The former West Virginia, Texas Tech, and South Carolina head football coach is on the ballot for induction into college football’s Hall of Fame. He deserves the nod. Here’s why.
From a 40-year academic career of reading, teaching, and writing about leadership, it’s fair to say that I know leadership when I see it. And that’s why I’m supporting Jim Carlen’s induction into college football’s Hall of Fame.
Carlen was a living portrait of outstanding leadership.
I believe Jim Carlen embodied 15 core attributes of leadership greatness.
1. Having a vision: Being able to communicate it well to others and getting buy-in and commitment to making that vision a reality
2. Surrounding yourself with talented people: Never being threatened by strong and talented associates, giving them space to do their work, helping them advance in their careers, and avoiding being surrounded by “yes people”
3. Never taking success for granted: Reminding everyone what made success possible
4. Never letting defeat get you down: Turning disappointments into successes down the road
5. Establishing a healthy culture: Headlining the importance of discipline and persistence, and helping to create a high morale environment with a strong esprit de corps
6. Giving just the right attention to detail: Never relaxing attention to the details but doing so without micromanaging
7. Being tough, fair, straight-shooting, and honest: Making sure people know where you stand on issues and where you stand with them
8. Practicing what you preach: Meaning that actions speak louder than words, but words also matter
9. Never taking your eye off the prize: Keeping primary objectives/goals in the spotlight and never veering off course
10. Never getting stale: Evolving with the times by trying new things and thinking/doing outside the box, but never getting away from fundamentals
11. Feeling comfortable under your own skin: Exuding confidence without being arrogant
12. Being successful at different places: Getting the job done in different settings with different cultures
13. Preaching and living accountability: Including for yourself
14. Understanding that respect can’t be demanded: Accepting that respect has to be earned and constantly re-earned
15. Never failing to say thank you: By giving credit and congratulating performance.
What does all of that have to do with Jim Carlen? It is who he was and why he succeeded at the three stops as a college head coach.
Who qualifies for induction into the Hall? To gain admission, a candidate “must have been a head football coach for a minimum of 10 years and coached at least 100 games with a .600 winning percentage.” Jim Carlen was a head coach from 1966 to 1981, and he compiled a record of 107 wins, 69 losses, and 6 ties over 182 games. Carlen had only three losing seasons over that timespan–his first in Morgantown, second in Lubbock, and third in Columbia. His best years were his last team at WVU (1969, 10-1, with a Peach Bowl win) and his fourth team at Tech (1973, 11-1, with a Gator Bowl win). Carlen also doubled as USC’s athletic director during the six years he served as head football coach.
Carlen and Bowden (photo, WVU Athletics)
Here’s how the College Football Hall of Fame describes Jim Carlen. “West Virginia (1966-69), Texas Tech (1970-74), South Carolina (1975-81): He led teams to eight bowl games and 13 winning seasons in 16 years as head coach. 1973 National Coach of the Year. Three-time Southwest Conference Coach of the Year. Coached Heisman Trophy winner George Rogers at South Carolina.” (I would have added the name Jim “Bubba” Braxton.)
I become familiar with Jim Carlen’s approach to leadership during my quest to gain a deeper understanding of the West Virginia teams of 1968-70–the last two years of the Carlen Era and the first year of the Bowden Era. The reason for investigating was personal. My spouse Kathy and I are WVU alums, and we studied in Morgantown about that time. Fans in the stands then, I was eager to learn more.
Going into the project, I expected to learn a lot more about Coach Bowden, which I did. I also gained a fresh perspective about Coach Carlen. I knew that WVU football had entered the modern era under Carlen’s leadership. I view it as the dividing line between what came before and what has happened since. Still, I did not fully understand the breadth and depth of Carlen’s impact until I interviewed former WVU players and coaches.
***You can listen to WVU players and coaches talk about Coach Carlin in the audiocast presented at the end of this article.
