If there has ever been a better high school football coach than Carl Madison, I don’t know of any such person. Nor, have I have ever met a better man. I worked with Carl Madison as an assistant coach at J.M. Tate High School located in Gonzalez, Florida, a small paper mill community located ten miles north of Pensacola. At Tate, Carl won his second state championship in 1980. That same year, the Tate marching band won the national championship of marching bands. It was named the greatest spirit high school in the USA of 1980.
Carl ranks second in the number of wins among Florida coaches, but ranks first for his coaching skills. No other coach took struggling, winless programs and magically turned them into champions.
After leading Pine Forest High School to two state champions, Pine Forest was named the High School National Champion, the first Florida high school achieving such a distinction.
Due to complications with the Florida retirement system, Carl had to leave Florida and display his skills elsewhere. Perhaps his greatest feat was when he a took a job at a historical losing program, the Jackson AL Academy, a team that hadn’t won a game in two straight years. But, things changed when the Jackson players came under Carl’s tutelage. Jackson lost three games that season but went on tear into the state tournament, and as he had done so often in the past, he took Jackson to the Alabama State Championship. The next year, Jackson went unbeaten and repeated as State Champion.
Carl should be given credit for two other championships where he was an assistant coach but the brains behinds the outfit. He steered Escambia County’s Earnest Ward, a country school to the state title, and he won another at Pensacola High School.
I worked with Carl for one year. My job was to help coach the offensive line. Even a rookie like me learned from Carl. Carl was a genius at teaching linemen techniques. He ran a modified Veer offense, and Carl used to preach that two guys should always be able to win a blocking assignment, and double team blocking on Carl’s teams was a thing of beauty. Watching Carl’s offenses, you’d frequently lose sight of the ball. Carl said, it’s a helluva lot easier to fool a player than knock him down, and time and again Carl’s opponents spent an inordinate amount of time tackling the wrong guy. Carl’s QB were prestodigitators.
I never saw anyone command the respect of young people as did Carl who was a veritable Pied Piper of Hamlin. His players loved and still love him. Carl told me he liked some much better than others, but no way in hell would he show it. Everyone was treated the same, and football practice was no picnic during the blazing hot Fall sun in Florida’s Panhandle.
I write this post because a new book by Clint Crockett, one of Carl’s WRs at Tate was just published titled Carl Madison’s Life in Football available on Amazon. Carl is still around at age 91. This month, the football field at Tate High School will be renamed for him. In my book, he was the best there ever was.