Note: The following appears in the Troy football gameday program.
Each year, the Clemson athletic department invites the 50-year, 25-year, 10-year and five-year reunion teams to campus for a game. But today’s “The Last Word” is about the 75-year anniversary team.
I heard a lot about Clemson’s 1950 season from my two predecessors in the sports information office, Brent Breedin and Bob Bradley. McNeil Howard was Clemson’s SID in 1950, but Bradley worked at The Greenville News and Breedin was a sports columnist at the Anderson Independent Mail in 1950.
I write this column in honor of these two men who always smiled when I asked about Frank Howard’s 11th team that finished with a 9-0-1 record, the first Tiger team to finish a season in the top 10 of the AP poll.
When you look at Clemson football history, there are only six teams out of 130 that have concluded a season with a “0” in the loss column. Those include the 1900 squad led by John Heisman (6-0), the 1906 team (4-0-3) led by Bob Williams, the 1948 (11-0) and 1950 (9-0-1) teams led by Howard, the 1981 national champion Tigers (12-0) led by Danny Ford and the 2018 national championship team led by Dabo Swinney, the first squad in modern college football history with a 15-0 record.
Just like the 1981 squad, the 1950 Tigers were not ranked in the preseason AP poll. Clemson had been undefeated in 1948, but it had a 4-4-2 record in 1949.
A look to the 1950 results show that Clemson had three wins over top-20 teams, a 34-0 victory at No. 17 Missouri, still the highest victory margin in Clemson history over a ranked team on the road, a 13-12 victory at Wake Forest and a 15-14 win in the Orange Bowl, which was really a road win even though it was a bowl game, because the Orange Bowl was Miami’s home stadium.
The 1950 team was the only Clemson team to beat three top-20 teams in one season until Ford’s 1981 national championship team pulled off the feat.
Offensively, Howard’s 1950 squad averaged 6.2 yards per play, still 10th highest in program history and the highest mark by a Clemson team until 2006.
The rushing attack averaged 280 yards per game, still the second most in school history. Twice that year, Clemson had three 100-yard rushers in a game, still the only team in school history to do that twice. Behind what Howard called his “dream backfield” of Fred Cone, Ray Mathews and Jackie Calvert, the Tigers averaged 5.0 yards per carry, still the sixth highest in school history.
In terms of passing efficiency, the team rating was 148.0, still eighth highest in program history and the highest for a Tiger team not coached by Swinney.
The team averaged 34.4 points per game, again the most in Clemson history by a team not coached by Swinney.
The defense was just as proficient, allowing only 7.6 points per game, sixth best in Clemson history. The team’s average scoring margin of +26.7 is still fifth highest in school history and the third-highest mark since 1901.
The defense forced 40 turnovers in 10 games, second most in school history, and the 4.0 turnovers forced per game is still tied for the school record. That total included 22 interceptions by the defense, fourth most in school history. That all contributed to a team pass efficiency defense of 59.1, still third in program history. The turnover margin of +19 is second to the 1988 team’s +21.
This was Howard’s most talented team in terms of the NFL draft. In the spring of 1951, six players were drafted, the “dream backfield” of Cone, Mathews and Calvert, blocking back Dick Hendley (Lucas Glover’s grandfather), lineman Bob Hudson and linebacker Wyndie Wyndham. That was the most Tigers selected in an NFL draft class until six were taken in 1979.
Twelve members of the 1950 team are in the Clemson Athletic Hall of Fame, twice as many as the 1981 national champions. The 1950 list includes the previously mentioned “dream backfield” of Calvert, Cone and Mathews, tailback Billy Hair, Hendley, receiver Glenn Smith, Hudson, defensive end Dreher Gaskin, linebackers Don Wade and Wyndham, defensive lineman Tom Barton and defensive back Fred Knoebel.
The coaching staff included Clemson Athletic Hall of Famers Bob Smith, Bob Jones, Walter Cox, Goat McMillan and Howard.
With 17 players and coaches in the Clemson Athletic Hall of Fame, no other Tiger team has that many.
