Maryland: Durkin Fired | Page 13 | Syracusefan.com

Maryland: Durkin Fired

Scooch said:
This situation is sooooooo screwed up. A kid F*CKING DIED. This isn’t some inane BS about paper writing or slipping $100s into Christmas cards.

A. Kid. Died.

That athletic department should be burned to the ground and the Board should all be removed for voting to bring the coach back.
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Nothing like missing the elephant in the room. UMD has messed this up from the start - Hiring Durkin.
 
HOFCeluck said:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/athlonsports.com/college-football/grading-college-footballs-head-coach-hires-2016?amp

Not sure how this could’ve been anticipated, and it was regarded as a pretty good hire at the time.
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Not one comment regarding the guy's character. I realize that was not the point of the article; however, character always counts. Too many people focus on football only, they miss the real point of leadership, coaching, the purpose of the university.

When a hire is focused on one point and only one point, they usually lay waste to all other points. Welders care about what they weld, not the electronics that will go with their product. Electricians don't care what the painter does. None of the technicians care what sales does. Etc. Etc. Etc. People that focus on one thing, do one thing well but they often do not understand the big picture. Coaches, especially football coaches with the largest teams and staffs, MUST be big picture people. No exceptions.
 
HtownOrange said:
Not one comment regarding the guy's character. I realize that was not the point of the article; however, character always counts. Too many people focus on football only, they miss the real point of leadership, coaching, the purpose of the university.

When a hire is focused on one point and only one point, they usually lay waste to all other points. Welders care about what they weld, not the electronics that will go with their product. Electricians don't care what the painter does. None of the technicians care what sales does. Etc. Etc. Etc. People that focus on one thing, do one thing well but they often do not understand the big picture. Coaches, especially football coaches with the largest teams and staffs, MUST be big picture people. No exceptions.
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To be fair, the vast majority of D1 CFB head coaches range from jagoff bullies to sociopaths.

Maryland isn’t alone in protecting an awful
human being.
 
HtownOrange said:
Not one comment regarding the guy's character. I realize that was not the point of the article; however, character always counts. Too many people focus on football only, they miss the real point of leadership, coaching, the purpose of the university.

When a hire is focused on one point and only one point, they usually lay waste to all other points. Welders care about what they weld, not the electronics that will go with their product. Electricians don't care what the painter does. None of the technicians care what sales does. Etc. Etc. Etc. People that focus on one thing, do one thing well but they often do not understand the big picture. Coaches, especially football coaches with the largest teams and staffs, MUST be big picture people. No exceptions.
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I feel like this could easily be applied to most college football coaches. ESPECIALLY at the highest level. And that’s not a defense of DJD nearly as much as it's indictment of college football.
 
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HOFCeluck said:
I feel like this could easily be applied to most college football coaches. ESPECIALLY at the highest level. And that’s not a defense of DJD nearly as much and it’s Ann indictment of college football.
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Unfortunately, you may be right. Hopefully these last several years will open up people's eyes to what matters most.
 
A year later I agree that it can’t all be blamed on the head coach but it must be a systemic issue with Maryland overall. Ignoring the conditions that caused a young man’s death and not implementing the recommended solutions as Hoo noted above proves the administration as a whole is ineffective. Talk about a real lack of institutional control.
 
Cheriehoop said:
A year later I agree that it can’t all be blamed on the head coach but it must be a systemic issue with Maryland overall. Ignoring the conditions that caused a young man’s death and not implementing the recommended solutions as Hoo noted above proves the administration as a whole is ineffective. Talk about a real lack of institutional control.
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Yeah, but - did an ESL student get extra help from a Tutor with some footnotes?

Because that's an unconscionable crime. :rolleyes:
 
721Comstock said:
Yeah, but - did an ESL student get extra help from a Tutor with some footnotes?

Because that's an unconscionable crime. :rolleyes:
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This isn't the first time that a player has died because of something like this and not a previously unknown physical problem. We'd like to think it will be the last. Be that as it may, the NCAA is not permitted by its member schools to intervene in these matters and I seriously doubt they will ever be permitted to do so. It's like blaming a meter maid for not punishing a bank robbery.
 
