Remembering Fred Pancoast, Who Revolutionized Florida's Passing Attack

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The 1969 season started and ended dramatically for the Gators. Offensive coordinator Fred Pancoast had a starring role in each circumstance.

In the season opener against heavily favored Houston – one of the most famous games in school history – Pancoast devised a game plan that left the Cougars, ranked No. 1 in Playboy magazine's preseason poll, stumbling toward the exits of Florida Field.

"By the end of the third quarter, we could have run anything,'' former Gators All-American receiver Carlos Alvarez said Monday. "They were so confused. They had no idea what was going on. That was the case for most of the season. He was an offensive genius."

In his first game as offensive coordinator after five seasons as an assistant for UF head coach Ray Graves, Pancoast's pass-heavy scheme overwhelmed Houston's defense in the Gators' 59-34 victory. The win launched a 9-1-1 season and the phenoms known as the "Super Sophs," a group of sophomores that included Alvarez, quarterback John Reaves, fullback Mike Rich and tailback Tommy "Touchdown" Durrance, among others. It took three plays for the Reaves-Alvarez connection to bring fans out of their seats.

More than 50 years have passed since that memorable opener, but the Super Sophs remain a part of Gators lore thanks in part to Pancoast, who died at age 90 on April 9 in Nashville.

Recruited as a running back, Alvarez convinced the coaching staff to move him to receiver the previous season on the first-year team. In the 1969 spring game, Pancoast purposely kept Reaves under the radar, devising a plan to hit the Cougars for the long ball if the opportunity presented itself.

Reaves hit Alvarez for a 70-yard scoring strike on the game's third play, setting the tone for what was to come that season. Under Pancoast's direction, Florida's offense averaged 301.6 yards passing per game, the first Southeastern Conference team to average 300 passing yards per game.

As quarterback coach in 1966, Pancoast tutored Steve Spurrier on the way to Spurrier winning the Heisman Trophy.

Pancoast, Fred/Smith, Larry/Spurrier, Steve (September 1966, St. Petersburg Times) — **Fred Pancoast**, left, as Florida's offensive backfield coach in 1966. Running back **Larry Smith**, middle, and quarterback **Steve Spurrier** are pictured with Pancoast. (Photo: *Tampa Bay Times* file via *Newspapers.com*)

"He made me a better and much smarter coach," Pancoast told Nashville sports historian Bill Traughber in 2011. "I hit it just right where I coached him as a junior and senior. Of course, he won the Heisman Trophy his senior year, and I got some credit for that. I didn't deserve that much credit since he was such a great athlete. But we put him in the right place at the right time and won a lot of games.

"When Spurrier left, everybody thought that we had lost everything. We had planned far ahead to be able to prepare ourselves to recruit Reaves as the next Spurrier."

At the end of the '69 season, Graves resigned as head coach to become UF's athletic director. Rumors swirled that Tennessee coach Doug Dickey would replace Graves at UF, a move that eventually came to fruition. Meanwhile, Pancoast was left hanging as the Gators and Vols met in the Gator Bowl, which Florida won 14-13.

Most expected Dickey to tab his Vols assistant and former Gators running back Jimmy Dunn to be his offensive coordinator in Gainesville if Tennessee did not hire Dunn as Dickey's replacement in Knoxville. Once the dust settled, Bill Battle replaced Dickey, Dunn joined Dickey in Florida, and Pancoast landed on Vince Dooley's staff at Georgia.

"When my wife and I were driving home from the Gator Bowl we rode by the Ramada Inn in Gainesville and read a sign, 'Welcome Home, Doug Dickey,' " Pancoast told Traughber. "When I got back to Gainesville, I got a hold of Vince Dooley. Vince and I played against each other in high school and played together in service ball. He had already offered me the offensive coordinator's job in Georgia. I immediately took that. I did not want to work at Florida under Doug Dickey. He had a different offensive mind and everything."

Pancoast grew up in Pensacola and earned a football scholarship to the University of Tampa, where he played quarterback. He started coaching as an assistant at the University of Tampa and later became the Spartans' head coach. Graves hired him at UF in 1964, where Pancoast spent the next six seasons until departing for Georgia.

He took over as head coach at Memphis in 1972, and after three successful seasons (20-12-1 record), he was named head coach at Vanderbilt before the 1975 season. Pancoast was the last Commodores coach to win seven games in his first season, but the program limped to a 6-26 record in his final three seasons, and Pancoast resigned late in the 1978 campaign.

He left coaching behind after the Vanderbilt job.

"I just couldn't live with losing like this,'' he told his hometown newspaper, the Pensacola News-Journal, following his resignation.

Pancoast remained in Nashville, where he became a successful business executive, community philanthropist, and candidate for the Tennessee State Legislature in 1992. He received the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007 and is a member of the University of Tampa Hall of Fame.

Florida fans remember Pancoast for his role in two of the most significant seasons in Gators history – Spurrier's Heisman-winning year and the Super Sophs of '69.

"A lot of people think the SEC started airing it out when we got to Florida in 1990. It actually began 21 years earlier with John Reaves, Carlos Alvarez, and the Super Sophs," Spurrier told the Orlando Sentinel in 2017 when Reaves died. "Coach [Graves] allowed Fred Pancoast and his offensive coaches to put in a big passing offense."

Pancoast grew up underprivileged in Pensacola and later joined the Marines. His father was a Navy pilot killed at Pearl Harbor when Pancoast was a kid. He rose to the top of his profession and his community, once greeted by former President George W. Bush upon Bush's arrival at the Nashville airport as a recipient of the President's Volunteer Service Award.

Pancoast made an impact on Alvarez that resonates all these years later.

"He was intelligent, and his knowledge of the offensive side of this game, especially the passing game, was way ahead of his time,'' Alvarez said. "It was a work of art. I'm telling you, it was just the greatest of times, people cheering when they would hear what we were going to do on offense. The schemes were unbelievable."

Pancoast's life was honored Friday at Christ the King Catholic Church in Nashville. Instead of flowers, the family requests donations to Room in the Inn.

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