GARY PINKEL
Head Coach, 1991-2000
Toledo's all-time leader in victories with 73 from 1991-2000, Gary Pinkel, is being inducted as the winningest head coach at both the University of Toledo and the University of Missouri. He is the first coach from Toledo and the sixth coach from Missouri to be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.
Pinkel began his head coaching career at Toledo in 1991 and during the next 10 years he would take the Rockets to new heights, winning 65.9 percent of his games and amassing a 73-37-3 record. His nine winning seasons at Toledo included the 1995 MAC championship, with the Rockets going 11-0-1 and finishing at No. 24 in the final polls. Pinkel would lead Toledo to three other MAC West Division titles. In 1997, the Rockets finished 9-3, climbing as high as No. 18 in the national rankings. They repeated as division champions again in 1998 with a 7-5 record. In his final season with the Rockets in 2000, the team went 10-1, including a 24-6 win at Penn State. The team finished the regular season with the MAC West Division title and ranked No. 25 in the AP Poll. He was named the MAC Coach of the Year in 1995 and 1997.
Pinkel took over at Missouri in 2001, leading the Tigers to 10 winning seasons, five conference division titles, 10 bowl appearances and six bowl victories. He finished his career at Missouri with an overall record of 118-73. Pinkel's Missouri teams posted final top-20 national rankings five times, including AP rankings of No. 4 in 2007 and No. 5 in 2013. In 2007, he was named the National Coach of the Year by FieldTurf, and he won conference coach of the year honors in 2007 (Big 12) and 2014 (SEC). In 2007, Mizzou claimed the school's first No. 1 national ranking since 1960 after a watershed 36-17 win against archrival Kansas in the Border Showdown at Arrowhead Stadium on Nov. 24, 2007. In 2011, the Tigers were SEC East Division champs, won the Cotton Bowl and finished with a final No. 5 ranking in the national polls.
Before announcing his retirement in 2015 due to a diagnosis of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, Pinkel ranked as the third-winningest active coach behind future College Football Hall of Fame inductees Frank Beamer of Virginia Tech and Bill Snyder of Kansas State. Pinkel also is one of only three coaches in history to be the winningest coach of two college football programs, joining College Football Hall of Fame inductees Bear Bryant (Kentucky, Alabama) and Steve Spurrier (Florida, South Carolina). Pinkel coached 10 First Team All-Americans, three Academic All-Americans, three NFF National Scholar-Athletes and 79 first team all-conference players.
Prior to becoming a head coach, Pinkel was an all-conference and Honorable Mention All-America tight end at Kent State, playing for future College Football Hall of Fame Coach Don James. Pinkel worked as an assistant under James at Washington for 12 years, including the Huskies' 1991 national championship team.
Active in the community, he created the GP Made Foundation to help youth facing difficult challenges and has raised more than $10 million for charitable causes. In 2017, Pinkel released an autobiography "The 100-Yard Journey: A Life in Coaching and Battling for the Win."
Pinkel was inducted into the University of Toledo Varsity T Hall of Fame in 2009.