Hoo's That said:
Someone I know that's involved with UMd says that nothing will change until they fire the president. He's a walking disaster area.
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They're not renewing his contract but they've still got him putting off retirement for another year. Sounds like the Board isn't exactly filled with proactive, forward-thinking people.
 
supp said:
They're not renewing his contract but they've still got him putting off retirement for another year. Sounds like the Board isn't exactly filled with proactive, forward-thinking people.
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This is par for the course from them. They're like how someone described the Palestinians, "They never pass up an opportunity to pass up an opportunity." Some years ago, they started a fund-raising campaign that had as a 5-year goal an amount that UVa nearly raises in a year. When told that, their chief defender, the President of the Md State Senate said, "Well, we don't have the advantage of being founded by Thomas Jefferson." Well, you've got twice as many students and alumni that UVa does, why don't any of them care enough to give money, and, in this case, to speak out and in loud enough voices so the state takes some action?
 
Hoo's That said:
They're like how someone described the Palestinians, "They never pass up an opportunity to pass up an opportunity."
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Wow. Is that UVA graduate level? You’re so “forward-thinking”

Can’t believe this post it still up.
 
JoeySimz said:
Wow. Is that UVA graduate level? You’re so “forward-thinking”

Can’t believe this post it still up.
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He’s referencing a fairly well known quote by Abba Eban. Not quite accurately, but in the way it’s often inaccurately cited. Not sure why that would be such a major issue (beyond the fact that there’s a huge percentage of this board that feels a need to be perpetually offended).
 
SWC75 said:
Maryland almost lost it's accreditation back in the 1950's when Curley Byrd was spending so much on the football program that they weren't meeting academic standards.

Curley Byrd - Wikipedia
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Wow, I didn’t know Byrd was such a racist. Amazing what toleration is shown when you can win a few football games.
 
longtimefan said:
Is he the namesake of their stadium?
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Yes, although there was a movement recently to remove his name.

Here is a rather lengthy excerpt from my series "The Bold, Brave Men of Archbold", (which I really need to get back to), about the 1956 Syracuse-Maryland game, which was a huge turning point for both school's football programs. It contains a lot of information about Curley Byrd:

Curley Byrd and Jim Tatum

(My primary source for this section is “The Terrapins: Maryland Football” by Paul Attner.)

You can’t talk about Maryland football in the 1950’s, (or for any prior period), without first talking about Curley Byrd. In fact you can’t even talk about the University of Maryland without talking about Curley Byrd. When I was a student at Syracuse in the early 70‘s I remember a professor telling me that Curly Byrd had spent so much money on the Maryland football team that he school almost lost its accreditation as a university. (I didn’t know you could do that.)

Harry Clifton Byrd started out as a 138 pound hopeful for the 1905 football team for the Maryland Agricultural College. The coach failed to discourage him from trying out for the team. By the time he was a senior, he was the team’s captain and quarterback. By 1912 he was the coach. Even before he got that job, a friend saw him drawing something while sitting on a hill over-looking the campus. The friend asked what he was drawing. Byrd said it was a map of what the University would look like someday. Decades later, according to the friend, (an old classmate, Dr. Levin Broughton), that’s what it looked like.

Byrd was the football coach, officially, for 21 seasons, until 1932. He had so many other jobs by that time that he was criticized for trying to do too many jobs at once and creating conflicts of interest. Byrd then chose front men to coach the football team while he continued to run things behind the scenes until he had become President of what was now the University of Maryland. Along the way he was also the school’s baseball coach, an “instructor in English and History”, Athletic Director, Assistant University President, (1918), University Vice President (1932) and a sportswriter for the Washington Star, reporting on his own team for the paper. He’s the only football coach who became the president of the university he coached for.

