Ranking the 25 best head coaches in college football history
By Zach Bigalke
16. Bobby Bowden
For much of Bobby Bowden’s career, he was the head coach who kept coming oh-so-close to winning a national title but who could never quite manage to get over the last hurdle. His career actually began at Samford in 1959, where Bowden went 31-6 over four seasons before taking over at West Virginia. After six years in Morgantown, Bowden arrived at Florida State with a decade of coaching experience.
Within a few years in Tallahassee, Bowden had turned the Seminoles into a fixture in the national top 20. Florida State went 10-2 in 1977, 11-1 in 1979, and 10-2 in 1980. They finished as high as second in the final polls in 1987 and 1989, beginning a stretch of 14 straight seasons in the top five of the final AP and Coaches polls. But until they joined the ACC in 1992, the national title eluded Bowden and the Seminoles.
The 1990s proved much kinder to Bowden, as his team won the 1993 national title capped by an Orange Bowl victory and went undefeated in 1999 to take the second BCS national championship game. The Seminoles played in each of the first three national championship games under the BCS system, falling to Tennessee in 1998 and Oklahoma in 2000. Despite hanging on for another decade, though, Bowden never could recapture that glory in the 21st century.