COLUMBIA -- Gary Pinkel’s coaching career took him all across the country. Now, seven years after his retirement, it’s taking him to Atlanta.
On Dec. 6, Pinkel will join John Luckhardt and Billy Jack Murphy in Atlanta as the three newest coaches enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame.
“I started crying,” Pinkel said Saturday night of when he found out he was going to be inducted. “There was a box in my house, and some people will send footballs to me and ask me to sign them, I thought, kinda, that’s what this one was, too. I opened it up, and there was a little note in there talking about 1868 and out of so many coaches and so many players only one half of one percent make the Hall of Fame. I just broke down.”
Pinkel enters the Hall of Fame as the winningest coach at Missouri (118-73) and Toledo (73-37-3) and left football in 2015 with the 20th most wins in college football history (191).
After playing tight end at Kent State, Pinkel joined the Golden Flashes coaching staff as a graduate assistant in 1973. Pinkel followed head coach Don James to Washington in 1976 before coaching for two years at Bowling Green, then returning to Washington for 12 years, including the Huskies’ 1990 Rose Bowl win as an offensive coordinator.
Pinkel got his first head coaching job with Toledo in 1991 and led the Rockets to a 73-37-3 record in 10 seasons, winning the Mid-American Conference championship in an undefeated 1995 season, where Toledo went to and won the Vegas Bowl to end the season with a 13-0-1 record.
“We tried to make our young men better people,” Pinkel said. “We tried to demand excellence in how you treat people. … It was a lot more than just winning football games. … I’m very honored.”
Missouri pulled Pinkel in after the 2000 season to start a 15-year relationship that led to the most successful stretch in Tiger football history. Pinkel led Missouri to 10 bowl games, including six wins, as well as the first time the Tigers ended the regular season ranked No. 1 in the country in 2007. Missouri lost in the Big 12 Championship Game before going on to win the Cotton Bowl to finish with a 12-2 record.
Pinkel guided the Tigers through conference realignment when Missouri went from the Big 12 to the SEC after the 2012 season.
The Tigers went on to win consecutive SEC East titles in 2013 and 2014.
“We put a lot in here,” Pinkel said. “It was difficult when we got here. Nick Saban told me, ‘Don’t go there, don’t go there.’ I had a lot of guys tell me not to do it. … It was more difficult than I thought it would be because you’re changing a culture, you’re changing how people think. It was much more difficult than I thought it would be.
“But we stuck to our program that I learned from coach James, that I learned at Kent State and at Washington, it worked at Toledo and then we moved that thing right in here and it worked at Missouri. … When we took off, we weren’t at the highest level. There were a lot of things I could have done to win more gains. But I really thought when I handed the keys over, Missouri football was at a much higher level than when I got it.”
After the 2015 season, Pinkel decided to step away from football for health reasons and has dedicated his time to the GP Made Foundation, which was founded in 2019. The foundation aspires to help children battling leukemia or lymphoma, as well as underprivileged kids in Missouri who want to go to college.