When not coaching, he spent much of his time in the state capitol lobbying for the school, especially his version of it. He convinced the legislature to pass the Consolidation Act of 1920, which created the University of Maryland in 1920. He lobbied for funds for a new football field, (named after him), and locker rooms, an athletic dorm, (an innovation at the time), and later a basketball arena. He also arranged to have the schools’ sports nickname changed from the “Farmers” to the “Terrapins” to eliminate the “cow college” reputation the school had. When the new university chapel was dedicated, no sufficiently non-denominational hymn could be found so Curly Byrd composed one. Despite an ongoing feud with Governor Albert Ritchie, (1920-35), he managed to get the budget for the University increased to $9.8 million a year. He also increased his own budget. When he became University President in 1935, his net worth was estimated to be almost $1.5 million in the depths of the depression.

Byrd was an ardent segregationist. In organizing the state university, he created Maryland State, (now Maryland-Eastern Shore), and Morgan State for black students in Maryland.
It was during his tenure that the famous incident in which Wilmeth Sidat-Singh, Syracuse’s star, was prevented from playing against the Terrapins in College Park because he was black. Marty Glickman has spoken and written about it at length in his book and interviews.

He used to get bored and would “walk down the hill from his office, take off his collar, put on an old sweatshirt and take up where his assistants left off.” But eventually he realized that Maryland needed a full-time coach who was in charge to prosper as a football team. He wanted the best for his school and the next four head coaches he hired are all in the Hall of Fame. The first was Clark Shaughnessy, who had installed the T formation for the Chicago Bears NFL champs and then went off to Stanford to do the same thing and led them to an undefeated season and a Rose Bowl victory in 1940. Behind quarterback Tommy Mont the Terps went 7-2 in 1942. But then Shaughnessy, whose nickname was “football’s man in motion”, left to what he considered a better job, coaching at the University of Pittsburgh, a move he later described as “the worst decision I ever made”. Pittsburgh announced a decision to de-emphasize the sport and Shaughnessy went 10-17 in three years there.

Byrd next turned to Clarence “Doc” Spears, another man in motion who had had success at Dartmouth, West Virginia, Minnesota, Oregon, Wisconsin and Toledo. But he didn’t have much success at Maryland, going 5-12-1 in in two seasons.

Byrd then gave Paul “Bear” Bryant his first head coaching job . He’d been coaching service ball and he brought 15 of his players with him to Maryland. (This was a common practice: hire a coach who had been involved with service ball and have him recruit some of the guys who had played for him or who had played against him and looked good: Frank Leahy had his greatest years at Notre Dame doing this and Paul Brown made the Cleveland Browns instant winner by the same method). He was still young and not so sure of himself. He called those his “up-chucking” days because he got so nervous before games. Echoing a future Syracuse coach, he said “We would have been undefeated except for my bad coaching.” It wasn’t that bad: Maryland went 6-2-1 in 1945. But he left the school after a dispute with Byrd for reinstating a suspended player when Bryant was away visiting his family. Bryant went on to glory at Kentucky, Texas A&M and, finally, Alabama.

Byrd then invited Shaughnessy back. Shaughnessy was serving as a consultant to the Washington Redskins and Byrd allowed him to continue with that job, figuring he could save money by sharing Shaughnessy’s salary with the Redskins. Shaughnessy missed three weeks of the pre-season working with the Redskins but tried to make up for it by having some Redskin assistants work with the Maryland team. A clique had developed among the war veterans and new players and Shaughnessy made it worse by dividing them into separate teams, the “big” team and the “little” team. That alienated the new recruits and Shaughnessy then alienated the veterans by saying “a lot of people would refer to some of these boys as bums…You have to remember they’ve been in the Army a long time. They’re all mixed up in the upper story about civilian life. They think the world owes them everything.” The team tumbled to a 3-6 record. And “the man in motion” was in motion again.

Byrd now turned to Jim Tatum, the head coach at the University of Oklahoma. It was a sticky situation. Oklahoma had to release Tatum from his contract and there was a state law in Maryland against long-term contracts which both Tatum and Byrd wanted, Curley because he was sick of losing coaches on short notice. If he couldn‘t get Tatum, Byrd was thinking about offering the job to Tatum‘s promising assistant, Bud Wilkinson.

