Former ETSU and North Carolina head coach Carl Torbush has passed

Carl Torbush, who helped to restart the East Tennessee State football program in 2015, has passed on.

He was 72 years old.

As Mack Brown fondly remembers, Torbush was the architect of "one of college football's greatest defenses" during the 1996 and 1997 seasons at North Carolina. 

His defenses led the ACC in total defense three different times, and ranked among the best in the country during those '96 and '97 seasons.

When Mack Brown left Chapel Hill to become the head coach at Texas, Torbush was elevated to head coach of the Tar Heels and led the team to a resounding 42-3 win over Virginia Tech in the Gator Bowl.

He would go on to spend three seasons leading the program, going 17-18 overall with a bowl trip after his first season.

After going on to be a coordinator at Alabama, Texas A&M, Mississippi State, and Kansas, he got the call in 2014 to help restart the ETSU program. He and his staff spent the first year building up numbers before beginning competition as an FCS independent program.

He spent three years atop the program, going 2-9 in 2015, 5-6 in 2016 and 4-7 in 2018 before announcing his retirement.

Torbush also had a one-season stop leading the Louisiana Tech program in 1987, where they went 3-8.

All told, Torbush held a 31-48 record as a college head coach.

He spent a total of 42 years in coaching, with 12 total stops in a career that saw him elected to three different Hall of Fames. Torbush is a member of the Carson-Newman Athletics Hall of Fame for his All American career in baseball and football, and is also a member of the Greater Knoxville Sports Hall of Fame and Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame.

Please join us in praying for coach Torbush's family.