by Charly Mann
The University of North Carolina has one of the most beautiful campuses in the United States. It also boasts one of the top MBA programs in the nation, as well as one of the best urban planning programs. For the last 65 years UNC has strived to excel at something else, football, and has for the most part failed in this effort. The pinnacle for success in football is getting invited to and winning a major college bowl game. By 1940, there were four major Bowl games: The Rose Bowl, The Orange Bowl, The Sugar Bowl, and the Cotton Bowl. During the late 1940s UNC had a very good football team made up of several all-stars who had played football for the military like Charlie "Choo Choo" Justice. During the Justice era UNC got its first three bowl invitations to the Sugar Bowl in 1947, the Sugar Bowl in 1949, and the Cotton Bowl in 1950. Unfortunately, UNC was not a national contender, and lost all three of these games.
1929 UNC team captain Ray Farris and star halfback Strud Nash. The Tarheels went 9 - 1 for the season and were considered the second best team in the country that year.
UNC desperately wanted to have a great football team, and in 1956 hired Jim Tatum away from Maryland where he had been one of the most successful coaches in the country. He had won the national championship in 1953 and in each of three other years his team had at least ten victories. He had also previously coached Oklahoma to a successful season and a bowl victory in 1947. In Chapel Hill his luck would change. In his first season Carolina won only 2 games, and the following two years his record was a mediocre 6 - 4. There were high hopes for his fourth season in 1959, but he was bitten by a tick and contracted Rocky Mountain Spotted fever and died at the age of 46 before the beginning of the season.
Jim Tatum, UNC football coach 1956 to 1958
Jim Tatum's tombstone is the most prominent in the Chapel Hill cemetery, and reminds those like me of his untimely death and the potential he might have brought to UNC football. Jim Hickey (1920-1997), Tatum's assistant, was UNC's head football coach for the next eight seasons (1959 to 1966). He only managed a single season with a winning record, but in that year UNC did something it had never done before... it won a bowl game.
