5 best college football coaches that never won a national championship
Bill Snyder. 2. player. 823. . HC | 1989-2005, 2009-2018. Wildcats
Bill Snyder won big in the Little Apple.
Bill Snyder is a coach that has never been given the credit he deserves for his incredible career. It doesn’t help that he spent his entire career at Kansas State. But the simple fact that Snyder was able to compete nearly every single year in the Big 12 with Oklahoma, Texas, and until they left for the Big Ten, Nebraska is a testament to how great of a coach he is.
Prior to Snyder’s arrival, Kansas State had only ever been to one bowl game and had a record of 299-510, which was the most losses by any Division I-A school at the time. Under Snyder, though the Wildcats were 215-117-1 while playing in 19 bowl games.
They weren’t just squeaking into these bowl games either, his Kansas State teams finished in the top ten of the AP poll five times, managing to win the Big 12 twice in that span as well. This is quite an accomplishment for a Wildcats program that hadn’t won a conference title since 1934 when he arrived
In his tenure there, Snyder was able to win his conference’s coach of the year award seven times while winning a multitude of different coach of the year awards in both 1998 and 2012. His only AP coach of the year came in 1998 when his team went 11-2 and were as high as No. 2 in the AP poll at one point in the season.
Snyder retired for three seasons from 2006-2008. In that span the Wildcats went 17-20, missing out on a bowl game twice. When he returned for his second tenure in 2009 his teams went 79-49, while being invited to a bowl game in every season except for his first season back and his last season ever in 2018.
He ranks No. 15 all-time in head coaching wins in college football, a monumental achievement coming into the program that he came into in 1989. But his most notable achievement is being inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2015
So no, Snyder was never able to get Kansas State to the top of college football, but his effort in turning the Wildcats into a respectable program is enough to get him on this list.