The WVU period is especially notable in Carlen’s career because it was his first head coaching job. He came to Morgantown from Atlants where he had served as a Georgia Tech assistant, the school where he had played college ball. And in taking it at 33 years of age, Carlen was the youngest head coach in major college football at the time. Carlen established his signature way of leading at WVU, what John Hale and Tom Kucer call (in the audiocast) “a CEO approach.”
The Carlen Way was how a college football program should be run and what college players should experience. That goes for the coaches, too.
In particular, the Carlen-Bowden relationship was textbook stuff, a classic handoff from Carlen hiring Bowden at WVU to Bowden succeeding Carlen as WVU’s head coach.
The story started in the mid-1960s when Carlen saw great potential but took a gamble by hiring a young coach with modest credentials. Back then, Bowden had been an assistant at Samford, South Georgia State, and Howard, and he had only two years of assistant coaching experience at a major school (Florida State). Carlen didn’t hire him as a position coach; Bowden was tabbed as his offensive coordinator.
When it came time for Bowden to succeed Carlen, the respect Bowden had for his mentor/leader shone through. It’s not unusual for the new person to talk about the changes they will make. That way, they will get the credit. Not Bowden. At his introductory press conference as the new WVU head coach, Bowden said: “The first question I was asked when I was appointed football coach here is how much is the program going to change. My answer is that the program is not going to change at all. You don’t change something good.”
The story didn’t end there. Carlen’s impact on Bowden’s philosophy and approach is well-noted in Bowden’s own words. “The four years (he spent with Carlen at WVU) were the greatest coaching experience I ever had,” the-then 90-year-old Bowden wrote in a handwritten letter mailed to the College Football Hall of Fame Board. “He taught me how a coach should act,” he continued. “Jim did it the right way.”
Letter courtesy Mollianne Carlen Elliott
“The right way” translated into wins. But even though success in Morgantown came quickly in football program terms, it didn’t come overnight. Getting the needed talent was job #1. Carlen and his staff focused on recruiting players from West Virginia (special emphasis), Western Pennsylvania, and Ohio. They looked for talent, figuring out later where many players would end up on the field.
After going 8-9-3 his first two years (1966-67), Carlen went 17-4 over the next two years (1968-69). 1968 was the turnaround season as the Mountaineers went 7-3 with notable wins against Pitt (away) and Syracuse (at home) with losses to Penn State, Virginia Tech, and Kentucky. Jack Fleming, Voice of the Mountaineers, provides a sketch of that success, focusing on Carlen, the coaching staff he had assembled, and the staff’s emphasis on academics to develop “the whole person.” (Audio courtesy of WVU Athletics and Grey Beard via YouTube).
1969, Carlen’s last year in Morgantown, featured a 10-1 record accentuated by what is still considered to be one of the greatest wins in Mountaineer football history–the 1969 Peach Bowl victory over South Carolina. Played in the mud, the weather wasn’t USC’s only problem. WVU threw a new offensive formation at the Gamecocks, switching from the veer offense it had used during the regular season to the wishbone offense that Bowden installed and the team practiced between the last game of the season (November 22) and bowl-game day (December 30).
Jim Carlen left Morgantown after that win and headed southwest to Texas Tech University. In Lubbock, Carlen won eight or more games in three of his five years, highlighted by an 11-1 record in 1973 that included a Gator Bowl win over Tennessee. Coming off an 8-4 1972 campaign with a Sun Bowl appearance against North Carolina, Carlen knew that Tech had an opportunity to do something special in 1973. (Audio courtesy of Channel 8 Sports Jerry Park reporting and SMU Jones Film via YouTube)
Carlen’s enthusiasm was well-founded. In 1973, the Red Raiders only lost to Texas on the road in Austin while knocking off all of their other Southwest Conference rivals, including Baylor, Texas A&M, TCU, SMU, and Arkansas. The crowning achievement came when Carlen was named National Coach of the Year.
