5/23/2019 football Edit

Massachusetts: Don McCauley

Don McCauley set a major college football record while ACC POY at UNC before turning in a solid NFL career. (GoHeels.com)

Andrew Jones • TarHeelIllustrated

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Andrew Jones has covered sports for 26 years, including all major college & professional sports for daily newspapers & national sites. He's done radio and TV & is entering his seventh year at THI.

Move over O.J. Simpson, Don McCauley just broke your record.

That’s what much of the 1970 football season ended up being about for North Carolina.

McCauley broke Simpson’s single season rushing mark by running for 1,720 yards, a number that remains the second highest single-season total in ACC history, and it came in an 11-game season.

It was an important accomplishment for several reasons, including that it helped nudge Carolina football back onto the national radar for the first time since the Charlie “Choo Choo” Justice era, some 20 years earlier.

“We ran the ball a lot with Coach Dooley, and my senior year I think I ran it around 30 times a game,” McCauley said a few years ago. “So, if you run it that much you’re going to get the numbers.”

More than that, however, McCauley is most proud of what the program did while he was there.

“We accomplished a lot by helping to turn around the program,” he said. “Coach (Bill) Dooley came over from the SEC and wanted to change football at Carolina and he did. We were a part of that and it’s always been special to me looking back.”

McCauley (23) was one of UNC's toughest runners ever. (GoHeels.com)

A native of Worcester, MA, McCauley was a two-time ACC Player of the Year and was named the ACC’s Male Athlete of the Year for the 1970-71 school year. He was a consensus All-America in 1970.

In his UNC career, McCauley accumulated 5,014 all-purpose yards, 3,172 rushing yards, 786 yards receiving, and 1,056 yards on kick returns. He also led the team in punting with 48 punts for 1,845 yards, a 38.4-yard average and scored 37 touchdowns as a Tar Heel. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2001.

“He was aggressive, hit the hole hard and wanted to punish tacklers,” close friend, teammate and former UNC head coach John Bunting said about McCauley. “Don loved to win those battles, he wanted the other guys to know he was tougher than they were.”

McCauley was drafted in the first round of the 1971 NFL draft and spent 11 seasons in the NFL, all with the Baltimore Colts. He played in 156 games, combining for 5,653 yards, which included an amazing 333 receptions as a running back. Twice he caught 50 or more passes and in seven different seasons he caught 30 or more. McCauley scored 58 touchdowns in his NFL career