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.
1950 Gator Bowl
Maryland was led by third-year head coach Jim Tatum, who had engineered one season turn-arounds at Maryland and previously Oklahoma. Missouri was coached by his former boss, Don Faurot, under whom Tatum had previous been an assistant coach for the U.S. Navy's Iowa Pre-Flight team. This game was the first in a six-game series between the former colleagues and would last for the remainder of Tatum's tenure at Maryland.