30 best college football coaches of all time, ranked

14. Bo Schembechler, Michigan 1969-1989

Jim Harbaugh took a long time to get the best out of his Michigan Wolverines, but even after making the College Football Playoff this season, he hasn’t taken Big Blue to the heights they saw under Bo Schembechler.

Many don’t know that Schembechler started his career at Ohio State. He was a graduate assistant, and eventually a few years later became their assistant coach under Woody Hayes. He also worked under legends like Ara Parseghian, who he was an assistant to at Northwestern. Schembechler got the ears of some of the greatest football minds in history before becoming a great head coach himself.

Schembechler eventually got the head coaching job at the University of Miami (Ohio). That’s where he played football, so he was able to go back to where it all began. He coached there for six years, winning two Mid-America Championships.

He was then hired as the head coach for the Michigan Wolverines. He became one of the greats in Ann Arbor. The team went 194-48 during his 21 years as head coach. He won a ridiculous 13 Big Ten titles. The one mark on his resumé is Michigan never won the national championship under him and he had a .200 winning percentage in the Rose Bowl. Still, he finished in the top ten 16 times and made Michigan into one of the great teams every single year.

Interesting fact: before Schembechler took the job at Michigan, he had an interview at Wisconsin. It went so terribly, years later he convinced Bob Knight not to take the basketball coaching job there.