BIG NASTY – Jim Carmody

No one has lived the “football lifestyle” more than Jim Carmody

By Lanny Mixon, Special to Mississippi Sports Magazine

We’ve all heard the old saying that football is life, but few really live by those words and fewer have ever lived the football lifestyle like Jim Carmody. Few people have ever had a bigger impact on the football landscape of Mississippi than Carmody.

Over the past 50 years Carmody has had a hand in some of the most historic moments in the storied gridiron history of Mississippi.

One of the most memorable accomplishments by a Carmoday coached team was in 1982 when he and star quarterback Reggie Collier went into Tuscaloosa and handed Alabama a 38-29 loss. What makes the game so significant is double fold. This was the last game Bryant would coach in Tuscaloosa and the loss broke the Tide’s 59-game home winning streak. The 38 points was also the most ever given up by a Bryant coached Crimson Tide team in Tuscaloosa.

In 1987, Carmody helped break the race barrier in football in the Magnolia State when he led the Golden Eagles onto the field at M.M. Roberts Stadium to take on Jackson State. The Eagles won 17-7, in front of a standing room only crowd but the game was far bigger than just a sellout. Carmody and the Eagles became the first of Mississippi’s major college programs to play one of the states historically black programs.

As the defensive coordinator at Ole Miss in 1977, Carmoday helped engineer a 20-13 win over Notre Dame. The Irish would go on to win the National Championship that year.Carmody is also the only coach to ever have two stints at all three of Mississippi’s major programs.

After coaching at Tulane and Kentucky during the early 1960’s, he would accept a the defensive line position at Mississippi State (1964-67) and would return to Starkville as defensive ccordinator in (1988-91). He would serve as the defensive coordinator at Ole Miss (1974-78) and later as the Assistant Head Coach (1991-95). At Southern Miss he would serve as the defensive coordinator and assistant head coach from January 1978 to January of 1981. In January of 1982, he would succeed Bobby Collins and take over the Southern Miss program as the schools Head Coach.

He holds an astonishing record against in-state teams no mater where he was coaching. During his time at Southern Miss, as both head coach and defensive coordinator, The Eagles were 8-2 in ten games against Mississippi State. As the defensive coordinator for Mississippi State Carmody was 2-0 against the Eagles (during the Brett Favre era).

He made memories as a Bulldog, the first being in his first year at Mississippi State, he helped put together a game plan that held the heavily favored Rebels in check giving the Bulldogs a 20-17 win in Oxford, this was the first time Mississippi State defeated a Johnny Vaughn coached Rebel squad.

During his two stints at Ole Miss Carmody helped produce a combined record of 10-4 against Mississippi State and Southern Miss.

While serving as head coach at Southern Miss his defenses became known as “The Nasty Bunch” and he would become known as “Big Nasty”. The nickname follows him to this day. The hard hitting, fast-paced style of defense would be a mainstay at Southern Miss for more than a decade.

In fact, everywhere he went stellar defenses were soon to follow.

During his first stint at Ole Miss, the Rebel defenses were ranked among the best in the nation each year. As defensive coordinator at Southern Miss his ball hawking defense set a school record with 23 interceptions in 1979, in an era where they just didn’t pass the ball very much.

He spent a year in the NFL as the defensive line coach for the Buffalo Bills. That season the Bills defense was ranked No. 1 in the AFC and shattered a team record with 47 quarterback sacks.

When he took over as the defensive coordinator at Mississippi State in 1988, the Bulldogs were the 84th ranked defense in the nation. After a year under Carmody they were ranked No. 15. They were the nation’s 4th ranked passing defense and the Southeastern Conferences best against the pass.

When he was hired at Ole Miss in 1991, he and assistant coach Joe Lee Dunn began working on what would become known as the “Organized Chaos” defense. The development of this defense helped the Rebels to a Liberty Bowl win in 1992, when they boasted the nation’s No. 6 defense. A year later Carmody’s defense was the nation’s best.

