The untimely recent death of one of the University of Minnesota’s best athletes undeservedly received scant attention. It was a loss not only of a great former Gopher, a two-sport star no less, but one whose post-athletic career may have been even more noteworthy, albeit less notable, than his sporting skills.
He was Jim Carter, a hard-charging three-year running back on the Gopher football team, who died of cancer at age 75 on Thanksgiving Day. The former Gopher gridder led the team to its last Big Ten championship, a three-way title tie in 1967. While not as legendary as Bronko Nagurski, Bruce Smith Paul Giel, Bobby Bell, Michael Thompson, Kevin McHale, Paul Molitor, Lou Nanne, Lindsay Whalen, Krissy Wendell and some other Gopher icons in a variety of athletic pursuits, he warrants a high place in the pantheon of University athletics, but not only for his prowess as a player.
Carter, a South St. Paul high school standout, was a rarity: a two sport college athlete in a day when they were few and far between, although even less prevalent today. In addition to his three years in the gridiron, he also played a couple years of hockey as a bruising defenseman for the Gophers. Interestingly, one of his teammates during that era was another native Minnesotan, Noel Jenke of Owatonna, a three-sport athlete. A teammate of Carter on both the football and hockey squads, he captained the 1968 football team along with a stint as a Gopher baseball player, who passed away in 2020.
Following his senior year, when he succeeded Jenke as captain of the football team, Carter went on to a solid nine -year career with the Green Bay Packers. Converted to a linebacker, he was one of the premier plays, a Pro Bowl all-star, on a team that fell into mediocrity in the 1970’s after its championship squads in the prior decade.
After athletics
But it was his accomplishments after his athletics career ended that transcend his successes on the gridiron and ice rink. A businessman, Carter went into the family business, primarily in automotive sales.
While doing so, he made three cardinal contributions to the community. Battling substance addiction for many years, he was passionately participated in rehabilitation for himself and as a guide and mentor steering many other addiction-afflicted individuals through recovery programs.
He also was a fierce advocate for improvements in the administration and governance of his beloved University as well as its Athletic Department. While a big booster of both, he was not a mindless cheerleader but spoke out critically when abuses, improprieties, and poor judgment stalked the halls of Morrill Hall and then the McNamara Center, as well as the Bierman complex.
Additionally, Carter was, unlike many of his locker-room contemporaries, very knowledgeable and engaged in public affairs. He was an unwavering supporter of equity, fairness and justice in political and social matters, opposing authoritarianism, dangerous tendencies and other aberrant developments.
In recent years, he and I occasionally corresponded and conferred about these matters concurring on a great number of issues, except for pleasantly disagreeing about the posture of labor unions: I wanted them to be enhanced. He was of a different mindset, probably stemming from his business background.
Carter won many accolades and awards for his athletic achievements. But he was truly a man for all seasons and reasons, and in the game of life that he was an ultimate winner.
Marshall H. Tanick is a University alumnus and Constitutional and employment law attorney with the law firm of MEYER NJUS TANICK.
