When talking about the greatest husker coaches of all time, the man in this photo is nowhere near the list … yet.
Most Husker fans can name the two coaches we all consider the best of the best, in Bob Devaney and Tom Osborne. We know them because
Most Husker fans can name the two coaches we all consider the best of the best, in Bob Devaney and Tom Osborne. We know them because they brought the Huskers their National Championships and hundreds of wins.
Those two coaches might be the ones that every knows, but the Nebraska football team has actually had a number of other really good coaches come through the program. Most of those coaches were simply lost in obscurity because they either weren’t here all that long, or they were winning games long before many people were paying attention to the program.
Conference championships used to be the way to measure how good a Cornhusker coach was and the guys on this list piled up a surprising number of them. Check out this list and see some of the best coaches that came through the school long before the Cornhuskers were one of the biggest and best schools in the country.
Next: W.C. Cole
W. C. Cole
W. C. Cole coached the Nebraska football team from 1907 to 1910 and he was quite successful in his short run here. His football career started at Michigan when he played for legendary coach Fielding Yost.
In 1903, he got his first head coaching job with Marietta, and then coached two years for Virginia when he went 12-6. In 1907 he took over the Cornhuskers and went 8-2 and won a conference championship in his first season at the helm.
His second season was almost as good going 7-2-1 and finishing second in the conference (Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association) While he took a step back in his third season, his fourth season was his second conference title and he went 7-1.
Overall, Cole was 25-8 for the Huskers and seemed to be on his way to a great career. The hitch was that back then, coaches didn’t need to be full time members of the staff. That changed after the 1910 season when the school decided all staff members needed to be part of the faculty.
Cole had a ranch in Montana he needed to pay more attention to than the job would allow so he left. He went out in a big way as his final game with the Nebraska football program was a 119-0 win over the Haskell College Indians. That’s still the highest point total and biggest win in school history.
Next: Fred Dawson
Fred Dawson
Fred Dawson took over the Nebraska football team in 1921 and coached for a short four years. His first year with the team he coached his team to a 7-1 record and got his first conference championship.
1922 was his second straight 7-1 record and yet another conference championship. His third season in Lincoln meant he got his third straight conference championship despite not posting quite as sparkling a record.
In his third season, he went just 4-2-2 overall. In the Missouri Valley conference, he went just 3-0-2. His final year with the school was not nearly as good as his first three. He went just 5-3 overall and 3-1 in conference.
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By the end of his Husker coaching career, he lost just one conference game and posted a 23-7-2 record. In 1925 he moved onto Denver and four years after that he went to Virginia. He didn’t have success with either of those schools anywhere close to what he did for the Huskers.
Once Dawson retired from coaching, he found himself back in the state of Nebraska. He became an industrial psychologist and also a motivational speaker. Dawson passed away in 1965 at an Omaha area hospital.
Next: Dana X. Bible
Dana X. Bible
Hardcore football fans have likely heard of Dana Bible, but they may not remember he was a longtime Nebraska football coach. Bible took over as the head coach for the Huskers in 1929 and took his teams to six Big Six conference championships in eight years.
Overall, Bible posted a 50-15-7 record for NU and he had an even better record in the Big Six when he posted a 33-3-4 record in conference. One of the reasons he might not be as well known as a Husker coach is because he had a long career with other teams.
Before he came to Nebraska, Bible was a coach for Texas A&M where he was arguably as successful there as he was with Nebraska. In 1937, Bible left the Huskers to take a job trying to turn around the Texas Longhorns.
While he struggled originally with Texas, he’s arguably the man that started them down the path of becoming the national power they were for decades. He won a couple of Cotton Bowls and several conference championships, but it should be pointed out he had quite a bit more success with the Nebraska football team than he did with the Longhorns.
Next: Ewald O. Stiehm
Ewald O. Stiehm
While people think the things Tom Osborne and Bob Devaney were able to do are impressive, Stiehm had arguably the best record of any Husker coach. When he was with the Nebraska football team he lost just two games and he never lost a conference game.
Betsided
Stiehm came to NU in 1911 when the school was still in the Missouri Valley. In that first year, he went 5-1-2 and 2-0 in the conference, meaning he got the championship in his first season. The next year, he won yet another Missouri Valley championship when he went 7-1 and again 2-0 in the conference. That one loss to Minnesota in 1912 ended up being the last time Stiehm lost a game at Nebraska.
Year three brought an undefeated 8-0 and 3-0 record and his third straight conference championship. Year four, he went 7-0-1 and his fifth and final year he went 8-0. In other words, while you may not have heard of this guy, he went undefeated in his final 28 games posting a record of 27-0-1.
Despite the career record of 34-2-3 and 14-0-1 in conference, he left the Nebraska football team to go coach at eventual conference opponent, Indiana. He had a much toughter go there, eventually posting a 20-18 record before leaving coaching. Still, there are few Huskers’ coaches who posted career records anywhere near Stiehm.
Next: Walter C. Booth
Walter C. Booth
Walter C. Booth started and ended his college coaching career for the Nebraska football team before the team was even part of a conference.
Saturday Blitz
Booth took over the team in 1900 and coached until 1905. His first season, he went 6-1-1 and went 6-2 in his second season. His third year with the school was the beginning of an undefeated run as he went 9-0 in 1902.
It wasn’t just that the Nebraska football team won nine games and no losses. it’s that the team didn’t even allow their opponents to score a single point. That shutout streak lasted until the seventh game of the next season. The losing streak continued, as the team went 10-0 in 1903.
The Huskers allowed opponents to score, but they only allowed two of those opponents to score a total of 11 points. The 1904 team won it’s first two before finally losing, snapping the Huskers 24 game regular season winning streak.
That run was a school record right up until the 1990s when Tom Osborne’s squad won 26 straight games before they were beaten by Arizona State. Booth posted two final winning records, though they weren’t nearly as good as his undefeated season but he never won less than seven games.
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After five seasons, Booth finished his college coaching career with a 46-8-1 record.