Athletes - Frank Howard

Home > Listing Index > Athletes > Frank Howard (football coach)

	Athletes - Frank Howard

Frank J. Howard (March 25, 1909 - January 26, 1996) was an American college football player and coach. He played college football for Alabama and was a teammate of legendary coach Bear Bryant. After a career-ending injury, Howard joined the staff at Clemson College and became head coach in 1939. Howard would coach the Clemson Tigers for 30 years, amassing the 15th most wins of any college football coach. He led Clemson to ten bowl games, an undefeated season in 1949, and several Top-20 rankings during his tenure as head coach. During his stay at Clemson, Howard also oversaw the athletic department, ticket sales, and was an assistant coach for the baseball team. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame, the South Carolina Sports Hall of Fame, and the Clemson Ring of Honor. The playing surface at Clemson's Memorial Stadium is named after him.

Howard was born at Barlow Bend, Alabama ("three wagon greasin's from Mobile"). He spent his early days on the farm playing mostly cow pasture baseball because there were not enough boys around the community for a football team. Howard says he left Barlow Bend walking barefoot on a barbed wire fence with a wildcat under each arm.

He graduated from Murphy High School in Mobile where he played football, baseball and basketball and served as president of both the junior and senior classes.

After finishing at Murphy, Howard entered the University of Alabama on an academic scholarship provided by the Birmingham News in the fall of 1927, and the 185-pounder played reserve guard his sophomore year. During his junior year he started every game but two, as an ankle injury sidelined him for the two games he missed. Again his senior year he was a regular.

Howard was president of the freshman class at Alabama, was member of Blue Key and president of the "A" Club.

Howard stepped onto the rolling hills of Clemson in 1931 fresh from the varsity football ranks at Alabama where he was a first stringer on Wallace Wade's 1930 team that drubbed Washington State 24-0 in the 1931 Rose Bowl Howard was known as the "Little Giant' of the Tide's "Herd of Red Elephants."

The bald veteran came to his first coaching post under Jess Neely as a line tutor. "At least that was my title," Howard recalls. "Actually, I also coached track, was ticket manager, recruited players and had charge of football equipment. In my spare time I cut grass, lined tennis courts and operated the canteen while the regular man was out to lunch:' Howard was not only track coach from 1931-39, but served as baseball coach in 1943 and his 12-3 record that year is still among the best percent ages for a season in Clemson history.

Howard held the line coaching post until Neely went to Rice University as head coach in 1940. When the Clemson Athletic Council met to name a successor to Neely, Prof. Sam Rhodes, a council member, nominated Howard to be the new head coach. Howard, standing in the back of the room listening to the discussion, said; "I second the nomination." He got the job and never left. When he retired as head coach following the 1969 season, he was the nation's dean of coaches, having been a head football coach at a major institution longer than anyone else in the United states. When he retired, he was one of five active coaches with 150 or more victories.

While line coach in 1939, the Tigers' record (8-1) was good enough to merit a trip to Dallas where Clemson met undefeated Boston College under the late Frank Leahy in the 1940 Cotton Bowl. The 1948 mark of 10-0 carried Clemson to the 1949 Gator Bowl and two years later, a 9-0-1 record sent the Tigers to Miami's Orange Bowl (1950). The Country Gentlemen were champions on their first three bowl ventures. Boston College fell 6-3, Missouri was nipped in the Gator, 24-23 (Howard says this is the best football game he ever witnessed), and Miami felt the Tiger claws, 15-14. The total point spread in these three bowl wins was five points.

The Gator Bowl beckoned the Tigers again in January 1952, and by being conference champions in 1956, Clemson played in the '57 Orange Bowl classic again. Miami downed Clemson 14-0 in the second Gator Bowl trip, and Colorado led Clemson 20-0, then trailed 21-20 before finally defeating the Tigers 27-21 in the second Orange Bowl. The Tigers then played in the 1959 Sugar Bowl and held No. 1-ranked Louisiana State to a standstill before losing 7-0.

The invitation to play in the first Bluebonnet Bowl in Houston in December 1959 was the eighth bowl that Howard had been a part of either as a player, assistant coach or head coach. It was the seventh bowl trip for a Clemson team and the sixth in 12 years. Howard says that Clemson's 23-7 triumph over seventh ranked Texas Christian in the Bluebonnet Bowl was the best performance he had ever witnessed by a Clemson team. Clemson was the first school to play in two bowls in the same calendar year.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Frank Howard (football coach) ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Frank Howard (football coach); it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Athletes - Frank Howard

Searches on eBay

Related searches on eBay