20 best college football coaches without a national championship
By Brad Weiss
Hayden Fry
, SMU, North Texas State, Iowa
In 1962, Hayden Fry took over the football program at SMU. He ran that program for ten seasons, before heading off to North Texas State for the next six years. When he finally got to Iowa in 1979, he was ready to turn the Hawkeyes into a national power, and he did just that.
At SMU, Fry was actually named the SWC Coach of the Year in his first season. That would just be a small sample of the kind of career he would put together, which included three Big Ten titles with the Hawkeyes. When his career ended, Fry had won over 230 games over his three stops, and was named to the College Football Hall of Fame in 2003.
When Fry took over the program at Iowa, they were a complete mess. They had lost 17 straight games prior to his arrival, and but his wide-open passing game would change their fortunes. After finishing with a losing record in his first two seasons, Fry had only three more for the rest of his time at Iowa, finishing in the top-25 in the country ten times.
Fry’s impact on the program is still felt today, as his former assistant is the current head coach. The Iowa Hawkeyes program is consistently a contender in the Big Ten, and Fry is a big reason why that is the case. He has not coached a game for Iowa in nearly 20 years, but his impact on the program will last forever.