Murray Warmath won national acclaim throughout his college football coaching career. A husky native of Humboldt, Tennessee, Warmath played football at UT from 1932 to 1934 under the legendary Coach Robert Neyland. He then became an assistant coach on the General’s staff from 1935 through 1939 and again from 1945 to 1949 after a stint in the Navy. Leaving his alma mater, Warmath became a line coach at West Point and then head line coach at Mississippi State from 1939 to 1942. He finally joined the head coaching ranks at Mississippi State in 1952 and 1953 and posted a 10-6-3 record. His next stop was the University of Minnesota in 1954, where he would remain for eighteen years. Warmath won consensus “Coach of the Year” honors from the American Football Coach’s Association and the Football Writer’s Association in 1960. He took the Gophers from last place in the Big Ten in 1959 to a tie for first the next year and captured the national championship. The Gophers’ 1961 Rose Bowl appearance was the first in school history, and they returned the following season to beat UCLA 21-3. In his twenty years of being a head coach, Warmath posted a solid record of 97-84-10. In 1978 he left the collegiate world and joined the Minnesota Vikings as defensive line coach. Tennessee’s own Murray Warmath distinguished himself through many years of exemplary service to hundreds of athletes, thousands of alumni, and millions of fans of the great sport of football.
