Buddy Pough’s legendary career.

Buddy Pough: An unsung legend

by Donal Ware
boxtorow.com

With the South Carolina State Bulldogs’ victory at the Norfolk State Spartans on Saturday, a legendary coaching career has come to an end. Buddy Pough, the most winningest coach in SC State history, the man who has put so many players into the National Football League, including two of the best currently in the league in San Francisco 49ers defensive tackle Javon Hargrave and Indianapolis Colts linebacker Shaquille Leonard, is retiring. Officially, this time. He was supposed to have retired several years ago and decided to come back. It was one of the many great decisions he made and benefited others, including the MEAC, greatly.

The pinnacle of all of his success was his Bulldogs winning the 2021 Celebration Bowl in dominating fashion over the heavily favored and cocky Jackson State Tigers coached by Deion Sanders. It was a 31-10 victory by SCSU in a game shown on network television on ABC. As the game ended, Pough shed a tear. And just like his life’s work, the win–although huge for him and his legacy–quite predictable, was not about him. It was about his alma mater, South Carolina State, and about the MEAC.

This was a game that took Pough six years to get to. He should have gotten there in 2015, when the Bulldogs were leading North Carolina A&T 6-2 late in the fourth quarter, thanks to a suffocating, dominating defensive performance by the Bulldogs. The Bulldogs lined up in punt formation and decided to fake the punt and the punter’s pass was intercepted by A&T. The Aggies eventually scored to go up 9-6. The Bulldogs’ potential game-tying field goal sailed wide left and the North Carolina A&T dominance over HBCU football for the rest of the 2010’s began, and it began a bit of a downward trajectory for SCSU and eight consecutive losses to A&T.

That trajectory began to change in 2019 when Pough announced that he would retire. The 2019 team went 8-3 and won a share of the MEAC title. Pough rethought retirement. SCSU wanted him back so they mutually agreed on his return.

Pough came back to his alma mater in 2002 after a successful stint as an assistant coach at the University of South Carolina, hired by Brad Scott in 1997 and then being retained by the legendary Lou Holtz.

“I did not know Buddy Pough at all, but I knew he was the assistant coach and I called Buddy and he wasn’t at home,” recalled Holtz, who in 1999, was hired as the head coach at South Carolina. When Coach Holtz called Pough he wasn’t at home. “His wife said he was at the playoff game looking at recruits. Now here’s an individual that didn’t even know if he would have a job or not and he was already out recruiting.

“That impressed me. Once I met him and spent time with him, he was just class. You look at him as a recruiter, as a coach, as a staff [member], he’s just fun to be around.”

Coach Holtz went on to tell me that in 2002, Pough came to him and said that he had been offered the job at South Carolina State, but he didn’t think he was going to take it. “I said Buddy you have to take it. I said think of how many people you’ll be able to influence, the lives you will change by being the head coach.

“We missed him. It was a very unselfish thing for me to do because you just don’t replace a Buddy Pough very easily. I think the world of him. He’s a very rare individual. You don’t find many people like him.”

When I asked Coach Holtz in a joking manner what if Pough had not taken the job, he said, “I think we would have been a little bit better because you don’t lose an assistant like Buddy… he was one of these guys that handled problems, solved problems, but is great with the players because he cared about them. He cared about them enough that he wouldn’t lower the standards for them.”

Prior to his time at South Carolina, Pough was a very successful high school coach in South Carolina, winning a state championship and being named Coach of the Year three times. Prior to that, he was an assistant coach at SC State for nine seasons. During his time as a player at South Carolina State, he played offensive line earning All-MEAC honors under the legendary Willie Jeffries, a College Football Hall of Famer and the first Black head coach at an FBS school. The 1973 team that he played on was Coach Jeffries’ first team and included a couple of teammates that would go on to be Pro Football Hall of Famers in Donnie Shell and Harry Carson.

When taking over the team in 2002, Pough came behind Coach Jeffries, who retired, finishing with a respectable 6-6 record. Pough’s first two years were solid, combining for a 13-9 record and a second-place finish in the MEAC in 2002. He broke through   winning his first of eight MEAC championships. Imagine the pressure he must have felt, not just in those early years, but throughout his career, not only having to come behind a living legend, but that living legend still being very much an integral part of South Carolina State University. Despite the shadow over Pough, he was able to create his own shadow, 22 years with a 151-93 record, 115-44 in MEAC play, three HBCU national championships (2008, 2009, 2021) and eight MEAC championships (2004, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2013, 2014, 2019, 2021), and four MEAC Coach of the Year Awards (2002, 2009, 2019, 2021). Even more accomplished than the legendary Jeffries. I think the College Football Hall of Fame will be calling one day.

When asked about whether he feels slighted by not having an opportunity to head coach at the FBS level he says, “not really.” He enjoyed his time immensely at his alma mater he said and points to the fact that he got a late start coaching in college because of all of his years in the high school ranks. But Pough has a coaching tree that includes University of Virginia head coach Tony Elliott, Florida head coach Billy Napier, and The Citadel head coach Maurice Drayton.

What’s most striking about Coach Pough was how personable he was. On conference calls, even if he didn’t know you, he would address you by name. He had a way with the media, an extremely likable way. And he didn’t really give you a lot of “coach-speak.” If you asked him a question, he would give you an answer. Even on tough questions, he has this way of answering those. Even in a time when bigger papers in respective states mostly covered the big schools, reporters for papers like The State (Columbia, SC), and The Post and Courier (Charleston) would cover South Carolina State, as well as TV stations, in part because of Pough.

The two things most dear to Pough’s heart were South Carolina State and the MEAC. The MEAC has gone through some challenging times over the last couple of years, with only six football-playing institutions. As of now, that’s not as much an issue as people think, with the Celebration Bowl in play. (North Carolina Central earned an at-large berth to the FCS Playoff this year.) Pough has been not only a strong advocate for the MEAC, but an outspoken one. And in his one and only shot at showing the world that the MEAC was in fact not dead, he came through in fine fashion, as his Bulldogs defeated Jackson State and won the HBCU national championship in 2021. The MEAC needed that and he put the conference on his back.

There have been many legendary coaches in the HBCU realm. Eddie Robinson. Cleveland Abbott. John Merritt. Jeffries. Jake Gaither. More recently, there’s Bill Hayes, Joe Taylor, and Rod Broadway. Only a handful of these coaches head coached at one school, including Robinson. I was much younger and did not cover Eddie Robinson. I only was aware of him because of his accomplishments and legendary status. I covered Pough for a good portion of his career at SCSU.

Buddy Pough is my Eddie Robinson.

The MEAC has lost one of its greatest coaches ever. Perhaps, its greatest coach. But he’s an advocate for all of the coaches that are still in the MEAC and goes out of his way to say a kind word about all of them. The HBCU football world has lost one of the most genuine people you’ll ever meet.

When asked how he wanted to be remembered, Pough said: “I always wanted to be remembered as a guy who tried his best to make the game exciting and fun. At the end of your career here, we want you to be a better person at the end and a guy who could go back home to wherever he was going to and be a positive influence on everybody around him.”

That and more.

Donal Ware is the host of the nationally syndicated sports talk radio program BOXTOROW, airing in over 28 markets across the country and on SiriusXM College Sports Radio and on SiriusXM Channel 142 H.B.C.U. He is a Morgan State University graduate and has been covering HBCU sports for more than 25 years, 18 of those as BOXTOROW host.

 

Buddy Pough’s legendary career

Buddy Pough’s legendary career

Buddy Pough’s legendary career