5 best college football coaches that never won a national championship

Bo Schembechler won a lot at Michigan but never won it all.

Arguably the most recognizable coach on this list, Bo Schembechler coached Michigan for 20 years winning 13 Big Ten titles in that span but was never able to win a national championship. His teams finished inside the top 10 of the AP poll a whopping 16 times including a stretch from 1969-1978 where they did this for 10-straight seasons.

To have never formed a team that was able to win a national title is rather unbelievable, but even more unbelievable when you know that Woody Hayes, Schembechler’s former mentor and coaching rival at Michigan, won five national titles as a coach.

Schembechler just wasn’t able to get over this hill despite always having great teams in Ann Arbor. Part of this failure to win a national title was due to the fact that he went just 5-12 in his bowl games at Michigan and 2-10 in the Rose Bowl.

While he often lost in bowl games, the same cannot be said for Schembechler against Hayes in the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry. Schembechler gained a name for himself right away as in his first season the Wolverines defeated the defending national champion Buckeyes who were on a 22-game winning streak. This started the famous 10-year war between the two coaches in which Schembechler went 5-4-1 against the Buckeyes.

But despite that early success, Schembechler would lose his first seven bowl games at Michigan, with his first victory coming in the Rose Bowl in 1980. This obvious failure in big games was disappointing, but it didn’t disguise the repertoire that Schembechler built up in his years as a Wolverines.

He went 234-65-8 combined between his first coaching job at Miami (OH) and Michigan placing himself at No. 12 on the all-time wins list. The 234 wins are even more than Woody Hayes was able to achieve in his long career.

In all, Schembechler won 15 conference titles combined at both schools, multiple national Coach of the Year Awards, one MAC Coach of the Year, and six Big Ten Coach of the Year Awards. To top it all off, Schembechler was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1993.

Though Michigan’s struggles in bowl games under Schembechler is clear, it is hard to deny everything else he accomplished in his distinguished career, placing him as the greatest college football coach to never win a national championship.

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