Tatum was another “service” coach, (that’s where he hooked up with Wilkinson), who, (per Wikipedia), “largely rejected the players from the previous season and instead focused on building a new team.” when he took the Oklahoma job in 1946. The 1945 team had a respectable 5-5 record but had ended the season with an unrespectable 0-47 loss to Oklahoma State. The 1946 team had a roster of 33 players, of whom 31 had been in the service. They had an amazing number of future college head coaches: Darrell Royal, (Mississippi State, Washington and Texas) Jim Owens, (Washington), Jack Mitchell, ((Wichita State, Arkansas and Kansas), Dee Andros, (Oregon State), Wade Walker, (Mississippi State), Warren Giese, (South Carolina), and Pete Tillman, (Wichita State). Andros joked “We had too many coaches and not enough players in the line-up”.

But they had players- and good ones. Nine of them became All-Americans in their careers at Oklahoma. The team opened up playing the Blanchard-Davis Army team that dominated college football in that era and the Sooners gave them quite a battle, losing 7-21 due to 4 turnovers, including a 86 yard return of an intercepted lateral. They also lost to Texas by a touchdown and Kansas by a field goal. They won their other seven games, including the mother of all paybacks, a 74-13 annihilation of Oklahoma State. They then beat North Carolina State in the Gator Bowl, 34-13.

Tatum wanted a 10 year contract. The best Oklahoma would offer was 6 years, so Tatum listened to Curley Byrd’s offer. After mulling it over and realizing Wilkinson was probably next in line for the Maryland job, Tatum decided to make the move, leaving Wilkinson to become a legend in Norman. Oklahoma President Dr. George Cross discovered that Tatum had paid his players $120 each after the bowl game and that $60,000 from the athletic department budget could not be accounted for. He contacted Byrd, wanting him to persuade Tatum not to reveal this. Byrd replied “Persuade? Hell, I’ll tell him to keep his mouth shut!”

Tatum was a legendary character. At 6-3 240, he was a bear of a man who seemed to fill up a room when he entered a door. He was a non-stop talker and master recruiter. He was also a tireless worker who was always searching for that 25th hour in a day. He learned the Split T formation coaching in the service with Missouri’s Don Faurot. But Tatum’s obsession was defense and one time it nearly got him and Faurot killed. “He was trying to explain a defense to me. We approached a little shanty on the side of a curve. Tatum was so busy talking he didn’t realize he was going at a pretty good clip, nor did he see the curve. People were sitting on the porch in horror. Tatum’s car left the road and I knew our doom was sealed. We went into the yard under a clothesline, over a ditch and bounced out on the other side of the curve, miraculously on the same highway. Jim never once changed the subject nor the tone of his voice. He never noted, as far as I can tell, our narrow escape. His defense, incidentally, worked.”

Both his defense and his offense worked at Maryland, largely because he obtained a small army of talented players, giving out as many as 93 scholarships in one season, (an era when there were no limits but when the giving of athletic scholarships at all was still controversial). He especially recruited western Pennsylvania. In the old black and white pictures, Maryland’s Tatum’s teams look a bit like Penn State, (but their jerseys were red, not blue), and their record was similar to what the Nittany Lions achieved in Joe Paterno’s best years. Basically they were Penn State, only in an adjacent state in the early 50’s. A sportswriter came up with a different comparison: “Tatum’s work at Maryland much parallels the building of Miami Beach. Both were wastelands until construction began. Both became monuments- one to football, the other to architecture and leisure. The transformation was rapid and complete.”

