship: 1993; 11-1, lost the Sugar Bowl, No. 7 final ranking
- Notable: 1993 Big East conference championship, Walter Camp Coach of the Year Award (1988), Bobby Dodd Coach of the Year (1988), AFCA Coach of the Year (1988), Big East Coach of the Year (1993), College Football Hall of Fame (2005)
Don Nehlen is best known for his time at West Virginia, in which he posted a career head coaching record of 149-93-4 that makes him the school’s all-time winningest coach, but Nehlen was also the head coach at Bowling Green for nine seasons from 1968-1979. A quarterback for the Falcons from 1955-1957, Nehlen led his alma mater to a 53-35-4 record during his tenure. After three seasons as the quarterback coach under Bo Schembechler at Michigan, Nehled was hired as the head coach of the Mountaineers in 1980.
Nehlen had immediate success in Morgantown. West Virginia stopped a string of four consecutive seasons with a 6-6 mark in Nehlen’s first season, then went 9-3 and finished with a Top 20 ranking in each of the three following campaigns. In 1988, Nehlen led the Mountaineers to an undefeated 11-0 regular season, but lost to national champion Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl and finished with a No. 5 final ranking in the AP Top 25.
West Virginia contended for a national title again in 1993 following an 11-0 undefeated regular season and the program’s first Big East Conference title, but were blown out by Florida in the Sugar Bowl and finished No. 7 in the final AP Poll. Nehlen coached seven more seasons before retiring with a career record of 202-128-8 as a head coach.
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