At Tech, Carlen earned SWC Coach of the Year honors three times in his five years there, and his overall record has stood the test of time. None of Carlen’s modern-day predecessors matched his TTU winning percentage (.644), and only two TTU head coaches since then have done better–Steve Sloan (.657) and Mike Leach (.661).
What’s more, only two coaches since Carlen’s days have won more games at TTU (Spike Dykes and Leach). In addition, Carlen won more games in five seasons at TTU (37) than current NFL coach Kliff Kingsbury did in seven years in Lubbock (2013 to 2018, 35 wins).
Carlen then went on to win seven or more games three times in his seven-year career at South Carolina. There, three wins (among others) stand out–in 1980, beating Michigan in Ann Arbor (the Wolverines never lost after that game and finished the year ranked #5 nationally, and winning again on the road against #3 North Carolina in 1981, Carlen’s final season in Columbia.
1975 USC-Clemson (photo courtesy YouTube)
But perhaps the most memorable game was the 1975 home win against bitter rival Clemson. The Gamecocks routed the visiting Tigers, 56-20, scoring on every possession as QB Jeff Grantz sliced and diced the CU defense.
The game ended in controversy to add spice to an already hot rivalry. This is how one media outlet remembered the game.
(Audio courtesy of Rlemco via YouTube)
When Carlen retired as the USC headman, he left the program as the coach with the most wins in school history (45). He had succeeded legendary Paul Dietzel, who had 42 wins from 1966 to 1974. Carlen’s wins record stood until it was broken by another legend, Steve Spurrier (86). Not even the legendary Lou Holtz (with 33 victories) won as many games in Columbia as did Carlen.
Carlen was succeeded at USC by one of his coordinators–a repeat of what had happened two decades earlier in Morgantown when Bobby Bowden got the nod. In this case, Defensive Coordinator Richard Bell, who had also served as Carlen’s DC at both WVU and TTU, was named USC head coach. Because Bell worked with Carlen at three schools, he knew him well, if not better, than any other coach in the business. He shared his thoughts recently about Jim Carlen.
You get the picture. Jim Carlen knew how to lead a football program and he did it at three different stops over two decades. In doing so, he left his mark on the aport, at the schools where he coached, and on players, coaches, and other staff members. Leading with values and vision, Jim Carlen did it the right way during the turbulent times of the 1960s and 1970s, including advocating equality for African American players and coaches. Daughter Mollianne Carlen Elliott elaborates.
There’s yet another reason to induct Jim Carlen into college football’s hall.
At a time when college sports are being pushed in multiple directions–not all of them good–including the increasing pro-like evolution of the game with its extraordinary emphasis on money, winning, and the infiltration of sports betting–the sport needs to honor people like Jim Carlen.
I believe firmly that coaching greatness shouldn’t be judged only in terms of proficiency with Xs and Os or be measured by wins and championships alone. There’s more to the story, and, indeed, there’s more to the account of greatness. There’s a fuller story to be told, and, in many ways, Jim Carlen embodied that fuller story. It’s a story that must be enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame.
Richard Bell puts it concisely.
Jim Carlen (1933-2012). Photo courtesy, The Smoking Musket
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AUDIOCAST: After my intro, you’ll hear (in order) the voices of John Hale, Tom Kucer, Dick Roberts, Mickey Plumley, Phil Callicut, Ken Juskowich, Danny Wilfong, Richard Bell, Callicut, Plumley, Callicut, Plumley, Kucer, Juskowich, Fear, Juskowich, and Fear. LISTEN HERE
LETTERS IN SUPPORT OF COACH CARLEN’S NOMINATION/CANDIDACY can be mailed to The College Football Hall of Fame, c/o Hillary Jeffries. 433 Las Colinas Blvd East, Suite 1130, Irving, TX 75039. Letters should be sent soon, preferably before July 1, 2022. Thank you!
