Knute Rockne & Howard Jones
Who would you rather have coaching your college football team: Knute Rockne or Howard Jones?
Knute Rockne was born on March 4, 1888 in Voss, Norway. His family immigrated to the US, and Knute ended up playing football for Notre Dame, where he was an All-American. He became an assistant coach at Notre Dame in 1914 and would continue as an assistant through 1917. He was hired as head coach of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in 1918.
Coach Rockne holds the record for the highest winning percentage for an FBS program with a percentage of 88.1%. His teams went 105-12-5 during his time at Notre Dame. He won the only Bowl game his team played in, 27-10 vs. Stanford. (Notre Dame’s administration voted not to participate in bowl games after that win in the Rose Bowl, a ban that would last until the 1969 season.)
He won four national championships while at Notre Dame: 1919, 1924, 1929, and 1930. His career was cut short by a fatal plane crash in 1931.
Howard Jones was born on August 23, 1885 in Excello, Ohio. Jones played for the Yale Bulldogs, where his teams went 28-0-2 and never lost a game. Yale claims a National Championship for all three seasons. After graduating from Yale, Jones became head coach for Syracuse.
Over his coaching career Jones would coach: Syracuse (1908); Yale (1909); Ohio State (1910); Iowa (1916-1923); Duke (1924); and USC (1925-1940). He won two Big Ten Championships and seven PCC Championships. His overall record at major schools was 188-63-18 with a winning percentage of 73.2%. (While at USC, he also coached John Wayne.)
Jones is primarily remembered for his career at USC, where he won four national championships: 1928; 1931; 1932; and 1939. He did win one for Yale in 1909. So in total he has five national championships and can lay claim to being the coach who started the USC Trojan football dynasty. His teams also played in five Rose Bowls and won them all.
It should be noted in head to head matchups that Knute was 4-2 vs. Howard Jones. One of Jones’ victories came when he was coaching the Iowa Hawkeyes; the other was when he was coaching USC. Knute’s victories were all Notre Dame victories against USC.
So there you have it, a brief summary of two legendary coaching careers. Who would you rather have coaching your college football team: Knute Rockne or Howard Jones? Comment via the button below.