30 best college football coaches of all time, ranked
By Nick Villano
13. Glenn “Pop” Warner, Cornell 1897-98 1904-06, Pitt 1914-1923, Stanford 1924-1932, Temple 1933-38
Imagine being so good at your job that they name an entire subsection of football after you. That’s what happened with Glenn “Pop” Warner. Like Amos Alonzo Stagg in the same era, Warner is known for many innovations to the game that are still used today. The three-point stance? That was Pop Warner. The spread formation? That’s another Pop Warner special. Even throwing a pass with a spiral came from the mind of Pop Warner.
Who knows what would have happened if Cornell’s head coach never met Warner on a train and convinced him to play football in 1892. He quickly took to coaching, serving as a player’s coach before breaking off on his own.
His first coaching job came at two different schools. He coached at Iowa State from August to September, then he moved to Georgia for the rest of the season. He would continue to coach Iowa State through telegraph with advice for the week. And we want to give Nick Saban credit? He has the internet and only coaches one team. He ended up keeping his Iowa State job while taking a job with his alma mater Cornell. He eventually went on to coach Carlisle, where he executed the “hidden ball trick” where on a kick return he had a player hide the ball in his jersey against Harvard, and the returner was able to bring it back for a touchdown.
Warner was the man behind Jim Thorpe, known as one of the greatest athletes in the history of the world. However, despite the talent he put together at Carlisle, he went on to coach the University of Pittsburgh. That’s where he became a dominant coach. He won three national championships there, including in his very first year where he led a team of All-Americans to an undefeated record. He went on to coach at Stanford where he won his fourth national championship in 1926.