College Football: 10 toughest coaching careers to follow

6. Robert Neyland (Tennessee)

General Robert Neyland won national championships on both sides of World War II in a career that spanned from 1926 to 1952. The man whose name now graces the stadium in Knoxville proved a tough coaching act to follow for the Volunteers, as Neyland remains to this day the winningest coach in Tennessee history.

A star at Army for the Black Knights, Neyland started his coaching career at West Point before moving to Tennessee in 1925. After a year as an assistant under M.B. Banks, Neyland was promoted the following season and immediately improved the team to 8-1 in his first year as a head coach. The following season, the Volunteers earned the Southern Conference title.

That only scratched the surface of his greatness. From 1926 through Tennessee’s last season in the Southern Conference in 1932, the Volunteers lost only two games in seven years. Upon becoming a charter member of the Southeastern Conference, Neyland’s teams regressed at first before adjusting to the new competition. By 1938, the Vols were claiming their first national championship.

Neyland won another national title two years later in 1940, before the war forced him to return to his original life as a military man. After the war, Neyland returned to Knoxville and got right back to winning ways. Earning back-to-back national championships in 1950 and 1951, Neyland stuck around one more season before riding off into the sunset. His successors struggled to get to the very top of the sport, and Tennessee fans were forced to wait for 16 years and four coaches before returning to the top of the mountain.