A Changing Game

Football is not a static game, it’s always changing and always evolving. A cat and mouse game between the best football minds in the nation trying to get a leg up on each other.

“I have so much respect for defensive coordinators today,” Carmody said. “It would certainly be a challenge to go out there week in and week out and try to prepare for the spread offense.”

In years past the nickle back was a situational type position, but not anymore.

“To defend the spread you’ve got to have five defensive backs on every snap,” Carmody said. “Every snap is a situation for a nickle back now.”

Carmody compares the game today to the days when the wishbone was first employed.

“People don’t really remember when the wishbone first came out and teams were running up and down the field scoring fifty or sixty points,” he said. “You couldn’t stop them. We had to learn to adjust, some coaches never learned to adjust.”

But, again the game is fluid and it’ll keep changing.

“Right now the offenses are just ahead of the defenses,” he said. “It took five to seven years from the wishbone becoming mainstream before people really began to understand how to defend it. Someone will figure out the spread. Then they’ll figure out something else on offense.”

One thing Carmody does like about the spread is the effect that it’s had on programs that aren’t considered traditional powers.

“It’s given teams opportunities to win and win big that couldn’t before,” he said. “A school can go out and get a quarterback and a couple of receivers and be really good. Take Houston, they’re a really good team, but take away that quarterback, or a couple of those receivers and put them in a traditional offense and they couldn’t win the games they’re winning now.”

Motivation

Down through the years no mater where he was coaching, you could always count on a Jim Carmody coached defense to leave it all on the field. There’s only so much x’s and o’s that can be taught on a given week or in a given season, and motivating players is one of the biggest keys to winning any game.

“It’s a big part of the game,” Carmody said. “But it requires study just like managing the game and putting together a game plan. You have to manage emotion and motivation. You’ve got to do it in a sensible way”

“Motivationally, the best thing you can do is let your guys see how important football is to you,” he said. “It rubs off on the players. Coach with passion, coach with sincerity, they’ll see that. If it’s important to you it’ll be important to them.”

Carmody recounts a game at Memphis when he realized the players had gotten on the same page with him.

“We were up at Memphis and it was the first series of the game we had kicked off to them and they were just coming out of the huddle for the first play,” he recounted. “The whistle blew for an off-sides or something, and their little quarterback was running around and some of the guys stopped, but Rhett Whitley kept after him. He ran him over to our sidelines and kind of picked him up and slammed him on his head. The kids helmet popped off and he got up yelling, ‘What are you trying to do, this is just a game?” Whitley spit out his mouth piece and said back to the Memphis quarterback, ‘Maybe it’s a game to you, but it’s a way of life to us.”

“I knew right then we were gonna be alright,” Carmody said.

Carmody coached his last game during the 1994 season at Ole Miss. In the summer of 1995, he was hired by the Arizona Cardinals as an area scout and was responsible for covering a nine state territory. In 2003, he was promoted to the Western Regional Scout, where he oversaw the Cardinal’s scouting for all states west of the Mississippi River.

Life after football

In 2005, Carmody had 11 years in with the NFL and decided to retire to his Madison home and focus on family.

“Retirement is good,” Carmody said. “I play a little golf, do a little speaking here and there, and we’ve traveled some. The only games I really care about now are the ones the grand kids are playing.”

Carmody and his wife Earlyn have four sons two of who played for Carmody while he was at Southern Miss.

He’s been inducted into just about every Hall of Fame and received just about every honor a sportsman in Mississippi is eligible to receive. For more than half a century football was a lifestyle for Jim Carmody and his family, and it’s a lifestyle he wouldn’t change for anything. – MSM

Lanny Mixon is the publisher of BigGoldNation.com and editor of MagnoliaPreps.com, he also hosts the Southern Connection a syndicated sports talk radio show that focuses on Southern Miss Athletics. He lives in Brooklyn, Miss with his wife Stephanie and son Mills.