With CU’s Bill McCartney and Air Force’s Fisher DeBerry on the list, The Athletic ranking of the 25 best head football coaches of the 1990s takes into account only the work done in that particular decade.
Championships count big, but so do turnarounds and successful programs built from scratch. Four of the top five coaches on the list inherited difficult situations and engineered lasting excellence.
10. Bill McCartney, Colorado, One national championship (split in the polls), two top-five finishes and ranked finishes in all five seasons, Two Big Eight championships, 15 wins against ranked opponents, five in the top 10, coached running back Rashaan Salaam to the 1994 Heisman – McCartney’s placement, one spot ahead of fellow Bo Schembechler protege Lloyd Carr, might come down to one play — Kordell Stewart to Michael Westbrook, a 64-yard Hail Mary to shock the Wolverines on the final play in 1994 (Carr was not yet Michigan’s head coach, for the record). That win kept the Buffs in contention for the national championship, their third time in six seasons as true contenders. A loss to eventual champ Nebraska ended that, but Colorado still finished No. 3 and shared the 1990 title with Georgia Tech after an Orange Bowl thriller over Notre Dame. The program has not approached that stretch since.
20. Fisher DeBerry, Air Force, 78 wins, tied for 10th-most nationally, two WAC championships, two ranked finishes, five wins against ranked opponents, one in the top 10 – DeBerry, a College Football Hall of Famer and the winningest coach in Air Force history, led the program from 1984 to 2006 and was right in his sweet spot in the ’90s. He had just one losing season during the decade, highlighted by his 1998 team, which went 12-1 and crushed Washington in the Oahu Bowl. That season was a 35-34 loss at TCU away from perfection.
1. Bobby Bowden, Florida State
2. Bill Snyder, Kansas State
3. Steve Spurrier, Florida
4. Tom Osborne, Nebraska
5. Barry Alvarez, Wisconsin
6. Joe Paterno, Penn State
7. Phillip Fulmer, Tennessee
8. Dennis Erickson, Miami, Oregon State
9. Gene Stallings, Alabama
10. Bill McCartney, Colorado
11. Lloyd Carr, Michigan
12. R.C. Slocum, Texas A&M
13. Lou Holtz, Notre Dame, South Carolina
14. John Cooper, Ohio State
15. Frank Beamer, Virginia Tech
16. Mack Brown, North Carolina, Texas
17. Paul Pasqualoni, Syracuse
18. LaVell Edwards, BYU
19. Joe Tiller, Wyoming, Purdue
20. Fisher DeBerry, Air Force
21. George Welsh, Virginia
22. Dick Tomey, Arizona
23. Bruce Snyder, Cal, Arizona State
24. Terry Bowden, Samford, Auburn
25. Don James, Washington
Honorable mention: Bobby Ross, Don Nehlen, Ron McBride, Gary Pinkel, Ken Hatfield, Hayden Fry, Jackie Sherrill, Glen Mason, John Mackovic, Mike Price.
