University of North Carolina Athletics
RAMblings - Sons of the South - Rams Club
RAMblings 9.21.09- Sons of the South
by Lee Pace
This weekend the Tar Heels venture into the epicenter of the Old South, into the oldest on-campus stadium in NCAA Division 1-A. Carolina and Georgia Tech face off at noon in Bobby Dodd Stadium/Historic Grant Field, a venue first opened in 1913 when Georgia Tech students helped lay the concrete forming the permanent stands on the west side of the field.
The stadium was known simply as Grant Field until the spring of 1988, when Tech's administration followed the recent passing of its Hall of Fame coach by adding Dodd's name to the stadium. Dodd was the head coach at Tech from 1945-67 and was one of a dozen or so colorful and legendary coaches throughout the region. These men built powerful programs and, in the process, achieved heroic status themselves. They were characters. They were colorful. They were often the public face of their institution. They were loved by fans, often feared by their players.
Consider the year 1949-six decades ago-and the list of head coaches at some of the major Southern institutions: Wallace Wade at Duke, Bob Neyland at Tennessee, Peahead Walker at Wake Forest, Frank Howard at Clemson, Wally Butts at Georgia, Johnny Vaught at Ole Miss, Bear Bryant at Kentucky, Jim Tatum at Maryland and Carl Snavely at Carolina.
Wade won three national titles coaching Alabama from 1923-1930 and then shocked the sporting world by leaving for the ivy-covered walls of Duke University. In later years he said he preferred the less frenetic pace of a private institution and that the Duke administration's philosophy of marrying academics and athletics was a better fit to his own views. He coached the Blue Devils from 1930-42, entered military service for three years and then returned to coach from 1946-1950. Wade's teams were famed and feared throughout the South as he drilled his players down to the intricate hand and foot movements and used a metronome to insure proper timing.
Neyland served in the Army and was stationed in France in World War I, later becoming an aide to Gen. Douglas MacArthur and rising to the rank of Brigadier General. He became a professor of military science and head football coach at the University of Tennessee in 1926. His first seven teams compiled a 61-2 record. After his career was twice interrupted with additional military service, Neyland settled back in Knoxville following World War II to coach the Vols from 1946-52, winning back-to-back national titles in 1950-51 with a 21-2 record. He molded his team like he did his troops-iron-handed, taciturn and disciplined.
Certainly one of the most chromatic coaches of the era was Douglas Clyde "Peahead" Walker, the long-time head coach at Wake Forest College. Walker stood only 5-6, but he made quite an impression with his jaunty fedoras and colorful ties (at one point he had more than a hundred in his collection). Once he was scolded by the college administration for use of profanity during practices, to which he responded, "Damn to a football coach is like amen to a preacher." Walker sometimes took recruits to the more splendorous campus of Duke University in nearby Durham and passed it off as being Wake Forest. "As a freshman you'll be at our satellite campus," Walker told the recruit. "If you play well, as a sophomore you can come here."
Howard was affectionately known as "The Bashful Baron of Barlow Bend" during his three decades as head coach at Clemson University, a remote enclave in the foothills of the South Carolina Upstate. Howard was bald, rotund and talked in a gravelly voice around an ever-present chaw of Red Man tobacco. "I had a lot of offers to go to other schools, but I turned them all down," Howard once said. "Clemson was the only place I could bum chewing tobacco from the professors." He called everyone "buddy," and the stories grew around him like moss as he coached the football team and at various times served as track coach, baseball coach, ticket manager and athletic director.
Vaught was a lieutenant commander in the Navy in World War II and then spent one year as an assistant coach at the University of Mississippi before being named head coach in 1947. He won 75 percent of his games, collected six SEC titles and three national championships over the next 24 years at Ole Miss. Vaught was an offensive innovator, introducing the Split-T to the Deep South and later pioneering roll-out and sprint-out passing attacks out of the Wing-T.
Dodd played under Neyland at Tennessee in the late 1920s and became head coach at Georgia Tech immediately following World War II. He continued in that capacity for two decades and led the Yellow Jackets to two SEC titles and one national championship. He preferred small, smart players and insisted they take calculus as part of their academic program-this in a world where "rocks for jocks" was often the academic rallying cry. Sometimes in practice Dodd had his players break off into volleyball games to mix things up. He developed the "belly series," where the quarterback would put the ball in the belly of a running back, wait for the defense to commit, then release the ball to the back or pull it out and move on to the next option. Dodd was called "Old Syrup Mouth" for his unmatched talent for schmoozing the press and boosters and smoothing over losses. He beat Georgia eight years in a row in the 1950s.
For 15 years Dodd and the Yellow Jackets were fierce in-state rivals with the University of Georgia and its coach, Wally Butts, who was dubbed the "Little Round Man" during his two-decade tenure in Athens. Butts took over the Bulldog program in 1939 and won the 1942 SEC title and went to the Rose Bowl, and in the post-war years played in five bowl games and earned two more SEC titles (1946 and '49). Butts was a forerunner in developing intricate passing attacks, and he helped mold the careers of players like Charlie Trippi and Fran Tarkenton. One of his finest moments came in 1959, when his team won the SEC title behind the efforts of All-Americas Tarkenton and Pat Dye (later to become the head coach at Auburn).
Another fixture for multiple decades throughout Southern football in the mid-20th century was, of course, Bear Bryant, who coached at Kentucky and Texas A&M before launching the tenure he was best known for, his 25-year run at Alabama. Bryant was the 11th of 12 children born to an Arkansas family, and he acquired his nickname as a 13-year-old when he wrestled a captive bear during a theater promotion. He played end at Alabama and was a member of the Crimson Tide's 1934 national championship team. Bryant returned to Tuscaloosa in 1958 and amassed six national titles and 13 SEC titles.
Tatum was another larger-than-life figure in college football following World War II. "Big Jim" or "Bullmoose," as he was called by friends and players, grew up in South Carolina and played at Carolina in the mid-1930s. He was head coach at Oklahoma for one year, 1946, before beginning a decade-long run at Maryland that would climax with the 1953 Atlantic Coast Conference and national titles. He then returned to Chapel Hill in 1956 to coach a program that soared during the Charlie "Choo Choo" Justice era of the late-1940s but had fallen on fallow times. Tatum was tall and gregarious and once pegged by Dodd as "the best recruiter in the business," and he was well on his way to building a powerhouse at Carolina until his tragic death in the summer of 1959. Tatum was visiting Walker for a Canadian hunting and fishing trip when he was bitten by a tick and succumbed to Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.
There was a collegiality at the time almost unheard of in today's high-stakes game of college football. Walker and Howard were great pals, and Howard once played a joke on Walker by having the Clemson police greet the Wake Forest busses before a game and "arrest" Walker. They took him kicking and screaming to the jail house, where he was put in a cell for an hour until the police grinned and took him to the stadium, just in time for kickoff. He spent the first half yelling across the field at Howard.
"Hell, your coaches and players didn't even miss you," Howard spat back.