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.
Crab Bowl Classic
The series resumed in 1950 after Georgetown unexpectedly canceled a scheduled game with Navy. Maryland agreed to fill in for Georgetown and hosted the Academy for the Byrd Stadium dedication game in front of a then Washington area-record crowd of 43,836 fans. The two teams last met in 1934, and since that time the Terrapins had hired head coach Jim Tatum. Tatum, an innovator of the split-T offense, had brought consistent success to Maryland in the intervening years. Fearing a renewal of post-game mischief, the Midshipmen attending the match were given strict orders: "Behave like gentlemen and go straight home after the Maryland–Navy football game in College Park tomorrow. No midshipmen will enter the goal post activity or other altercation following the game."
Newspapers predicted that Navy would win the 1950 game due to the inexperience of the Maryland quarterbacks, who were led by 19-year-old sophomore Jack Scarbath. A week before, Scarbath had his first start in a 27–7 loss to Georgia, but he would later become one of Maryland's greatest quarterbacks and the 1952 Heisman Trophy runner-up.