banksmcfadden2

     Besides his football coaching years, McFadden also put in a stint as varsity track coach, freshman basketball coach and was for 10 years the varsity basketball coach. Then after Howard resigned as football coach in 1969, McFadden took over the university's intramural department, which he directed for 15 years.
     Asked if he had any favorites, McFadden said, "Fred Cone was a very steady player. But I'm not so sure that Joel Wells wasn't the best all around football player that I had the opportunity to work with as a vasity coach. He was one of the best defensive players we had and a mighty fine offensive player. For somebody who could go both ways, Wells stood out.
     "When I was in high school, colleges could do almost anything they wanted to as far as recruiting went," McFadden remembers. "Schools didn't have much (scholarship) money to give away, but they did go out and look at people and try to talk them into coming (to Clemson), paying their own way (or what is called a walk-on today.) But there wasn't very much recruiting until '35 or '36. But I believe there were 25 or 30 on my freshman team (1936) who were getting aid." (Note: The Clemson IPTAY Club was founded in 1934).
     The Great Falls, SC native came to Clemson in a 6-3 frame and a skinny 165 pounds. Howard, an assistant coach at the time, said that if McFadden drank a can of tomato juice, they could have used him as a thermometer.
     "I can remember the first time I saw him on the practice field," Howard recalled. "He looked like one of those whooping cranes. I thought sure as the devil that Coach (Jess) Neely had made a mistake giving this boy a scholarship. But he proved me wrong."
     Clemson had required military when McFadden was playing, but he believes that was a plus. "We were so much a team then, and that's still there. But now the rules allow two different teams (offense and defesne) and it causes so much more work. Our people were so close, as are the alumni of Clemson. Our team was just like the student body was then-a very close-knit bunch of people.
     McFadden believes he, "came to Clemson at the right time. I was blessed to have some athletic ability," he recalled. "We had great coaches, had great individuals playing with me, but we were all playing as a team."
     Of all the honors he received as an athlete, being voted the most valuable player of the 1939 football team was the highest. "To me, when your teammates vote you something," he beams, "then you feel pretty good. That award meant more than anything else (to me)."
     This is one athlete where a two-page story on a football website does not do that person justice...just about enough room for the tip of the iceberg. But if one could use just one were to describe McFadden (as Howard called him), it would have to be 'competitor,' for he was just that.
     McFadden is the only Clemson athlete to have both his football jersey and basketball jersey numbers retired. In 1995, the Banks McFadden Building at Jervey Athletic Center was dedicated in his honor.
     There hasn't been another like him down the pike.