Jim Tatum
James M. "Big Jim" Tatum (July 22, 1913 – July 23, 1959) was an American football and baseball player and coach. Tatum served as the head football coach at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1942, 1956–1958), the University of Oklahoma (1946), and the University of Maryland, College Park (1947–1955), compiling a career college football record of 100–35–7. His 1953 Maryland team won a national title. As a head coach, he employed the split-T formation with great success, a system he had learned as an assistant under Don Faurot at the Iowa Pre-Flight School during World War II. Tatum was also the head baseball coach at Cornell University from 1937 to 1939, tallying a mark of 20–40–1. Tatum's career was cut short by his untimely death in 1959. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach in 1984.
Maryland Terrapins men's basketball
The 1950s began with a new head coach leading the way, Bud Millikan. A disciple of legendary coach Henry Iba, Millikan's emphasis on defense and fundamentals would become hallmarks of the program over the next two decades. Maryland quickly reels off seven straight winning seasons under Millikan. For the 1953–54 season, the team joined North Carolina, North Carolina State, Duke, Wake Forest, Virginia, Clemson, and South Carolina in leaving the SoCon for the newly formed Atlantic Coast Conference. That season was perhaps the finest the Terrapins had experienced to date, finishing with a 23–7 record and a conference mark good enough for second in the league. Maryland experienced its first games as a ranked team, spending the final nine weeks of the season ranked in the AP Top 20, peaking at #11 before settling for a final ranking of #20. It also featured the school's first win over a ranked team when it beat local rival George Washington, then-number 7 in the country. The team was led by its second All-American, Gene Shue, who was honored in both that season and the prior year.