Former North Carolina coach, SEC coordinator Carl Torbush dies at 72

Former North Carolina Tar Heels head coach Carl Torbush has died. He was 72 years old.

Torbush’s death was announced by East Tennessee State, one of the many locations he coached during his life, during a weekly press conference. Torbush was the head coach at ETSU from 2015 through 2017. It was the last coaching job that he held in college football.

ETSU was a rebuilding job for Torbush. The ETSU football team had been discontinued in 2003. So, after more than a decade away, he was resurrecting it. Given those circumstances, he had more success than could reasonably be expected, going 11-22 in three seasons there.

Still, for most college football fans, Carl Torbush is best known as the former head coach of the North Carolina Tar Heels.

From 1997 through 2000, Torbush led the Tar Heels. He had a 17-18 record during his time in Chapel Hill, winning the Gator Bowl and Las Vegas Bowl in the process.

The 1997 season saw Carl Torbush act as North Carolina’s interim head coach for the Gator Bowl. Previous head coach Mack Brown left the team to take the head job at Texas and long-time defensive coordinator Torbush got his shot at the job. His tenure was short and marred by concerns his staff was overly conservative and not living up to the standard previously set.

In 1987, Torbush was also the head coach at Louisiana Tech.

Along with spending time as a head coach, Carl Torbush was a long-time SEC coordinator, with programs like Alabama, Ole Miss, and Texas A&M. However, at the time that he was at Texas A&M, the Aggies were still in the Big 12.

During his time as an assistant coach, Torbush became known as one of the best defensive minds in the sport. It was his time as the defensive coordinator at Ole Miss that landed him the position at Louisiana Tech. He later would become the only assistant to coach for the entirety of Mack Brown’s first tenure at North Carolina.

After losing the head coaching position at North Carolina, Torbush would go on to become a defensive coordinator at several more programs. That included stints at Alabama, Texas A&M, Mississippi State, and Kansas among other stops. He would leave Kansas to battle cancer.

As a player, Carl Torbush walked onto Tennessee but after not playing as a freshman, he transferred to Carson-Newman, a Division II program where he would later spend time as an assistant too. Torbush also coached baseball at Carson-Newman.

More details will be released in the coming days, according to ETSU.