Tubby Raymond & the Making of Delaware Football
You can't spend very long digging into Delaware football history before one name starts showing up everywhere: Tubby Raymond.
His name is on the field. His Wing-T offense became part of Delaware football's identity. His teams won championships. He coached hundreds of players, won 300 games and stayed at Delaware long enough that generations of Blue Hen fans grew up with the same man standing on the sideline.
But simply listing Raymond's numbers doesn't really explain why he matters.
The more interesting story is how a coach who arrived in Newark in 1954 became so closely connected to one football program that, decades later, it's difficult to tell the story of one without telling the story of the other.
Before He Was the Head Coach
Here's something that's easy to miss when you see “1966–2001” attached to Raymond's coaching career: his Delaware story actually started much earlier.
Raymond came to Delaware in 1954 and joined the football staff under another legendary Blue Hen coach, Dave Nelson.
He spent 12 seasons as an assistant before taking over the program in 1966. So by the time Delaware handed Raymond the keys, he wasn't some outsider arriving with plans to rebuild everything.
He already knew the place.
He knew the program, the players, the system and the football culture Nelson had helped establish.
Raymond also coached baseball at Delaware, leading the Blue Hens baseball program during the 1950s and 1960s. In other words, his connection to the university was already pretty deep before his 36-year run as football coach even began.
1966–2001
300–119–3
1971 • 1972 • 1979
9
16
College Football • 2003
The Wing-T: When an Offense Becomes an Identity
If you're going to talk about Tubby Raymond, eventually you're going to talk about the Wing-T.
And probably sooner rather than later.
Raymond and Dave Nelson were among the major innovators behind the offense at Delaware. Raymond continued developing and teaching it after becoming head coach, and over time the system became so closely associated with the Blue Hens that people simply referred to versions of it as the Delaware Wing-T.
The basic idea was wonderfully frustrating for a defense.
Motion. Misdirection. Fakes. Multiple backs. Blocking schemes designed to make defenders hesitate for just long enough to create an opening somewhere else.
The football might be going left.
Or right.
Or to the guy you stopped watching two seconds ago.
That was rather the point.
What's remarkable is how far the system traveled.
Long after Raymond retired, coaches around the country were still studying and teaching Wing-T concepts. In 2014 — more than a decade after his final game — an 86-year-old Raymond was invited to a major New England coaching clinic to give an hour-long presentation on Wing-T X's and O's.
That's a pretty good measure of influence.
Winning games is one thing. Helping shape something other coaches are still studying decades later is another.
And Then There Were the Championships
Of course, an innovative offense only becomes legendary if it actually wins.
Raymond did plenty of that.
His Delaware teams won national championships in 1971, 1972 and 1979. They made 16 NCAA playoff appearances, won nine conference championships and collected 14 Lambert Cup trophies.
Thirty-one of Raymond's 36 Delaware teams finished with winning records.
Eleven won at least 10 games.
Raymond himself was named national Coach of the Year four times.
This wasn't a short burst where everything came together for a couple of seasons. Delaware kept winning through different decades, different players and a college-football landscape that changed dramatically around it.
.png "Tubby Raymond and Delaware Football Championship History")
The Players Who Came Through Newark
Raymond's Delaware teams weren't just successful at their own level of college football.
During his career, he coached 34 first-team All-Americans and 15 NFL Draft selections.
The most famous was quarterback Rich Gannon.
Gannon played at Delaware before embarking on a long NFL career that eventually included four Pro Bowl selections and the 2002 NFL Most Valuable Player award.
His path from Newark to NFL MVP is a useful reminder of what Raymond's program had become. Delaware wasn't merely winning games. It had developed a football culture capable of producing players who could go considerably farther.
Win No. 300
There is something almost too neat about the way Raymond reached one of college football's biggest coaching milestones.
November 10, 2001.
Richmond came to Delaware Stadium.
Delaware won 10–6.
It wasn't some wild 48–45 shootout. It was a tough, low-scoring football game — and it gave Raymond career victory No. 300.
At the time, he became only the ninth college football coach to reach 300 wins and only the fourth to win that many at a single school.
Better yet, it happened in his final home game.
When it was over, his players carried him off the field.
After 36 seasons as head coach, that's not a bad final walk out of Delaware Stadium.
The Coach Who Painted His Players
This may be my favorite part of Raymond's story because it has absolutely nothing to do with a scoreboard.
Tubby Raymond was also an accomplished painter.
During his time at Delaware, he began painting portraits of Blue Hen football players. And he didn't simply stop when he retired.
Raymond continued the tradition afterward, painting Delaware seniors and leaving behind something much more personal than another trophy or statistic.
Think about that for a moment.
The coach remembered for 300 victories, national championships and one of football's best-known offensive systems was also sitting down with a canvas and preserving the players who had been part of the program.
That's exactly the kind of detail that makes sports history more interesting than a list of records.
.png "Tubby Raymond Delaware Football Legacy Exhibit")
A Hall of Fame Career
The honors followed.
Raymond entered the University of Delaware Athletics Hall of Fame in 2002 and the College Football Hall of Fame in 2003.
He was also inducted into the Delaware Sports Hall of Fame and several other halls of fame during and after his career.
But Delaware gave him an honor that's probably more fitting than any plaque hanging on a wall.
They put his name on the field.
Delaware Stadium: Sacred Grounds
In 2002, Delaware Stadium's playing surface was dedicated as Tubby Raymond Field. Explore the stadium, its history and the traditions surrounding the Blue Hens' home.
🔓 ENTER DELAWARE'S SACRED GROUND →Why Tubby Raymond Still Matters to Delaware Football
Raymond died in 2017 at the age of 92.
Delaware football has changed enormously since his coaching days.
Coaches have changed. Offenses have changed. College football itself barely resembles the sport Raymond entered in the middle of the twentieth century.
Delaware has now moved into the FBS era.
Yet when today's Blue Hens run out at Delaware Stadium, they're still running onto Tubby Raymond Field.
That's why Raymond belongs in the story we're building around Delaware.
The stadium explains where the Blue Hens play. The Fightin' Blue Hen traditions explain part of who they are.
Tubby Raymond helps explain how Delaware became a football program with enough history and identity to carry all of that into its next era.
Three hundred wins tell you he was successful.
Thirty-six seasons tell you something more.
Why the Fightin' Blue Hens?
Go deeper into Delaware's identity — from its Revolutionary roots to YoUDee, the Birdgade, the marching band and modern Blue Hen game-day traditions.
🐔 EXPLORE BLUE HEN TRADITIONS →The Delaware Vault Is Growing
Tubby Raymond is now another piece of our growing Delaware football collection. Explore the stadium and traditions that surround the program while more Blue Hen chambers are unlocked.
🏟️ DELAWARE STADIUM 🐔 BLUE HEN TRADITIONS 🏈 EXPLORE ALL 138 TEAM VAULTS →Historical information in this feature was researched using University of Delaware Athletics and the National Football Foundation / College Football Hall of Fame records covering Raymond's coaching career, championships, Wing-T legacy and Hall of Fame recognition.
Artwork displayed in this feature is fictional concept artwork created for entertainment and historical appreciation. It is not official University of Delaware artwork or merchandise.