ACC football record book: ‘where would the ACC have been had Jim Tatum lived?’

Editor’s note: This is part of a 10-story series focusing on ACC football records. See the bottom of this story for a list of all the other content in the series.

CHAPEL HILL — On the occasion of his 46th birthday, “Big Jim” Tatum towered over college football.

He perfected the Split-T offense and rode it to four titles in three different conferences. He owned a national championship. He was a driving force in the creation of the Atlantic Coast Conference and its first Coach of the Year recipient. He lifted North Carolina, his moribund alma mater, to a consensus top-10 preseason ranking. He owned exactly 100 victories, 29 more than current Clemson coach Dabo Swinney at the same age.

He died the next day.

Tatum was many things to many people, but to this day he looms as the greatest “what if” in Tar Heels history.

“I think Tatum is really one of the people who was a central figure in the early years of the league,” said Wes Durham, long-time ACC television and radio personality. “I think his presence in the early years of the league was critical. What he did was pretty remarkable in many respects.”

Durham and his father Woody often pondered an alternate universe where Tatum had never been bitten by the tick that delivered a fatal infection during the summer of 1959. At the time, Woody Durham was an incoming freshman at Chapel Hill. Had Tatum survived, the man who became known as “The Voice of the Tar Heels” might have added many more memorable calls to his Hall of Fame portfolio. Perhaps Tatum’s name would currently dominate the “Coaches Records” portion of the ACC Football Record Book, along with Swinney and Florida State legend Bobby Bowden, among others.

“My dad and I had conversations as far back as 20 years ago about where the ACC would have been if Tatum lived,” Durham said.

Tatum’s untimely demise 61 years ago derailed North Carolina at the precise moment it was rising to national relevance. The 1959 Tar Heels were a senior-laden team coming off consecutive six-win seasons that included three wins against ranked opponents. Tatum’s recruiting pipelines were full, promising sustained growth. In the decades since, the Tar Heels have toiled in the shadows of other more successful conference brethren, occasionally breaking through only to fall away again.

What if …

“It’s a question that gets more interesting as time moves on and the elements change,” Durham said.

‘SUNNY’ SIDE UP

Tatum was born just over the border in McColl, South Carolina on July 22, 1913. He carried a chiseled 230 pounds on his 6-foot-3 frame whenever he wasn’t carrying a double-chinned 260. He parlayed that athleticism into a starting tackle position on Carl Snavely’s 1935 North Carolina squad that went 8-1 and finished second in the Southern Conference.

Tatum fell short in a tryout for the NFL’s New York Giants and played minor league baseball just long enough to earn the nicknamed “Sunny Jim.” His professional sports days behind him, Tatum followed Snavely to Cornell in 1936 as his assistant. Two years later he returned to North Carolina as an assistant under Raymond Wolf and when Wolf was called up to the Navy in 1942, Tatum got his first shot as a head coach.

It was a harbinger.

Tatum guided North Carolina to a 5-2-2 record in 1942, including a win against No. 13 Duquesne, but at season’s end he enlisted in the Navy. In a twist of fate, he was sent to the Iowa Pre-Flight School where he met Missouri Tigers coach Don Faurot, the inventor of the Split-T. He learned the scheme alongside fellow future coach, Bud Wilkinson.

After the war, Tatum accepted the head coaching job at Oklahoma and brought Wilkinson along. The Sooners went 8-3 in 1946, winning the Big Six Conference as well as the Gator Bowl, earning Tatum a call from Maryland. He handed the reins to Wilkinson and pocketed a huge raise to run the Terrapins.

It would be at Maryland, with an accommodating school president, that Tatum would truly forge his legacy and reshape college football. Tatum took Maryland to the Gator Bowl in 1947 and 1949, then pushed the Terrapins to even greater heights in 1951 with an undefeated season that was capped by a Sugar Bowl victory and a No. 3 national ranking.

There was a problem. The Southern Conference finally lost its patience with the Terrapins for accepting bowl game invitations, something it traditionally frowned upon, believing it took the student-athletes away from the classroom for too long. After thumbing its nose at the league for a third time in accepting the 1951 Sugar Bowl bid, Maryland was banned from playing conference opponents during the 1952 season.

