Warren Giese (July 14, 1924 – September 12, 2013) was a state legislator in South Carolina and a college football coach. He served as the head football coach for the South Carolina Gamecocks for five years at the University of South Carolina. He later served in the South Carolina State Senate. At South Carolina, Giese employed a conservative, run-first game strategy, but he enthusiastically adopted the two-point conversion when it was made legal in 1958. That year, he also correctly predicted the rise of special teams after the NCAA relaxed its player substitution rules. Early life Giese was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he attended Rufus King High School. He attended and played football at the Milwaukee State Teachers College for one year before enlisting in the United States Navy through the V-12 pilot training program at Central Michigan University. He played football there as well in 1943, and in the Navy, he also played at stations in Miami and Jacksonville, Florida. After World War II, