Carl Maddox

Sport: Coach

Induction Year: 1986

University: LSU

Induction Year: 1986

It didn’t take Carl Maddox long to realize that coaching football at Louisiana State University is a high-pressure job.

Maddox was a successful high school coach before and after a Navy stint on a motor torpedo boat during World War II. Then he joined Gaynell Tinsely’s LSU staff in 1954 as the Tigers’ offensive backfield coach.

A few months later, after a 5-6 season, both Tinsley and T.P. “Skipper” Head—who had been the Athletic Director for 23—were fired by the Board of Supervisors.

Welcome to life in the fast lane, Carl.

When Paul Dietzel was selected to succeed Tinsley, one provision was that he had to retain the assistants from the previous year. The only one who left was line coach Will Walls, whose position was compromised by a players’ petition supporting his candidacy for the head position.

After struggling through three years without a winning season, five of them (including Maddox) were still on the staff when the Tigers won the national championship in 1958.

Maddox dropped out of athletics for a few years in the 1960s to serve as director of the Student Union. But in 1968, he was selected Athletic Director over Charlie McClendon—who wanted to combine that job with his position as head football coach.

Maddox, the son of a college mathematics professor, was born in Magnolia, Ark., on Dec. 10, 1912. His family moved to Stillwater, Okla., and then settled in Natchitoches as Carl was entering third grade. His dad became head of the math department at Louisiana Normal (now Northwestern State) and Carl—who skipped a grade in elementary school and completed his college work in three years—was graduated from Normal in 1932, at the age 19.

“My dad had visions of me becoming a Rhodes Scholar,” he recalled.

Maddox had another vision, and launched his coaching career at Franklin High School. He later coached at the Gulf Coast Military Academy in Gulfport, Miss., and two other Mississippi schools, Greenwood High and Greenville High. His 1953 Greenville team won the state championship.

He faced 1945 Heisman winner Felix “Doc” Blanchard as both a coach and player. Gulf Coast Military Academy played Blanchard’s school, St. Stanislaus of Bay St. Louis, three years in a row, with Charlie Black leading GCMA to a 33-32 victory in one of the duels. Then Maddox entered the Navy, and was a 192-pound guard for the Motor Torpedo Boat Raiders after the war when the Raiders played Army at West Point.

“We jumped off to a 13-0 lead,” Maddox recalled. “But they were in better shape, and they wore us down in the second half. But not as bad as they beat Notre Dame.”

Army, coached by Earl “Red” Blaik, won its second straight national championship that season with the inside-outside combination of Blanchard and Glenn Davis. The Black Knights’ closest game was a 32-13 rout of Navy in the their season finale. They beat the Motor Torpedo Boat Raiders 55-13 and No. 9-ranked Notre Dame 48-0.

Maddox spent 25 years at LSU, but was inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame primarily for his role as Athletic Director from 1966 to 1978. He added 10 varsity sports, five of them in the women’s program, in changing LSU’s image from a football school to one with a quality all-around program that won the Bernie Moore all-sports trophy in 1979.

“From Day One,” Maddox said, “I wanted to have the best overall varsity program in the conference. Our conference is competitive enough that if you can do well in the Southeastern Conference, you are likely to be nationally ranked. To achieve that, you’ve got to give coaches the tools to work with, and primary among those tools to work with, and primary among those tools are facilities for each sport.”

He worked to expand Tiger Stadium, renovated Alex Box Stadium and add the Bernie Moore track complex, as well as facilities for other sports. He hired Dale Brown as the LSU basketball coach, and supported him through a start. By the time Maddox stepped down, brown had turned a once-mediocre basketball program into a perennial power.

When he had to leave LSU after reaching the mandatory retirement age, Maddox served five more years as Athletic Director at Mississippi State. Although his budget was smaller, he once again established a quality all-around program. “I really wasn’t ready to retire,” he said. “I guess I never looked at my job as going to work. I was just going to do something I wanted to do.”

After he retired again, Maddox spent more than a year helping organize the National Sports Festival in Baton Rouge.

In 1986, he won the James J. Corbett Award presented by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics.

“The kind of recognition that is most rewarding is the one from your peers,” Maddox said. “I had a hard and fast rule. Never spend more than you make. It never occurred to me to do anything else.”

The surpluses at LSU ranged from $48,000 to $300,000. “We used the money to upgrade facilities,” Maddox said.