Incensed by the penalty, Maryland incited a quake along a long-simmering fault line that ran through the unwieldy 17-team conference. When the dust settled, seven schools (Duke, North Carolina, N.C. State, Wake Forest, Maryland, Clemson and South Carolina) had broken away to form the ACC.

Tatum promptly proved the new league’s relevance. He led the Terrapins through an undefeated 1953 regular season and though Maryland lost to old pal Wilkinson’s Oklahoma squad in the Orange Bowl, Maryland won the national championship and Tatum earned the league’s first Coach of the Year award.

The every-other-year cycle continued. In 1955, Maryland went 10-1 to win its second ACC title and even though Tatum’s crew was thumped once more by Wilkinson and Oklahoma, he earned national coach of the year honors.

Throughout his time at Maryland, Tatum flirted with several other schools, including Navy. As long as university president Curley Byrd’s hands-off administration controlled the purse strings, Tatum stayed put. That changed when Wilson Elkins took over that position at the end of the 1954 season. Elkins quickly determined undue emphasis was being given to student-athletes and he informed Tatum he could no longer recruit out-of-state players.

In a move that surprised no one, Tatum departed Maryland at his first opportunity.

As fate would have it, the moving van had North Carolina license plates.

THE UNDER SIDE

While Tatum was establishing himself as one of the nation’s premier coaches, North Carolina lured Snavely back from Cornell. As Tatum led Oklahoma to the Big Six title, Snavely led the Tar Heels to their first Southern Conference title since 1922. Snavely won two conference titles in his second stint in Chapel Hill, but he couldn’t maintain that success. After three consecutive losing seasons, North Carolina and Snavely parted ways and the program cratered under George Barclay.

The taste of success under Snavely had been sweet enough to give North Carolina a hankering for Tatum, who happily peeled out of Maryland. Upon his arrival in Chapel Hill, Tatum was greeted by an enthusiastic administration and fan base … as well as a skeptical faculty and a dismissive school newspaper.

In an editorial, the Daily Tar Heel lambasted Tatum as a “parasitic monster of open professionalism.” The editorial went on to rip Tatum for “playing to win and win alone.”

The school newspaper had a point. Tatum’s victories had paved over a number of potholes.

Tatum’s departure from Oklahoma after the 1946 season served the dual purpose of closing the books on an internal investigation into $6,000 that Tatum had distributed to Sooners players out of discretionary funds at that year’s Gator Bowl.

The crackdown on Tatum’s recruiting at Maryland wasn’t arbitrary. While Maryland was going undefeated in 1953, the Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools issued a damning report on the program’s largesse. It revealed that while football players accounted for just 1.5 percent of the student body, they received 18 percent of available scholarships and 54 percent of scholarship money. In all, 93 players were under scholarship at an average of $940 per player.

In a statement that could have been ripped from the pages of today’s newspapers, Daily Tar Heel co-editor Louis Kraar said the attack on Tatum wasn’t personal, but that he was being held up as “a symbol of rampant professionalism in college sports.” (Kraar passed away in 2006 after a career that included stints as the Asian correspondent for Time and Fortune magazines.)

Tatum waved away any controversy, essentially saying nothing matters as long as the home team wins.

“Is winning over-emphasized in the big-time game? I don’t think winning is the most important thing,” Tatum said in the Nov. 2, 1957 edition of the Saturday Evening Post. “I think it’s the only thing. Isn’t it big time when you’re winning and small time when you’re losing?

“You always hear that a losing coach is building character,” Tatum added. “I say you can’t build character in losing football.”

Following Tatum’s logic, his first season at North Carolina involved very little character building. His relentless optimism in newspaper and radio interviews built up a false sense of hope heading into the 1956 season.

The Tar Heels fell flat, going 2-7-1. Later, they forfeited the two wins due to fielding an ineligible player.

Making things worse, Tar Heels basketball coach Frank McGuire built on his 1955-56 ACC championship by leading an unbeaten North Carolina to a national championship in 1956-57.

The student body found a new hero in McGuire, leading one student leader to say if they had to choose between Tatum and McGuire, the students would choose McGuire 10 to 1.

Prior to 1956, Tatum had built the best 10-year record of any coach in college football history. The 1956 season had been humbling.

It wouldn’t happen again.

THE ONLY THING

In his book “Football in a Forest”, author Lee Pace detailed the game that changed everything for Tatum and the Tar Heels.

On Oct. 5, 1957, North Carolina welcomed No. 6 Navy to Kenan Stadium, where the Tar Heels pulled off a stunning 13-7 upset.

Afterward, Tatum said the win would be worth “a million dollars to our kids because it would give them confidence they have lacked. Now they can stand up and play with the best teams in the country.”

Pace went on to note improvements that had been made in and around the football program heading into the 1957 season, including a renovated field house, rebuilt practice fields and upgraded dormitories.

The win earned North Carolina a spot in the Associated Press poll. The No. 18 Tar Heels went on the road to Miami and pulled out a 20-13 win, climbing to No. 14. Maryland halted the modest upswing the following week, but a foundation had been laid.

Later in the season, North Carolina picked off a second ranked team, upending No. 11 Duke, 21-13.

That 6-4 campaign was good enough for North Carolina to open the 1958 season at No. 10 in the preseason rankings. The Tar Heels followed an 0-2 start with a six-game winning streak, shutting out South Carolina, Maryland and Virginia along the way.

Tough losses to Notre Dame and Duke closed out the season but hardly dampened enthusiasm going forward. North Carolina was a trendy pick to win the 1959 ACC title when Tatum headed to Canada to do some hunting that July.

When he came home, he had a fever. Shortly thereafter he was hospitalized.

On July 22, he turned 46.

On July 23, he died.

When the team gathered for its first practice following Tatum’s death, team co-captains Jack Cummings and Wade Smith wrote a letter to their teammates.

“We know that no person in Chapel Hill will be so missed as Coach Tatum,” the letter said, “but deep down there is a mystic feeling that we’re sure you all feel — that though in body our coach is gone, his spirit and soul will ride with every one of us throughout this coming season. ... Notre Dame has its Knute Rockne — Carolina has its ‘Sunny Jim’ Tatum. Don’t lose hope.”

The shell-shocked team went 5-5 that season under Tatum assistant Jim Hickey. The Tar Heels returned to their once-in-a-blue-moon ways. Hickey won an ACC title in 1963. He lasted just three more seasons.

Bill Dooley led North Carolina to three ACC titles (1971, 1972, 1977) and his successor, Dick Crum added another in 1980. That would be the last conference crown.

Mack Brown found some success during the second half of his nine-plus years, but he started out with consecutive 1-10 seasons and at his best, never was able to finish better than second place, although he’s back and again has the Tar Heels on the upswing.

WHAT IF?

Clemson traveled to Chapel Hill for the 1959 season opener. On the night before the game, a Sports Illustrated correspondent saw a lone figure walking toward the Kenan Stadium locker room. It was Clemson coach Frank Howard. The writer asked Howard what he was doing there.

“I’m looking for Jim Tatum’s ghost,” Howard said. “I don’t mind playing a football team, but I sure would hate to have to play a ghost.”

What if Jim Tatum lived?

In Pace’s book, Jim Tatum Jr. stopped short of anointing his father the Tar Heels savior.

“I think he would have done very well, but I don’t think you can slap that label on it, that he would have been the Dean Smith of football,” Tatum Jr. said. “He had a wonderful career from age 32 to 45. Who knows what the next 15 years would have brought.”

Tatum passed away with a lifetime record of 100-35-7. Of the top 10 winningest major college coaches in modern history, only Lou Holtz can match Tatum’s win total on his 46th birthday. Bo Schembechler had 98 while Tom Osborne and Bear Bryant each had 96. Swinney had 71 wins on his 46th birthday while Frank Beamer and LaVell Edwards each had 28. Nick Saban had 26.

Pace, in talking with Tatum’s contemporaries, found a simple, familiar sentiment among them all.

“I think many of the people who were around at the time were adamant about what would have happened,” he said. “It would have been like at Oklahoma where he had the great year and then at Maryland where he won the national title.”

In Durham’s mind, the ACC might have reached the heights enjoyed by the SEC beginning with the early part of the 21st Century.

“It’s crazy to say it now, given the history of the conference,” Durham said. “But the ACC was on a really strong football move. The scenario was playing out. People felt like Carolina was building momentum. You had all these coaches coming into the league.

“It was really something that was starting to play out,” Durham added. “It’s something Dad and I talked about all the time — just where would the ACC have been had Jim Tatum lived?”

THE SCHEDULE FOR THIS SERIES

(Dates the stories will be posted online)

MAY 24 — Duke’s DeVon Edwards scored three non-offensive touchdowns in one game, including interception returns for touchdowns on consecutive plays from scrimmage.

MAY 25 — Big Jim Tatum won the first ACC championship as coach at Maryland. He went on to coach at UNC shortly after and had turned a struggling program around. He might have broken every ACC coaching record in the book and been on par with coaches like Bobby Bowden and Dabo Sweeney had he not died suddenly in 1959.

MAY 26 — Wake Forest quarterback Rusty LaRue holds records for single-game pass attempts (78), single-game pass completions (55), total offensive plays in a game (82) and a few others from a crazy 1995 stretch where he threw for 478 yards against Duke, 501 against Georgia Tech and 545 against N.C. State.

MAY 27 — N.C. State wide receiver Torry Holt has the record for most receiving touchdowns in a game with five against Florida State, which was ranked No. 3 in the country.

MAY 28 — Don McCauley, a UNC running back from 1968-70, has the ACC record for most rushing attempts in a season with 360 in 1970. He also owns the ACC record for the most plays from scrimmage in a single season with 375 that same year. The most interesting stat associated with McCauley is that he broke the ACC record for most rushing yards in a season with 1,863 yards in 1970, a record that stood for 43 years.

MAY 29 — Duke receivers Conner Vernon and Jamison Crowder are tied for the ACC career receptions record with 283 apiece. They were teammates for a time in the early 2010s.

MAY 31 — North Carolina’s Kendric Burney has the record for most interception return yardage in a game — 170 against Miami in 2009.

JUNE 1 — N.C. State’s Ted Brown still holds the ACC career rushing record, a mark he set from 1975-78.

JUNE 2 — Wake Forest’s Tanner Price has the ACC passing record by a left-handed quarterback.

JUNE 3 — A quick roundup of other interesting and important ACC footbal records leads with the 2011 Clemson team, which became the first in ACC history to win three straight games against ranked opponents. That team had a bevy of kids from the state of North Carolina.

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FROM THE ACC RECORD BOOK

Coaching wins (all games — only while coaching in the ACC)

1. Bobby Bowden (Florida State) — 173

2. George Welsh (Virginia) — 134

3. Dabo Swinney (Clemson) — 130

4. Frank Beamer (Virginia Tech) — 113

5. Bill Dooley (North Carolina and Wake Forest) — 98

ACC coaching wins (regular-season conference games — only while coaching in ACC)

1. Bobby Bowden (Florida State) — 117

2. George Welsh (Virginia) — 85

3. Dabo Swinney (Clemson) — 77

4. Frank Beamer (Virginia Tech) — 69

5. Frank Howard (Clemson) — 66

Winning percentage (all games — only while coaching in ACC, 3 seasons minimum)

1. Dabo Swinney (Clemson) — .807

2. Jimbo Fisher (Florida State) — .783

3. Bobby Bowden (Florida State) — .764

4. Danny Ford (Clemson) — .760

5. Lou Holtz (N.C. State) — .719

ACC winning percentage (regular-season conference games — only while coaching in ACC, 3 seasons minimum)

1. Dabo Swinney (Clemson) — .827

2. Bobby Bowden (Florida State) — .813

3. Jerry Claiborne (Maryland) — .802

4. Bill Murray (Duke) — .775

5. Danny Ford (Clemson) — .754

Bowl/College Football Playoff wins (while in ACC)

1. Bobby Bowden (Florida State) — 11

2. Dabo Swinney (Clemson) — 10

3. (tie) Danny Ford (Clemson) — 6

3. (tie) Frank Beamer (Virginia Tech) — 6

5. (tie) Jimbo Fisher (Florida State) — 5

5. (tie) Ralph Friedgen (Maryland) — 5

Total seasons in ACC

George Welsh (Virginia) — 19

Bobby Bowden (Florida State) — 18

(tie) Frank Howard (Clemson) — 17

(tie) Earle Edwards (N.C. State) — 17

(tie) Bill Dooley (North Carolina and Wake Forest) — 17