Ranking the 25 best head coaches in college football history
By Zach Bigalke
18. George Washington Woodruff
George Washington Woodruff was a man of many successes. He served as Pennsylvania attorney general and acting Secretary of the Interior under Theodore Roosevelt. Before his political career was launched, though, Woodruff enjoyed a career spanning the 19th and 20th centuries as one of college football’s greatest head coaches. His teams at three different schools never finished a season with fewer than eight victories.
A former guard at Yale, Woodruff took over the Penn Quakers football team in 1892 and went 15-1. The only defeat in his inaugural season as a coach came against his alma mater as Yale went undefeated and won the national title. Two years later, without Yale on the schedule, Penn went 12-0 and won its first national championship. Penn went 14-0 for a second straight title in 1895 and won a third national championship by going 15-0 in 1897.
In their three national championship seasons, Woodruff’s Quakers posted 31 shutouts in 41 games. He went on to coach one season at Illinois, where he went 8-6 in 1903, and posted one more 10-win season at Carlisle in his final year of coaching in 1905.