Alabama Football: Top Ten Coaches With Most Losses To The Tide
By Ronald Evans
Three Coaches Tied at No. 10 on our WOAT list at 7 losses
WOAT No. 10 Doug Dickey – Tennessee and Florida (1964-1978)
Record Against Alabama Football: 3 Wins -7 Losses -1 Tie
In fairness to Doug Dickey his record against Alabama as Tennessee was pretty good, 3-2-1 to be exact. Florida was a different matter, as Dickey’s Gator teams were 0-5 against the Tide.
Doug Dickey’s coaching demise was averaging over 4.7 losses each year during his nine-year tenure for the Florida Gators.
WOAT No. 10 Les Miles – LSU (2005-2015)
Record Against Alabama Football: 5 Wins -7 Losses
The grass-snacking Mad Hatter of college football is LSU’s most successful coach since 1909 when Joe Pritchard led the Tigers to a 4-1-0 record.
Miles was an assistant coach at his alma mater Michigan, Colorado, Oklahoma State and the Dallas Cowboys before Oklahoma State hired him as Head Coach in 2001. In four seasons with the college Cowboys, Miles posted a less than stellar 28-21 record.
Miles built his head coach reputation from two improbable upsets of Oklahoma in 2001 and 2002. In 2002, Les Miles was honored for his turnaround efforts at Oklahoma State, by being named Big 12, Coach of the Year.
From 2005-2015, Miles’ LSU teams were 112-32, a 77.78 winning percentage (a tad under Joe Pritchard’s 80 percent.) Under Miles, the Bengal Tigers won SEC Championships in 2007 and 2011 and the National Championship in 2007. In 2011 Les won five National Coach of the Year Awards.
Miles did almost everything right in Baton Rouge with one exception. He lost to Alabama seven times and five of those losses came in his last five LSU seasons. LSU fired Les because they feared if they retained him, the losing streak to Alabama Football would never end.
WOAT: No. 10 Tommy Tuberville – Ole Miss and Auburn (1995-2008)
Record Against Alabama Football: 7 Wins – 7 Losses
Tommy Tuberville is a coaching enigma. In 21 seasons of being a head coach, Tuberville never became one of the top coaches of his era. He had a chance to do so at Auburn, but Auburn big-dollar boosters stymied Tuberville’s path to national prominence.
Much like Miles at Oklahoma State, Tuberville was not particularly successful in his four seasons as Head Coach of the Ole Miss Rebels. At Oxford, his record was 25-20, winning less than 56 percent.
Two days before playing Alabama in the 2003 season, Auburn sought to replace Tuberville with Bobby Petrino. Petrino was Tuberville’s Offensive Coordinator at Auburn in 2002, before becoming Head Coach at Louisville. When the clandestine meeting quickly became public knowledge, the Auburn administration backtracked and Petrino remained at Louisville.
Tuberville never forgave those biggest of the big-money Auburn boosters and they never forgave him for thwarting their plans. Tuberville led Auburn to a 13-0 record in 2004 and by the end of the 2007 season, Tuberville had won six straight games against Alabama Football.
In 2008, following a 36-0 loss to the Tide in Tuscaloosa, Tuberville saw a future where SEC domination would be wielded by Nick Saban. After two lackluster recruiting classes and the T-Town shutout, Tubs was desperate for a new locale. So desperate that he chose Lubbock, TX and the Texas Tech Red Raiders.
After three Red Raider seasons and the three Cincinnati Bearcat seasons that followed, Tuberville’s post-Auburn career was 45-31, a 59 percent winning record.
Tommy Tuberville has nowhere to coach in 2017. And he is desperate again, so much so he is talking about running for Governor of Alabama. It is not difficult to plot Tuberville’s tipping point on the road to oblivion. It was a November night in Tuscaloosa when Tuberville understood the SEC future belonged to Nick Saban and Alabama Football.