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.
1956 Maryland Terrapins football team
Maryland entered 1956 ranked number-six in the Associated Press preseason poll. The previous year, the freshman Terrapins finished with an undefeated record, and "Sports Illustrated" had called it the "best freshman team in the entire South." Before resigning his post as head coach, Jim Tatum had said before the 1956 Orange Bowl, "Our 1956 squad will have the greatest potential of all, despite the loss of ten seniors."