In late March, an “Until Saturday” listener submitted a voicemail for the podcast simply asking: Who would be on your Mount Rushmore of college football coaches? It led to a podcast episode and column, which you can read here.

That same listener submitted another Mount Rushmore topic: Who are the biggest villains in college football?

This was a tricky topic to handle, especially considering there have been truly reprehensible people affiliated with this sport. We’re going to ignore those people.

We instead focused mostly on what happened on the field and didn’t go back further than 1980.

Here are our lists.

Ari Wasserman
1. Larry Scott, Pac-12 commissioner: Regardless of who you root for, there’s probably a part of you that despises the fact that the Pac-12 no longer exists. You could blame television networks, individual programs that pursued realignment opportunities, university presidents or other commissioners, but nobody’s actions made the current reality of this sport possible more than Scott’s.

Where did Scott go wrong? It’s a combination of things ranging from poor television deals to expensive office buildings in San Francisco. The thing that stands out the most? The creation of the Pac-12 Network and, more importantly, the fact that Scott couldn’t figure out a way to get it included in more cable and/or satellite television packages. That led to USC and UCLA looking for more lucrative television rights deals and ultimately the demise of an entire conference.

2. Urban Meyer, Florida and Ohio State coach: Who has a more complicated legacy than Meyer? On one hand, he is a three-time national championship-winning head coach. On the other, trouble arose during his tenures at Florida and Ohio State.

While he was at Florida, Ohio State fans loathed him because he represented the big, bad SEC and the team the Buckeyes couldn’t beat, including in the 2006 national title game. After Meyer departed — a time during which he was mocked incessantly for having what many considered to be a made-up medical condition — he went to Ohio State, a program disliked by fans around the nation. He lifted Ohio State’s program to what it is today, winning a national title along the way, but he left shortly after a scandal involving former assistant coach Zach Smith.

Meyer is unquestionably one of the most successful coaches of all time, but he is viewed by many as someone who broke rules along the way. He did a bunch of winning, and there were a bunch of off-the-field incidents, which followed him to his short stint in the NFL as the Jacksonville Jaguars’ coach. That’s quite the hate cocktail for fans looking to despise a person.

3. Jim Harbaugh, Michigan coach: Harbaugh, now the coach of the Los Angeles Chargers, is one of the most eccentric personalities to ever coach in college football. He revived Stanford’s program and was on the doorstep of winning a Super Bowl with the San Francisco 49ers. Then he showed up at Michigan and immediately started posting veiled shots on Twitter at opponents, climbing trees, throwing the football while shirtless and arranging satellite camps.

After failing to beat his arch-rival or reach the Big Ten Championship Game in the first five years of his tenure, he finally knocked off Ohio State and immediately intimated that Buckeyes coach Ryan Day was “born on third base.” In the final year of his time at Michigan, Harbaugh was involved in two NCAA investigations and then won a national title on the heels of one of the biggest cheating scandals the sport has ever seen. He’s a winner. He walks to the beat of his own drum. And he thumbed his nose at the NCAA on the way to winning it all. This sport is going to miss him.

4. Brian Bosworth, Oklahoma linebacker: A linebacker who played violently and was the physical embodiment of his position, Bosworth was college football’s bad boy. He played for Oklahoma for three seasons, was a two-time unanimous All-American and the winner of the first two Butkus Awards — still the only two-time winner. But if Bosworth’s crushing hits and mullet-styled bleached haircut put people on the offensive, don’t forget how the sport took it when he was suspended from the Orange Bowl after his junior year for taking steroids. During the third quarter of the Orange Bowl, Bosworth removed his football jersey to reveal a shirt that read, “NCAA: National Communists Against Athletes.” He’s one of the most notorious players in college football history.

Sam Khan
1. Mark Emmert, former NCAA president: Fair or not, Emmert became a punching bag and a symbol for the NCAA’s resistance to change during his 12-year tenure, which concluded in 2023. At a time when college sports needed a visionary to guide it through what would be its most significant period of change in its history, it instead had Emmert arguing why college athletes should be prevented from profiting off their name, image and likeness.

He later lobbied Congress to solve the problem for the NCAA, to no avail. The organization’s hand was eventually forced via resounding defeats in court and state laws that launched in 2021, which led to the messy situation we now have.

