Six decades ago, Tennessee State and Notre Dame football coaching legends swapped intel
SOUTH BEND — They call themselves The Untouchables, and they have the silkscreen logo and the coordinated T-shirts and headwear to amplify that fact.
Friday evening at Jon Hunt Memorial Plaza, where Tennessee State’s Aristocrat of Bands got the crowd pumped up for Saturday afternoon’s first-ever meeting between Notre Dame football and an HBCU opponent, six retired Tigers-turned-superfans lounged in the warm sun and considered the significance of this business trip.
“This is a historic moment to us,” former NBA and ABA basketball player Ted McClain, who turned 77 on Wednesday, said as he sat with his fellow Untouchables. “Being here at Notre Dame is a highlight in Tennessee State’s history. It’s huge because we might not ever have this opportunity again.”
McClain, known as “Hound Dog” in his playing days, led the Tigers to their national tournament final in 1970. During his era, the Tigers’ football dynasty claimed two of its 12 all-time Black college football national titles.
Future NFL legends such as Claude Humphrey, Joe Gilliam Jr., Joe “Turkey” Jones and Ed “Too Tall” Jones roamed the Nashville campus in those days. McClain, who later befriended Notre Dame basketball legend John Shumate in the pros, smiled at the thought of Tennessee State at its peak getting a crack at mighty Notre Dame football.
“Back in the day, they wanted none of us,” McClain said. “We had great athletes.”
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'Big John' Merritt built legendary program at Tennessee State
They also had a College Football Hall of Fame coach in cigar-chomping “Big John” Merritt, who guided Tennessee State (known as Tennessee A&I until 1968) to seven Black college football national titles during his 21 seasons from 1963-83.
Before his death at age 57, a result of years spent battling hypertension and heart disease, Merritt coached his teams to 29 consecutive winning seasons. His overall record of 235-70-12 included 11 seasons at Jackson State and a national title at the Mississippi HBCU in 1962.
A former Kentucky State offensive guard who earned his master’s degree at the University of Kentucky, Merritt caught the eye of the Wildcats’ ascendant football coach, Paul “Bear” Bryant. The two would remain friends for the final three decades of their lives.
Tennessee State’s Blue Ribbon Coaching Clinic, which ran for about a decade starting in 1958, attracted mainstream football coaching legends such as Woody Hayes (Ohio State), Weeb Ewbank (Miami of Ohio), Sid Gillman (American Football League) and Ben Schwartzwalder (Syracuse).
In July 1964, the featured speaker was Notre Dame football’s newly hired Ara Parseghian. A black-and-white photo shows Merritt greeting Parseghian at the Nashville airport.
Arthur Finley, then an engineering student at Tennessee State, attended Parseghian’s free talk in the student union.
“I walked in and got a good seat; it wasn’t crowded,” Finley, 80, said in a phone interview from Chattanooga, Tenn. “I remember Parseghian speaking, but I don’t remember anything that stands out to me about what he said.”
What struck Finley, who spent 38 years working for Goodyear Tire Co., was Merritt’s message to the group of coaches, many of them from high school programs in the Deep South.
“John Merritt talked about the pass,” Finley said. “He said the pass is nothing but a long handoff, and it starts with the center-quarterback exchange.”
Merritt gave the floor to one of his former Jackson State quarterbacks, Leroy "Redtop" Smith, who went on at length describing the intricacies of proper footwork upon taking the center snap. Smith's teams won more than 100 games during his coaching career at Mississippi Valley State, Tuskegee and Kentucky State.
Parseghian returned to South Bend and led the ’64 Irish to a turnaround season. Unheralded quarterback John Huarte, passing often to wideout Jack Snow, won the Heisman Trophy as the nation’s outstanding college football player.
'60s-era clinics allowed Black, White football coaches to share ideas
Rayburn Traughber became Merritt’s son-in-law when he married Bonnie, the coach’s only child, almost half a century ago.
Chattanooga residents as well, the Traughbers confirmed in a phone interview the significance of those Blue Ribbon Coaching Clinics.
“We’re talking about pre-Civil Rights Bill,” said Rayburn Traughber, 76. “You had White coaches that would come to Black football clinics. In the early ‘60s, you didn’t have Black coaches that were allowed to go to White football clinics.”
Similar clinics existed at HBCU powers such as Grambling, Southern and Florida A&M under their hall of fame coaches.
“It was an unusual situation that White coaches would come to speak,” Traughber said. “Not only that, they would learn from each other. They wouldn’t be playing those (HBCU) teams, so they traded secrets.”
A young Vanderbilt assistant named Bill Parcells would later make the short trip over the Tennessee State to visit with Merritt and his staff. After Tennessee State upset Louisville on two occasions and nearly knocked off San Diego State on a trip out west, future NFL coach Don Coryell of the Aztecs marched into the visiting locker room after the game to personally compliment Merritt on his game plan.
Years before “Air Coryell” dominated the NFL, Tennessee State had its “Air Show” with the likes of quarterbacks Eldridge Dickey and Joe Gilliam Jr. firing downfield early and often.
Merritt’s last national championship team featured a wideout named Golden Tate Jr., who would become a fifth-round draft pick of the Indianapolis Colts in 1984. Golden Tate III, a Nashville-area product who starred at Notre Dame, went on to play 11 seasons in the NFL.
Grandson will attend historic game in John Merritt's honor
Charles Ayers Traughber, 42, will represent the Merritt family at Saturday’s game at Notre Dame. A Tennessee State graduate who lives in Nashville, the youngest of Big John’s two grandsons works as general counsel for Bridgestone Tire Co.
Merritt Traugher, 46, had his famous grandfather in his life long enough to remember the day he gave the commencement address at his kindergarten graduation.
As McClain surveyed the upbeat gathering outside the Morris Performing Arts Center, the former basketball star was asked what Merritt would think had he lived to see this weekend.
“He would say, ‘Oh, baby. What a thrill,’ “ McClain said. “He asked for all of this back in his day. He wanted to play these big schools. Big John didn’t shy away from anybody. He would play you anywhere. At your place, at his place. It didn’t matter.”
Bonnie Traughber, 74 and retired after four decades as a high school teacher, will be watching on NBC as the Tennessee State program her father launched gets its long-anticipated shot at 13th-ranked Notre Dame.
What would Big John Merritt tell his team in the locker room if he had a chance to give one more pregame speech?
“He’d say this is a ‘once in a lifetime’ event for them,” Bonnie Traughber said. “He’d probably be very excited about it. He’d be fired up.”
Follow Notre Dame football writer Mike Berardino on social media @MikeBerardino.
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Notre Dame connections with HBCU opponent Tennessee State
