Bud Carson

Bud Carson
Sport	Football
Born	April 28, 1930(1930-04-28)
Place of birth	Brackenridge, PA
Died	December 7, 2005 (aged 75)
Place of death	Sarasota, Florida
Career highlights
Overall	27–27
Bowls	1–1
Coaching stats
College Football DataWarehouse
Playing career
1949-1951	North Carolina
Position	DB
Coaching career (HC unless noted)
1967-1971 1989-1990	Georgia Tech Cleveland Browns

Leon H. "Bud" Carson (April 28, 1930(1930-04-28) – December 7, 2005) was an American football coach best-known for his role on the Pittsburgh Steelers' championship teams of the 1970s.

Player

This section requires expansion.

Carson played defensive back for North Carolina from 1949 to 1951, then entered the Marines.

Coach

Georgia Tech

After his discharge from the Marines, he went into coaching, working at Georgia Tech under head coach Bobby Dodd. Carson took over as head coach in 1967. Under Carson, the Yellow Jackets endured three straight 4-6 seasons before going 9-3 and winning the Sun Bowl in 1970. In 1971, Tech finished 6-6 after a Peach Bowl loss. His dismissal as Head Coach of the Yellow Jackets was reported in the Atlanta Constitution under the headline "Bitter Bud Carson Is Ousted at Tech".^{[citation needed]}

In 1970 the GT Band began playing the Budweiser tune after the end of the 3rd quarter. In tribue to the then head coach the words were actually sung as, "When you say Bud Carson, you said it all!"

NFL

Carson is considered one of the best defensive minds ever to coach in the NFL.^{[citation needed]} Steelers head coach Chuck Noll hired Carson as defensive coordinator in 1972. Under Carson, the "Steel Curtain" developed as one of the best defenses in National Football League history. The unit, led by Jack Lambert, Mel Blount, Jack Ham and Mean Joe Greene, gave up fewer points than any other American Football Conference team in Pittsburgh's Super Bowl seasons of 1974 and 1975. In 1976, the Curtain gave up fewer than 10 points a game.

After the 1977 season, Carson took over the defensive-coordinator job with the Los Angeles Rams, who lost to the Steelers in Super Bowl XIV. He later served on the coaching staffs of the Kansas City Chiefs and Baltimore Colts before running the New York Jets' defense from 1985 to 1988. He finally landed a head-coaching job with the Cleveland Browns for the 1989 season.

Cleveland won the AFC Central Division in 1989 before losing to John Elway's Denver Broncos in the conference championship for the third time in four years. Browns owner Art Modell fired Carson halfway through the 1990 season, which ended with a 3-13 record. Carson returned for stints as an assistant with the Philadelphia Eagles (his 1991 crew pulled the rare feat of being ranked #1 versus the pass, #1 versus the rush, and #1 overall) and Rams — by then in St. Louis — before retiring in 1997.

Family

Carson, a long-time smoker, died in 2005 of emphysema.^[1] He was married to Linda Carson, an anchorwoman at Sarasota television station WWSB. His daughter Cathi Carson is the sports reporter at two Jacksonville stations in Jacksonville WTEV and WAWS and was formerly a reporter at WWSB. He also had a son, Cliff, and a daughter, Dana, as well as a stepson, Gary Ford.

References

Further reading

• Grossi, Tony (2004). Tales from the Browns Sideline. (Champaign, Ill.): Sports Publishing LLC. ISBN 1-58261-713-9
• Carroll, Bob, et al. (1999). Total Football II. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-270174-6.