List of Eastern Michigan Eagles head football coaches

[2] Among the more notable head coaches at EMU have been Clayton Teetzel (1900–1902), Henry Schulte (1906–1908), Elton Rynearson (1917, 1919–1920, 1925–1948), Fred Trosko (1952–1964), Dan Boisture (1967–1973), Mike Stock (1978–1982), and Jim Harkema (1983–1992).

Rynearson was the longest-serving and winningest coach, with a record of 114-58-15 over 26 seasons, while Vern Bennett (1894) posted the highest winning percentage, 71.4%.

About Deane W. Kelley (1892), Verne S. Bennett (1894), Enoch Thorne (1898), Dwight Watson (1899), Hunter Forest (1903), Daniel Lawrence (1904–1905), Clare Hunter (1909), Curry Hicks (1910), Dwight Wilson (1911), Leroy Brown (1912–1913; basketball also), and Thomas Ransom (1914; basketball also) little is known beyond the years they held the position, the team's schedule, and occasional tidbits from The Aurora, the school yearbook.

Teetzel went on to Brigham Young University (1905–1908) and Utah State Agricultural College (1908–1916), where he headed the athletic departments and coached a variety or sports, including basketball and track.

[20] From 1906 to 1908, Schulte served as coach of the football, baseball and track teams at Eastern Michigan University.

[29] In the fall of 1912, he was hired as a teacher and coach at Union High School, where "[h]e developed state title contenders in baseball, football, and basketball".

[31] In 1917, Mitchell left MSNC for the University of Michigan, where he coached the first two seasons of varsity basketball,[32] and instituted intramural athletics.

Although Rynearson's offense was more effective, outscoring opponents 111 to 82, more than half of the scoring came in a single game, a 63-0 rout of Central Michigan, and the team ended the season with a 3-4 record.

[2] Over the course of his career, he coached at least one year in every varsity sport at Michigan State Normal, including football, basketball, baseball and track,[40] as well as serving as athletic director from 1948 to 1963.

The Eastern Michigan football program has played its home games at Rynearson Stadium since the 1969 season.

In 1976, Rynearson was posthumously named one of the inaugural members of the Eastern Michigan University Athletic Hall of Fame.

[45] After serving in the U.S. Army Air Corps throughout World War II, from 1946 until 1952 Trosko worked as a high school football coach in Michigan.

Boisture's bowl-bound 1971 team played for one of just two sellout crowds in the stadium's history, a 0-0 tie against Eastern Kentucky on October 16, 1971 which drew 17,360 spectators.

[60] In February 1974, Boisture left Eastern Michigan to coach the Detroit Wheels, in the World Football League,[61][62] who also played home games at Rynearson Stadium.

[63] A native Detroiter, George Mans was a multi-sport athlete in high school,[64] and played football at Michigan, where he was team captain in 1961.

[64][67] In 1966, he accepted an assistant coaching position at the University of Michigan where he remained for eight years from 1966 to 1973,[68][69] serving under both Bump Elliott and Bo Schembechler.

"[73] According to one newspaper report, Mans resigned "when it became apparent that EMU would place a greater emphasis on basketball, hiring former Detroit Pistons Coach Ray Scott.

Chlebek came to Eastern Michigan from the University of Notre Dame, where he was an assistant under Dan Devine and coached future Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana.

Both Mike Stock and Bob LaPointe had lengthy coaching careers, but their time at Eastern Michigan University is primarily notable for a school-record 27-game losing streak from 1980 through 1982, including a winless season in 1981.

[82][83] La Pointe went on to a long career as a high school football coach in southeastern Michigan, retiring in 2010.

An alumnus of Kalamazoo College, Harkema had achieved success as the head coach of Grand Valley State, where he compiled a record of 68–29–1 with winning seasons in nine of his ten years,[85] reaching the NAIA semifinals in 1978.

[86] Beginning in 1986, Harkema led Eastern Michigan to four consecutive winning seasons,[87] including Eastern's only Mid-American Conference championship and only 10-win season[88] in 1987, when the team went to the 1987 California Bowl and upset 17½ point favorite San Jose State University for the only bowl game win in school history.

[89] Harkema is credited with building the program at Eastern Michigan into a "Top-Shelf" program,[90] and he coached one of just two EMU games at Rynearson Stadium that sold-out: a 24-31 loss to Western Michigan on October 22, 1988 drew 23,003 (listed capacity at the time was 22,227), and a 0-0 tie against Eastern Kentucky on October 16, 1971 drew 17,360 (listed capacity at the time was 15,500).

[60] In 1991, the EMU Board of Regents voted to change the school's mascot from "Hurons" to "Eagles", in a move that remains controversial to this day.

Rick Rasnick attended San Jose State University, and after graduation he stayed with the school as an assistant coach.

[99] When Eastern Michigan hired him as head coach in 1995, Rasnick brought a more open, pass-oriented offense to Eastern Michigan than his predecessor, Ron Cooper, had used,[100] and Rasnick's recruiting noticeably favored junior-college transfers rather than high school seniors.

[101] On November 16, 1999, three days after a 29-26 loss at Central Michigan,[102] Eastern Michigan Athletic Director Dave Diles held a press conference to announce that he had fired Rasnick as head coach,[103] and that defensive coordinator Tony Lombardi would serve as the interim head coach for the final game of the season, four days later, saying, "I felt it was best to make a change at this time to begin an immediate search for a new head football coach.

He was fired in November, 2008, but coached the final game of the season against Central Michigan,[105] which set numerous school records for offense.

At the time of his hiring by Eastern Michigan, he was one of six African American head coaches at Football Bowl Subdivision teams; the others (and their teams at the time) were Turner Gill (Buffalo), Kevin Sumlin (Houston), Mike Locksley (New Mexico), Randy Shannon (University of Miami), and Mike Haywood (Miami University).