Sullivan gave the state a new kind of football hero

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Pat Sullivan gave the state a new kind of football hero

Updated Dec 01, 2019;Posted Dec 01, 2019

7-8 minutes

Pat Sullivan was the first player from Alabama to win the Heisman Trophy, and he did it excelling at a style of football that had seldom been seen at Auburn or anywhere else in the state.

The 69-year-old Sullivan died Sunday.

Sullivan won college football’s most prestigious award for the 1971 season -- before Bo Jackson in 1985 and Cam Newton in 2010 joined him as Heisman Trophy winners from Auburn, before Mark Ingram in 2009 and Derrick Henry in 2015 won the Heisman at Alabama and before former Hueytown High School star Jameis Winston won the stiff-arm statue as Florida State’s quarterback in 2013.

Before Sullivan, the closest a player from Alabama or Auburn had come to the Heisman was the fourth-place showing of Crimson Tide center/linebacker Lee Roy Jordan in 1962.

Wearing the No. 7 jersey that has since been retired by Auburn, Sullivan led the Tigers to a 9-2 record in 1971. Sullivan also won the Walter Camp Award and was the unanimous All-American quarterback in 1971 -- the first of the 10 SEC players who have been the consensus All-American QB.

“As a young first-, second-, third-, fourth-grader, growing up, in this stadium, coming here, I mean I wore No. 7 in junior high, and I was a quarterback at Prattville Junior High. I don’t think I need to tell you why I wore No. 7,” current Auburn defensive coordinator Kevin Steele told AL.com in 2016 about growing up a Sullivan fan in Bibb County.

Sullivan completed 162-of-281 passes for 2,012 yards and 20 touchdowns in Auburn's 10 regular-season games in 1971. Twelve of his 20 TD passes went to wide receiver Terry Beasley, a figure that remains the Tigers' single-season record for touchdown receptions as a testament to the Sullivan-to-Beasley connection.

Both players have been enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame, with Sullivan inducted in 1991 and Beasley in 2002.

Sullivan was a three-sport star at John Carroll Catholic High School in Birmingham. An AL.com poll in 2013 selected Sullivan as the best player and best quarterback in the history of Alabama high school football.

The 1967 National Catholic High School Player of the Year chose coach Ralph "Shug" Jordan and Auburn over coach Paul "Bear" Bryant and Alabama. Sullivan made his choice at a time when Auburn hadn't won more than six games in a season since 1963 or appeared in The Associated Press poll since 1964, while Alabama had been at least as high as second in the national rankings at some point in each of the preceding seven seasons and had finished on top of the final polls in 1961, 1964 and 1965.

“Pat Sullivan was the Moses of Auburn football,” former Auburn athletic director David Housel told AL.com’s Joseph Goodman in 2016. “There have been a lot of Jacobs and King Davids behind him, but Pat Sullivan was Moses.”

Freshmen weren't eligible for varsity competition when Sullivan arrived on the Plains, so he had to wait until 1969 to take his first snaps for Auburn. He set school single-season records for touchdown passes and passing yards that year, and the Tigers broke the school single-season record with 370 points, including 49 in a 23-point victory in the Iron Bowl -- three more points than Auburn had scored in the previous 10 games combined against Alabama.

As good as Sullivan was in 1971, he might have been even better in 1970, when he was the SEC Player of the Year. That season, Sullivan set an SEC record with 2,586 passing yards and led the nation with 2,856 yards of total offense -- the first SEC player to do that in 24 years. His average of 8.57 yards per play in 1970 stood as the SEC record for 31 years.

Sullivan led Auburn out of a 17-0 hole in the 1970 Iron Bowl to a 33-28 victory, followed by a 35-28 victory over Archie Manning and Ole Miss in the Gator Bowl on Jan. 2, 1971.

Sullivan and Manning had shared the All-SEC QB spot for 1970. In their bowl meeting, Sullivan threw for 351 yards. At the time, the Auburn single-game record for passing yards was 366, set by Sullivan in a 63-14 victory over Florida 63 days earlier.

Sullivan’s play prompted Bryant to say: “He does more things to beat you than any quarterback I’ve ever seen.”

Sullivan's three seasons at Auburn ended in bowls -- and he won the MVP award in two of them. Sullivan broke the school record for TD passes each year, and his 53 touchdown passes remain the most in Auburn history. Because he also ran for 18 scores during his career, Sullivan left the Tigers tied for the NCAA record for TD responsibility.

"Pat was a playmaker back before that was a term," Scott Hunter, Sullivan's Alabama counterpart at quarterback in the 1969 and 1970 Iron Bowls, told AL.com in 2014. "You'd sack him on second down and have him back there on third-and-long and think you've got him, and all of a sudden he spots a receiver for 15 yards and a first down. That's what I remember most about Pat. He was always making plays."

Sullivan won the MVP Award for the 1972 Senior Bowl in Mobile before entering the NFL as a second-round selection in the 1972 draft. Over four seasons with Atlanta, Sullivan played in 30 games with four starts as the Falcons went with Bob Berry, Bob Lee and Steve Bartkowski (the first player picked in the 1975 NFL Draft) as their starting quarterbacks.

After the NFL, Sullivan reconnected with Auburn as a member of the radio-broadcast team for Tigers' football games.

Sullivan got back on the field as Auburns' quarterbacks coach in 1986. After six seasons on the Tigers' staff of Pat Dye, Sullivan became the head coach at TCU. The 1994 Horned Frogs shared the Southwest Conference championship and played in the Independence Bowl, one of TCU's two bowls in a 32-year span.

Sullivan's coaching career included six seasons leading TCU, eight seasons as UAB's offensive coordinator and eight seasons as Samford's head coach. The Bulldogs won the Southern Conference crown in 2013 before Sullivan retired from coaching after the 2014 season.

His resume nearly included the title of LSU head coach, too. The Tigers were set to bring Sullivan back to the SEC for the 1995 season. But the buyout in Sullivan's contract held up the deal, and he returned to TCU, and LSU got Vanderbilt's Gerry DiNardo instead.

During the last decade of Sullivan's coaching career, he turned back health issues after being diagnosed with throat cancer.

“There are a lot of good men in our profession, but if I had to rank them, Pat would be at the top,” former Troy coach Larry Blakeney told AL.com in 2014. Blakeney played and coached with Sullivan at Auburn.

In addition to the College Football Hall of Fame, Sullivan is a member of the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame, the Samford Athletics Hall of Fame and the Halls of Fame of the Gator Bowl, Senior Bowl and Sugar Bowl.

Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.