Tatum ‘s first team, (1947), went 7-2-1 and tied Georgia 20-20 in the Gator Bowl. His second team fell back to 6-4 but the Terps really got going in 1949, rolling to a 8-1 regular season record, losing 7-14 to another rising power, Biggie Munn’s Michigan State team, (coached by the 1946 Syracuse coaching staff, who had moved there the same year Tatum showed up at Maryland because the Spartans were making the same kind of commitment to winning football games the Terps were). They beat the Missouri team of Tatum’s mentor, Don Faurot in the Gator Bowl, 20-7. The next year, they lost their opener to Georgia and traveled to East Lansing for the return game with the Spartans. State had just beaten #3 ranked Michigan and had risen to #2 in the polls themselves. The Terps were unranked. Three fourth quarter touchdowns, two the result of interceptions, closed out a resounding 34-7 Maryland win. Ed Modzelewski said “It was our first major national victory. We found out we could do well against a big power. From then on, I think those types of games weren’t nearly as hard for us.”

They still had a couple of hiccups along the way: a loss to NC State and a tie against North Carolina to finish 7-2-1 in 1950. But no game was hard for Maryland in 1951. The outscored nine consecutive regular season opponents 353-62, including a combined 96-7 over the two teams that had beaten them the year before, Georgia and NC State. They wound up ranked #3 behind Tennessee and Michigan State, (voters have short memories). The Spartans, who had just joined the Big Ten, were not yet eligible for the Rose Bowl and stayed home while the Vols and Terps were matched in the Sugar Bowl.

In those days there were no polls after the bowls so Tennessee was already in the books as the 1951 “National Champion”. Tatum told his players before the game “We’re like the little boy who said ’Hell, no, I’m not the toughest kid in the neighborhood. But I can lick the kid who is!” They went out and steamrolled to a 21-0 lead in the first 20 minutes and led 28-6 going into the fourth quarter when they gave up a meaningless late TD to win 28-13. They out-rushed the Vols 289-81 and out-gained them 351-156. Had there been a poll after the bowls, Maryland would likely have been voted national champions for 1951.

The Terps opened 1952 with seven straight wins, extending their winning streak to 19 straight and their undefeated streak to 22. But they kind of ran out of gas at the end of the year, losing to Mississippi and that Alabama team that went on to obliterate Syracuse in the Orange Bowl. Jim Tatum was seen to be crying after the Ole Miss game. One of his players, Joe Blair, said “I don’t think any loss, even in the bowls, got to him as much as that one.” It may have cost quarterback Jack Scarbath the Heisman that year, although tackle Dick Modzelewski won the Outland.

At this point a rift developed between Byrd and Tatum, two egos too big for one campus. There had been a controversy over bowl games. Maryland was in the Southern Conference, which was against them, (it was a similar issue in that time that the BCS is now, with many of the same arguments). When they’d violated the conference rule to go to bowl games, Tatum was against it, feeling that scheduling would get harder if they were kicked out of the conference. Byrd was in favor of them. The dispute eventually led the top teams of the SC to form the Atlantic Coast Conference in 1953. After the disappointing ending in 1952, Byrd was quoted as saying that the losses were because Tatum “stopped thinking and talked too much about things when he should have left well enough alone. I’ve been trying to shut him up for three years.” Tatum almost left the school to take and offer from North Carolina, his alma mater.

Tatum’s team came back strong in 1953, crushing ten teams by a combined 298-31, including revenge games on Mississippi and Alabama by a total of 59-0. When Notre Dame, who had been #1 in the polls all year long, suffered an upset tie to Iowa, 14-14, the Terrapins snapped up the #1 spot in the polls and kept it through the end of the regular season. As with Tennessee in 1951, that gave them the national championship in that era. And like Tennessee, they lost, (0-7) in a bowl game, (The Orange), to Tatum’s protégé Bud Wilkinson and his Oklahoma team, who had embarked on what would be an all-time record 47 game winning streak after losing to Notre Dame and being tied by Pittsburgh to begin the season. (In Syracuse we would read about these events in the paper and wonder what it was like to be so good that we could be involved in them.) Maryland should be considered either the 1951 national champions, (in modern eyes), or the 1953 champion, (by the standards of the time). But either way, they got one.

