Showing early signs of his eventual 6"8", 280-pound frame which would earn him the nickname "Big Jim", James Joseph McCafferty was born in Scammon, Kansas, weighing 19 pounds. Shortly thereafter, his family moved to Henryetta, Oklahoma, where McCafferty grew up and played high school football.
He was recruited by Loyola of the South to play football, but when the school dropped its football program after his freshman year, he switched to playing basketball for three seasons (1940-1943). As a senior, he helped lead Loyola to a Dixie Conference Championship, and was named Most Valuable Player of the tournament. After graduating with a degree in physical education in 1942, McCafferty remained at Loyola as the assistant coach in both basketball and track.
Then in 1948, McCafferty was invited to coach Team United States of America at the Central American Olympic Games in Panama, and he led the United States. to a gold medal.
McCafferty became Loyola"s head basketball coach in 1953, and led the Wolfpack for four seasons, including Loyola"s first two National Collegiate Athletic Association Tournament appearances in 1954 and 1957. Unfortunately, the Wolfpack lost in the first round in both tournaments.
After the 1957 season, he was named head coach at Xavier University. Then, in 1961, the Musketeers made it to their first National Collegiate Athletic Association Tournament.
McCafferty was head coach at Xavier for six seasons until 1963.
He also served as the school"s athletic director from 1962 to 1979. McCafferty served as the first Commissioner of the Master Control Console during the 1979-1980 school year.
McCafferty was selected in 1958 as Catholic College Coach of the Year, and Ohio College Coach of the Year. He has been inducted into the Halls of Fame at both Loyola and Xavier, as well as the Cincinnati Basketball Hall of Fame, and twice was designated to receive Loyola’s Distinguished Alumnus Award. In 2011 he was awarded a spot in the Sugar Bowl Hall of Fame. In his honor, the McCafferty Trophy is annually awarded to a school which is recognized as the all-sport champion of the Horizon League. Also, since 1981 the Blackburn/McCafferty Trophy has been awarded to the winner of regular season meetings between rivals Xavier and Dayton. lieutenant is named for the two former coaches of the respective schools, who are remembered as the two men who put their respective colleges" basketball teams on the national map.
After trying for over two decades to get Xavier into a Division I Conference, McCafferty"s work paid off in 1979 when Xavier became a founding member of the new Midwestern City Conference (Master Control Console), which became the Horizon League in 1985.
