Tag: Sam Barry

Pac-12 goodbye tour: Remembering USC football’s unbeaten 1939 season

1939 was the last great Howard Jones-coached #USC team, with Sam Barry as his trusted assistant.

Howard Jones is the godfather of USC football. He built the first great dynasty at the school and developed the Trojans into a national brand. Jones got the Notre Dame rivalry off the ground, working with Knute Rockne to begin a stories series which will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2026.

Jones won national championships and Rose Bowls at USC, but his influence and legacy greatly exceed his enormous football accomplishments. Jones, who came from Iowa to USC — as we noted in our Big Ten summer podcast series with Hawkeyes Wire — recommended that Sam Barry be hired as USC basketball coach. He was. Barry joined Jones on the football staff as defensive coordinator and also took charge of USC baseball, winning the program’s first College World Series in 1948 and handing the baton to legendary coach Rod Dedeaux.

Jones and Barry both did great things for USC sports. They are the two most important figures in the school’s history of team athletic competition. The 1939 Trojans were the last great Jones-and-Barry team, also the last of Jones’ five Rose Bowl champions at USC.

Let’s relive that 1939 season:

Today, like every other day, is a great time to learn about USC sports icon Sam Barry

#LSU is the 1st school to win basketball & baseball national titles in the same year. #USC’s Sam Barry is 1 of 3 head coaches to make a Final Four and a College World Series.

The LSU Tigers just became the first Division I athletic program to win an NCAA basketball national championship and the College World Series in the same year. It’s a monumental feat which elicits many questions. One of them: “Has any coach reached the Final Four and the College World Series in a career?”

The answer: Yes. Three people have pulled off that double. One of them belongs to the University of Southern California.

His name is Sam Barry, whom we wrote about in an extensive series during the pandemic in 2020.

Barry won the College World Series at USC in 1948. Eight years earlier, in 1940, Barry took USC to the Final Four and lost by one point to Kansas in the national semifinals.

Barry joins Everett Dean of Stanford and Frank McGuire of St. John’s as the only three people to earn a Final Four appearance and a College World Series berth as a head coach.

Dean led Stanford basketball to the 1942 Final Four and then guided Stanford to the 1953 CWS.

McGuire led St. John’s baseball to the 1949 CWS and then guided the Johnnies to the 1952 Final Four. McGuire later won the 1957 college basketball national championship at North Carolina.

Sam Barry’s list of accomplishments and innovations is remarkably long. If you have never heard of him before, today — or any other day — is a great time to learn about (and this is no exaggeration) the single most important figure in the history of USC athletics.

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USC football regular season history vs Ohio State: 1941

The story of 1941 #USC football is less about the Ohio State game or any result, and much more about Sam Barry’s historic year as a Trojan coach.

The 1941 college sports cycle was unique not just in USC history, but in the history of college sports.

USC lost to Ohio State 33-0 in 1941. The Trojans finished a relatively forgettable year with a 2-6-1 record while Ohio State ended 6-1-1. The story of 1941 USC-Ohio State is less about the game itself, more about the remarkable man who coached the Trojans that season: Sam Barry.

If you don’t know who Sam Barry is, let’s put it plainly: He is the most important figure in the history of USC athletics. Howard Jones is the most important figure in the history of USC football, but Sam Barry’s legacy at USC flowed substantially into all three major sports: football, basketball and baseball.

Here is what happened in 1941 at USC:

“In this year, Barry led an injury-plagued and shorthanded USC football team to a victory over Oregon State, which won the Rose Bowl that season.

“In 1941, Barry guided the USC basketball team to a 15-10 record.

“In 1941, Sam Barry coached the USC baseball team to a 9-6 record.

“Wait a minute: One man coached the football, basketball and baseball teams at a prestigious, prominent university in the same year?

“To be clear, plenty of men coached multiple sports in the first half of the 20th century. Amos Alonzo Stagg might be the most famous one. In 1921 at the University of Chicago, Stagg coached football, baseball and track. He also coached basketball.

“Yet, Barry can claim something Stagg cannot: Barry coached three team sports — football, basketball and baseball — in the same year.”

How did Barry get to coach all three USC teams in the same year? Howard Jones died of a heart attack in July of 1941. There was simply no time for USC to conduct a national coaching search. Barry, Jones’s trusted assistant, filled in for the 1941 season. It’s no wonder USC didn’t play all that well that year, given the loss of the program patriarch and a college football coaching icon.

Nevertheless, Sam Barry coached USC’s three major men’s sports teams in the same season, one of the most incredible college sports facts you’ll ever come across.

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