Don Faurot, the man who had the greatest impact on intercollegiate athletics at the University of Missouri, died Oct. 19, 1995, of congestive heart failure at University Hospital and Clinics, in Columbia. He was 93 years old.
Faurot's association with MU started when he was a young boy who'd sneak into old Rollins Field some 80 years ago to watch the football Tigers play and practice. Later, he was a three-sport letterman at Missouri from 1922-24.
But it was as football coach and director of athletics that Faurot left his legacy on the University, and the sport. Even though he terminated his employment with the MU Athletic Department more than 30 years ago, he never really found a way to retire, maintaining an office at the Tom Taylor Building where he spent several hours nearly every day. He was a regular attendee at football practice.
Faurot served as football coach from 1935 through 1956 - with three years out for Navy service during World War II. Aside from leading the Tigers out of debt and into football's big time, Faurot's tenure as football coach and director of athletics - a job he relinquished in 1967 - left MU athletics with its greatest legacy, the imprint of his integrity.
His prime contribution to football was his innovation of the Split-T formation at Mizzou in 1941. In the post-World War II era countless universities adopted the Faurot formation - and more than 50 years later, it is still in vogue today at all levels of football. Several of football's most publicized formations - the Wishbone, Wingbone, Veer or I-attack and others - utilize Faurot's option play as their basic play.
In 19 years as Tiger football coach, the Faurot record was 101 wins, 79 losses and 10 ties. His 1939 team, featuring all-American Paul Christman, won Faurot's first Big Six title and the Tigers' first bowl bid (Orange).
Though he inherited an insolvent department and a downtrodden football program at MU in 1935, Faurot left the department 32 years later virtually debt-free despite continual expansion and improvements. On a national level, his football teams of the late 1930s and early '40s projected the University of Missouri into the upper strata of collegiate competition.
He also accumulated a staff of coaches and administrators who spent long tenures at the University, and were honored by induction into their respective halls of fame - baseball coach John "Hi" Simmons, track coach Tom Botts, football coaches Dan Devine and Frank Broyles, sports information director Bill Callahan, and former head trainer Fred Wappel, among others.
Faurot was a member of the National Football Foundation Hall of Fame, the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame, the University of Missouri Intercollegiate Athletics Hall of Fame, the Orange Bowl Hall of Honor, the Blue-Gray Game Hall of Fame, past president of the American Football Coaches Asssociation, and recipient of the Amos Alonzo Stagg award for his distinguished service in the advancement of the best interests of football.
In 1972, the Tigers' football stadium was officially named for him - and that probably rates as his greatest personal honor. As a graduate student in agriculture in 1926, Faurot helped lay the sod on the field, prior to the opening of Memorial Stadium, that fall. In '95, he placed the final square of sod as MU successfully converted the stadium's floor back to natural grass.
Right up through 1994, Faurot was active as a talent procurer and coach for the annual Blue-Gray football game in Montgomery, Ala. He was secretary of the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame for many years, and was also the executive secretary of the Missouri Senior Golf Association. He spent a term after his retirement as assistant director in charge of special events for the MU Alumni Association.
Faurot's entire collegiate coaching experience, including nine years at Kirksville State Teachers College (now Truman State University) was spent within the state's borders. His career record was 169-92-13.
One of four brothers to win a football letter at MU, Don - the eldest - was a three-sport letterman in the early twenties. A lightweight fullback in football, he captained the basketball team, and was an infielder in baseball. He was born in Mountain Grove, Mo., on June 23, 1902.