Curley Byrd decided to tilt after other windmills. He resigned as President of the University in 1954 to run for Governor of Maryland. In his tenure as president, enrollment had increased from 3,400 to 15,700. The schools’ budget had grown from $3 million to $20 million. The value of the school’s physical plant had increased from $5 million to $65 million, including Byrd Stadium and Cole Field House. But there were complaints that he’d spent so much on athletics that academics had suffered. The new president, Dr. Wilson Elkins, was determined to put athletics and football back in perspective.

In Maryland’s second game of the 1954 season, they lost a titanic battle in Los Angeles with UCLA, 7-12. The Bruins went undefeated and won the coach’s version of the national title, (Ohio State was #1 in the writer’s poll hat year). Later they lost a 7-9 nail biter to up and coming Miami, (Florida). The Canes were a top ten team that year, losing one game by a point to another coming power, Auburn. (Again, to Syracuse reading about this was like looking at another planet through a telescope.) Maryland also suffered a tie to lowly Wake Forest. The frustrating 7-2-1 ended with a 74-13 slaughter over another Faurot Missouri team. Tatum must hold the all-time record for 74-13 wins.

Faurot almost gained revenge in the 1955 opener but Maryland won 13-12. Then they gained revenge against UCLA in College Park, 7-0. They went on to run the regular season table for the third time in three years. They reached #1 in the polls after the UCLA game but lost it to Michigan after the Wolverine’s deceivingly impressive 26-2 win over Army, (which was the product of 9 turnovers by the Cadets). They moved back into the #1 spot in week 7. Despite not losing, they were eventually overtaken by Oklahoma, (the normal rule of retaining your position in the polls if you don’t lose didn’t seem to apply in this year). They also fell behind an 8-1 Michigan State team after they beat Michigan. They wound up rated #3 and matched again in the Orange Bowl with Oklahoma. In what turned out to be the finale of the Tatum era, they got beat again, 6-20.

In 1951 Maryland had been cited in a court case for over-emphasizing football, the judge noting that 60 of Maryland’s 97 players came from out of state. That would not be shocking now but in those days the idea was that a state university was primarily for the citizens of the state. Governor Theodore McKeldin ordered an investigation to see if the athletic program “is based on deceit, whether it invades the rules of intercollegiate sports and whether it would bring dishonor to the university.” The report found nothing it considered unethical and that only three players “of the first 33” were below the “average standing in class”. Then in 1954, a report by something called the “Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools” found Maryland had “flexible academic standards“, that football was “overemphasized”, that “athletic scholarships were out of proportion with the rest of the school’s grants” and that the recruiting rules of both the NCAA and ACC had been violated. Athletes totaled 8% of the student body but received 78% of the scholarship money, 54% going to football players. And 73% of the football team was from out of state. (By comparison, 28 of Syracuse’s 91 players in 2012 are from New York State. That puts us at 69% out of state.)

Tatum was not only the football coach but the athletic director and he had tired of that role. The new President, Dr. Wilson Elkins, despite being a former football player, (at Texas), was determined to bring the athletic department and the football program under control and re-emphasize academics. “It think a school can have a strong athletic program and a strong academic program. We are opening up next year additional scholarships for non-athletes in the amount of $10,000, (10 scholarships). These are state scholarships that formerly went to students. I hope (athletic scholarships) can stay the same. Sports will have to depend more on its own funds and on outside help.” That opened the door for “booster clubs” to finance and thus influence athletic programs. But in the short run it made football success, or at least dominance, more difficult. Elkins also established a rule that and out-of-state student had to maintain a “C” average to play.

“Tatum rebuked almost every part of the report. His solution to the scholarship situation was to “Add more money (to the budget) for non-athletic scholarships.” Regarding complaints about athletes being given ‘soft jobs’, he said “Does anyone in their right mind expect an athlete to hold down a 20-30 hour a week job after all he puts in on studies and practice?” Tatum claimed he had given out an average of only 28 scholarships a year and 90% of those who had completed their eligibility had graduated.

