5 best college football coaches that never won a national championship
4. player. 872. . HC | 2001-Present. Horned Frogs . Gary Patterson
Gary Patterson turned TCU into a Power 5 program.
Gary Patterson is the only coach on this list that is still coaching, but his dominance at TCU both as a mid-major school, and now as a Power 5 school is very impressive.
Patterson now has 19 full years as a head coach under his belt and is already tied for No. 38 on the all-time head coaching wins list with a record of 172-70. Patterson got his coaching start as a graduate assistant at Kansas State in 1982. He then had a plethora of other jobs before landing at New Mexico as their defensive coordinator.
He would soon be hired as the defensive coordinator at TCU, eventually taking over as the head coach of the Horned Frogs in their 2000 bowl game.
At the time TCU was a mid-major school playing in both Conference-USA and the Mountain West. TCU would become known as one of the elite mid-major teams under Patterson alongside Boise State in the 2000s. This would come to a pinnacle in the 2009 season where TCU would go undefeated in the regular season before falling to Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl.
Patterson would one-up himself in the following year, however, finishing the regular season undefeated once again, and this time defeating Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl. This would be only TCU’s second undefeated season in their history.
TCU’s grand success under Patterson ultimately allowed them to join the ranks of the power five by joining the Big 12 in 2012. It would be rough sledding at first, but in 2014 the Horned Frogs would arguably have their best team ever as they would win the Big 12 and narrowly miss out on the first College Football Playoff.
In his tenure at TCU Patterson has won one C-USA championship, one Big 12 title, and four Mountain West conference titles. He has been named the National Coach of the Year twice by the Associated Press in both 2009, and 2014 and has won his conference’s coach of the year four times.
While Patterson’s list of accomplishments is long, it is still missing a national title. It will be very difficult for Patterson to get one at TCU, but with everything he has done in his career, it wouldn’t be a surprise in the slightest.