The 10 Worst College Football Coaching Tenures Of All Time

We’re going to stop short of calling these men the worst college football coaches of all time, because when things get this bad, there are multiple fires contributing to the disaster. And besides, a lot of these guys went on to have long careers as NFL assistants.

Some guys just aren’t cut out for college, and some just aren’t cut out to be head coaches.

Still, nobody in college football history has had a worse go of it than these 10 men.

Robert McNeish, Virginia Tech Hokies, 1948-50

Record: 1-25-3

This was so long ago that Virginia Tech was called VPI (Virginia Polytechnic Institute) and the mascot was the Gobblers.

Anyway, the lone highlight in the McNeish era came in the second-to-last game of the 1949 season, when the Gobblers beat lowly Richmond 28-13 on the road, then used the momentum from that day to tie VMI 28-28 on the last day of the year.

McNeish went 1-0-2 in his final three games of the 1949 season, and that was enough for the Gobblers to bring him back again for 1950. But they lost every game by at least 20 points and McNeish was replaced by Frank Moseley, who went 54-42-2 in 10 seasons at VPI, including six top-three finishes in the Southern Conference.

Stan Parrish, Kansas State Wildcats, 1986-88

Record: 2-30-1

Stan Parrish forever goes down as the last man to try winning at Kansas State before Bill Snyder actually did it. K-State at the time was universally regarded as the worst program in the country, and its 1987 game against Kansas, a depressing 17-17 tie, is lovingly remembered as the “Toilet Bowl.”

As always, there was reason to think Parrish might work out. In 1984, he had led Marshall to its first winning season since the plane crash, then backed it up with a 7-3-1 record in 1985.

Granted, Marshall was playing in Division I-AA (FCS), but wins are wins and K-State gave it a shot.

After beating Kansas in 1986, Parrish went 0-26-1. Remarkably, this did not kill his coaching career. For most of the next two decades, he was an assistant at Rutgers, Michigan, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Ball State, before getting another chance to be a head coach at Ball State in 2008.

Then he went 6-19 and got fired after two years.

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David Beaty, Kansas Jayhawks, 2015-present

Record: 3-34

David Beaty’s three wins at Kansas have come over:

• Rhode Island


• Southeast Missouri


• Texas

You can’t explain that.

Kansas lost its first game this season to FCS Nicholls State, and the local newspaper’s editorial board has called for Beaty to be fired immediately. The first-year athletics director, Jeff Long, says the evaluation process is ongoing, but we all know what’s going to happen.

Beaty is either going to get fired fast, or he’s going to leave Kansas with a record of 3-45 over four seasons, which would be the worst record ever in the history of major-college football.

Frank Lauterbur, Iowa Hawkeyes, 1971-73

Record: 4-28-1

Like Parrish, Lauterbur had been a head coach before Iowa hired him in 1971. He was the coach and AD at Toledo for most of the 60s and had a lousy record until 1967, when he went 9-1 and won the MAC, then had back-to-back undefeated seasons in 1969 and 1970.

Lauterbur was hired at Iowa on the basis of his excellent defenses at Toledo, but that never translated from the MAC to the Big Ten. Iowa had a winless 1973 season, and the fans and athletics director wanted him to fire his defensive coordinator.

He refused, and got himself fired instead.

That was the end of Lauterbur’s career as a head coach and as a college coach. He spent the remainder of his career as an assistant in the NFL and USFL.

Rick Venturi, Northwestern Wildcats, 1978-80

Record: 1-31-1

Rick Venturi was just 32 when he took over at Northwestern in 1978. It was his third job in coaching, following four years as an assistant and Purdue and one as the defensive backs coach at Illinois.

His lone win came in the second week of his second season, when Northwestern beat Wyoming 27-22. It was the first of two times the Wildcats topped 20 points that year.

Amazingly, Northwestern played No. 11 Michigan to within a touchdown in 1980, but wasn’t close to winning any other game. Venturi went on to have a long career as an NFL assistant, and went 2-17 in two different stints as an interim coach for the Colts and Saints.

Joe Avezzano, Oregon State Beavers, 1980-84

Record: 6-47-2

In 1981, Avezzano broke a 14-game losing streak with what was then the greatest comeback in college football history in a 31-28 win over Fresno State … and followed that with another 14-game losing streak.

Despite paying him a massive salary of $40,000 per year, Oregon State kept Avezzano around for the duration of his four-year contract before letting him get away to Texas A&M as an assistant.

If the name rings a bell, it’s probably because he was the special teams coach for the Dallas Cowboys from 1990-2002.

Richard Voris, Virginia Cavaliers, 1958-60

Record: 1-29

Check this out: Dick Voris’ first coaching job was a head coaching job at Hartnell Junior College in California, and he was awesome at it. He was 20-0-1 at Hartnell and parlayed that into an assistant job for the Los Angeles Rams and then Army.

So the resume was solid, if short, when Virginia made him the head coach in 1958.

His tenure began encouragingly, with a five-point loss to No. 18 Clemson in his debut, and a win over Duke in week two.

And then that was it. Twenty-eight losses in a row and it was on to the NFL for Voris, who was an assistant in the league until 1976.

John Coatta, Wisconsin Badgers, 1967-69

Record: 3-26-1

Imagine the excitement in Madison when John Coatta, a former Wisconsin quarterback, took the Badgers job after six seasons as an assistant at Florida State and two at Wisconsin.

But Coatta didn’t get his first win until the fourth game of this third season, when the Badgers beat Iowa 23-17. He tacked on wins over Indiana and Illinois before the season was over but by then Wisconsin was ready to move on.

Coatta dropped down to Mankato State, where he went 34-25-2 in six seasons.

Earl Brown, Auburn Tigers, 1948-50

Record: 3-22-4

Aurburn was Earl Brown’s fourth head coaching job after stints at Dartmouth, Merchant Marine and Canisius.

Turns out the SEC was a bit tougher.

Incredibly, Auburn got shut out seven times on the way to an 0-10 1950 season and scored four touchdowns the whole seasons, two of them against Wofford.

At that point, Brown figured he’d coach basketball, which he did at Harvard, Dartmouth, Merchant Marine and Canisius, recording a 72-70 record from 1941-48.

Tim Lovat, Utah Utes, 1974-76

Record: 5-28

Tim Lovat was a Utah guy through and through. He played both guard and linebacker there, he had two different stints as an assistant coach there, and in 1974 Utah figured he was just the man to take over.

Unlike many of the coaches on this list, Lovat never put up a winless season and he went 3-3 in WAC play in 1976, finishing fourth.

In fact, all five of Lovat’s wins at Utah were conference wins. So there’s something.

His next job was for Bill Walsh at Stanford, which propelled a career as an NFL assistant that lasted until 2003.