Best college football coach in history from each state

Colorado: Bill McCartney

Colorado is still working to match the success of the McCartney era when it won its lone national title.

McCartney played for three seasons at Missouri before jumping into the high school coaching ranks three years later. After spending a decade as a football and basketball coach at Holy Redeemer High School in Detroit, McCarney received an opportunity to serve as an assistant at Michigan under legend Bo Schembechler.

Eight years later, McCartney was hired to his first head coaching job at Colorado, a program that had struggled tremendously over the prior five seasons. McCartney won a combined seven games in his first three years, but at least brought the Buffaloes to respectability with a string of four straight seasons of .500 or better from 1985-1988.

Things really picked up the next season, as the Buffaloes went 11-1 with their lone defeat coming in the Orange Bowl against Notre Dame. One year later, Colorado enjoyed the best season in school history with an 11-1-1 record and split the national title with Georgia Tech after getting revenge on the Fighting Irish in the Orange Bowl.

McCartney would help the Buffaloes finish with eight wins or more in each of his final four seasons, including a near miss at a second national title in 1994, to compile a lifetime record of 93-55 before retiring at just 54 years old. Colorado’s program completely fell apart in the mid-2000s, although current head coach Mike MacIntyre appears to be leading a resurgence with a 10-4 campaign in 2016.