But the handwriting was on the wall. “Although Elkins had not criticized Tatum, it was still clear that he was going to correct the apparent deficiencies despite the effect it might have on the athletic program. Tatum no longer enjoyed the free reign he had had under Byrd. By 1955 he could see that maintaining the type of program he wanted was impossible.” He announced he was leaving to coach his alma mater, North Carolina. “It’s like a br’er rabbit returning to the briar patch.” But he tearfully told a friend, “I don’t want to leave. I love it here. It’s been very kind to me. But I have to.”

Former quarterback Tommy Mont became the Maryland coach for the 1956 season. “I knew there would be some changes but I thought I could do the job. I was a graduate of Maryland and I liked the area. I took the job with the idea if things didn’t work out and if Maryland improved its academic standing, things would be worked back up again. I never saw it happen.” Football scholarships were cut to 18 a year, (Ben Schwartzwalder started out at 12 in 1949, which was increased to 16 in 1952 and later to 22, eventually reaching 25 per “The Syracuse Football Story“. The dates of the last two increases were not stated). The Maryland football roster had been 93 players in Tatum’s last year. Under Mont, it shrunk to 51 players. “He was asked to recruit more from Maryland high schools, even though the caliber of play was not good.” Mont’s first team started out being ranked #6 out of force of habit. After all, they were “Maryland”. Per Street & Smiths: “Coach Tommy Mont is blessed with marvelous material from the Tatum regime. He has no major personnel problem since there is ample experience to fill the shoes of four departed regulars.”

But after being knocked off by Syracuse in the opener, they tumbled to a 2-7-1 record. Mont had 23 letterman back from a 10-1 team but injuries swept through the team. 13 of his 22 starters missed at least one game. Quarterback Frank Tamburello got drafted, (and not by the NFL). “Injuries, flunkouts and the draft killed us.” It was the beginning of a stretch of 17 years in which Maryland would have only three winning seasons. Mont only lasted three of them, getting fired after a 13-18-1 record.

The one highlight of his career was winning a game against Tatum’s North Carolina team on a day when Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip on a visit to the United States, attended the game:
www.britishpathe.com

THE QUEEN IS AT HOME (aka THE QUEEN IS HOME)

Queen+Elizabeth+and+Prince+Philip+arrive+in+England+after+visiting+USA.
www.britishpathe.com www.britishpathe.com
That was Ted Kerschner going 81 yards for the go ahead score in the 21-7 win. “The delirious players carried Mont on their shoulders to meet the Queen and she seemed to delight in the break with protocol.” Mont said “I’m going to revel in this for the rest of my life.”

It was a different story for the former coach. “On the other side of the field , Tatum walked slowly to the locker room, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched. He was a lonely figure.” Back at the “rabbit patch” as he continually called his alma mater, he was not able to immediately re-create the success he had had at Maryland. He also went 2-7-1 in 1956. He improved to 6-4 the next two seasons. After a round of golf he developed a fever that wouldn’t go away. He had to be hospitalized. He eventually fell into a coma and died on July 23, 1959 at the age of 46. It was determined he’d been bitten by a tic and died of what was determined “to be a rickettsial disease "similar to typhus and Rocky Mountain spotted fever".

Curley Byrd lost his race for Governor in 1954. Typically, he held several different positions, often at once for the next several years. He became involved in administering the fishing business in Maryland, head of the Tidewater Fisheries Commission, the Potomac Fisheries Commission, the Commission on Chesapeake affairs, etc., bringing to an end something called “The Oyster Wars” with the State of Virginia. He also became involved in banking, helping to form the Suburban Trust Company. He was active in the Loyal Order of Moose and the head of the local Rotary club. He also created something called “Defense Orientation Conference Association”, which “educates civilians on the Defense Department’s programs and policies”. But even perpetual motion machines age and run down. Curley Byrd died of a heart condition at the age of 81 in 1970.

So now you know the back-story of the 1955 (and 1956) Syracuse-Maryland game. 1955 was their last great team of their great era, as prominent an opponent as Syracuse had had in the Ben Schwartzwalder Era and one of the best teams ever to come to Syracuse to play a football game. But now it was 1956.
 
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