Ranking the 25 best head coaches in college football history
By Zach Bigalke
3. Pop Warner
Glenn “Pop” Warner was one of the great mastermind head coaches of the game. He spent more than four decades innovating the sport of college football from coast to coast. Warner was a guard at Cornell before taking his first head coaching job at Georgia in 1895. With the Bulldogs, he went 3-4 in his first season before engineering a perfect 4-0 record in 1896. From there he returned to his alma mater, where he went went 15-5-1 in his first two-year stint as head coach of the Big Red.
In 1899, Warner left Cornell to coach at the Carlisle Indian School. He spent five years in Pennsylvania, going 11-2-1 in his final season before returning to Cornell for three more years at his alma mater. By 1907, he decided to return to Carlisle. He led the team to five double-digit winning seasons in eight years. Then Warner made another shift that would greatly impact his overall legacy among head coaches. The move proved prescient, as Carlisle shuttered its football team three years later.
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At Pittsburgh, Warner began his tenure with a 30-1 record and three national championships in his first four years. He spent five more years at Pitt before another relocating to Stanford. There he won a fourth national title in 1926, leading Stanford to a 10-0 regular season and a 7-7 tie against Alabama in the Rose Bowl. Warner posted a winning record at all six schools where he coached.