The NCAA is a membership-driven organization, and meaningful change on NIL or player compensation would have required consensus from school presidents, which he never had. But when it became obvious something had to give, the opportunity to be more proactive on those issues was never the route taken. Someone had to shoulder the blame, and Emmert became that figurehead.

2. Sherwood Blount, former SMU booster: In an era when paying players or luring recruits with money was heresy, nobody skirted the rules quite like the Southwest Conference in the 1980s. And nobody in the SWC perfected the practice quite like SMU, which received the “Death Penalty” as a result. Blount, a Dallas real estate developer and SMU booster, was one of the “Naughty Nine” boosters who received a ban from association with the program on the heels of multiple recruiting violations, and he was known as the most notorious of the group. He famously told NCAA investigators “I can damn well spend my money any way I damn well please.” Truly a man ahead of his time.

3. “The U” — 1980s-era Miami Hurricanes: The Hurricanes of the 1980s (and even early 1990s) were swagger embodied. They kicked everyone’s rear ends and then rubbed it in their opponents’ faces, which earned the Canes plenty of detractors. If you’ve seen the ESPN 30 for 30 “The U,” you know what I mean. Alonzo Highsmith, Jerome Brown and Winston Moss refusing to shake hands during the coin toss before playing Oklahoma in 1986. Randal Hill running through the Cotton Bowl tunnel after clobbering Texas. The NCAA made a rule penalizing excessive celebration, which became dubbed “the Miami rule” because it was clear which team was the inspiration for it. Regardless, the Canes won — a lot — notching four of their five national titles in that era.

4. Notre Dame: The current Fighting Irish aren’t as polarizing as they used to be, but think of the program a little bit like the New York Yankees: a ton of historical success that earned the Irish a lot of haters. The Irish have the fourth-most wins in college football history, the second-most national titles among current FBS schools (and fourth-most overall). Notre Dame is the only major program with its own network TV rights contract and the only major program not in a football conference, and it has received special consideration in college football’s postseason structure (see: the BCS’ “Notre Dame rule”). For a long time, the Fighting Irish were the anti-underdogs. Tony Kornheiser used to call Notre Dame “The University of Football in America.” Oh, and lest we forget, the Irish had run-ins with those old Miami teams, including the birth of the infamous “Catholics vs. Convicts” T-shirt in 1988.

Mitch Light
1. Scott, George Kliavkoff, Pac-12 presidents: I’m just sad that the Pac-12 will soon no longer exist.

Those who follow the league closely say the blame should be spread out to both of the commissioners, Scott and Kliavkoff, as well as the school presidents throughout the league. It’s just mind-boggling that there is no longer a power conference on the West Coast.

2. Steve Spurrier, Florida and South Carolina coach: Spurrier was a master at needling his opponents during his successful stints at Florida and South Carolina. One of his best lines: “But the real tragedy was that 15 hadn’t been colored yet” after a fire at a library at Auburn destroyed 20 books.

3. Charlie Weis, Notre Dame and Kansas coach: Weis was despised by college football fans around the country from the time he uttered the phrase “decided schematic advantage” as the coach at Notre Dame. He used that decided advantage to go 35-27 in five seasons at Notre Dame and 6-22 in two-plus seasons at Kansas.

4. Barry Switzer, Oklahoma coach: Switzer was the bad boy of college football during a 16-run in Norman that included run-ins with the SEC (not the conference, the actual Securities and Exchange Commission) and the NCAA. He went 157-29-4 overall and an astounding 100-11-1 in the Big Eight.4. Barry Switzer, Oklahoma coach: Switzer was the bad boy of college football during a 16-run in Norman that included run-ins with the SEC (not the conference, the actual Securities and Exchange Commission) and the NCAA. He went 157-29-4 overall and an astounding 100-11-1 in the Big Eight.

Honorable Mention
Cam Newton: Florida and Auburn quarterback
Hugh Freeze: Ole Miss and Auburn coach
Johnny Manziel: Texas A&M quarterback
Nick Saban: Toledo, Michigan State, LSU and Alabama coach
Jameis Winston: Florida State quarterback
Bobby Petrino: Arkansas, Louisville, Western Kentucky coach
Desmond Howard: Michigan wide receiver
Baker Mayfield: Oklahoma quarterback
Deion Sanders: Colorado coach
Tommy Tuberville: Ole Miss, Auburn, Texas Tech, Cincinnati coach
Craig James: former SMU running back and father of former Texas Tech receiver Adam James
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