Pat Dye in his trademark coat and tie during his stint as Auburn's head coach from 1981-1992. (File photo)
Carter's Corner: UF's Jacobs Impacted Greatly by Dye
Thursday, June 4, 2020 | General, Scott Carter
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By: Scott Carter, Senior Writer
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Before he joined Gators athletic director Scott Stricklin's senior administrative staff in 2018, Jay Jacobs was athletic director at Auburn. Before he became Auburn's AD, Jacobs served in various administrative roles with the Tigers for two decades, starting as a graduate assistant with the football program in the mid-1980s.
And before that, Jacobs met a man he didn't know anything about. That man ended up altering the course of his life.
"If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you today. I was a young guy that didn't have a lot of direction,'' Jacobs said this week. "I played high school sports but I didn't get recruited anywhere. I ended up going to Auburn my sophomore year and decided to walk on. I didn't know who Pat Dye was and I didn't know who the previous coach was. He treated me and everybody else as if we were all equal. It didn't matter to him who you were, how you got here, what your background was.
"If you wanted to be a part of it and were willing to work hard, he would give you a chance."
Former Auburn athletic director Jay Jacobs, at podium during the unveiling of a statue honoring NBA and Auburn legend Charles Barkley in 2017, is now executive associate athletic director of external affairs at UF. (Photo: USA Today Sports)
Jacobs made the most of his opportunity, earning a starting spot as a 6-foot-3, 235-pound left tackle in 1982, Dye's second season as Auburn's head coach and a year that marked the arrival of a soon-to-be-famous freshman running back named Bo Jackson.
The 80-year-old Dye passed away on Monday and on Tuesday was buried beneath a tree on his farm in Notasulga, Ala., about a 30-minute drive from the Auburn campus. If you grew up in the '80s and followed Southeastern Conference football, Dye stood as a towering figure, dressed in a coat and tie on Saturday afternoons in the fall.
He turned a downtrodden program around quickly and in 12 seasons at Auburn, posted a 99-39-4 record. Five of Dye's teams finished the season ranked in the top 10. His first SEC game as Auburn's coach in 1981 was a 10-7 loss at Tennessee, led by Johnny Majors, another SEC icon who died this week.
As Dye changed the culture of the program and began to lift the team out of the doldrums, the roster started to thin of those not willing to make the sacrifices, allowing Jacobs to climb the depth chart and make his debut in a win over Wake Forest on Sept. 11, 1982. A few days later, according to news reports from the time, Jacobs was one of 22 Tigers singled out for their performance by the coaching staff in the 28-10 season-opening win over Wake Forest.
Nearly 38 years later, Jacobs remembers when Dye's grip on him truly started to take hold. It was when Dye stood up to address the team in the pregame locker room. He wasn't a rah-rah type coach. He laid out the facts of what the Tigers needed to do to win and how they had to go about it.
A bundle of nervous energy when Dye began to speak, Jacobs' attention suddenly focused on Dye's words.
"So many guys quit, they had to play me,'' Jacobs said. "It was my first time in the home locker room. I had never heard [one of his pregame speeches] before. Two things that he said just hit me. 'All your mistakes belong to me. If I haven't prepared you to do what you're supposed to do, that's my fault. The only mistake you can make is not going full-speed. Second thing, your opponent expects you to outhit them and don't disappoint them.'
"Let me tell you, I could go full-speed,'' Jacobs added. "When he said that, all the pressure just left the room with me. If I made a mistake going full-speed, I was going to be OK." Jay Jacobs during his playing career at Auburn. (Photo: Courtesy of Auburn archives)
Following the news of Dye's death, Jacobs and former teammates held a conference call this week to talk about what they can do to honor his legacy. And they shared stories, of course, of Dye's ability to connect through simple messages.
North Carolina offensive line coach Stacy Searles, one of Jacobs' former teammates, is a master at recapturing Dye's pregame speech.
"Stacy can recite the whole thing. It meant so much to us," Jacobs said. "We all remember it."
Dye's stint at Auburn was during an era when the annual Florida-Auburn rivalry was one of the SEC's most storied. He won five of his first nine games against Florida – his 1988 Tigers are the last team to shut out the Gators – but went 0-3 against the Gators after Steve Spurrier took over the program in 1990. After leaving the sideline following the 1992 season, Dye never coached again and retired to the farm where he is now buried.
Still, he made regular visits to the Auburn campus and remains a cherished figure in the eyes of his former players.
"We had a great relationship. I loved him as all of us do who played for him," Jacobs said. "He did things for us that nobody else could do. We were just young boys at college and he instilled in us a spirit that is not afraid.
"You never expect your heroes to die. My hero has."
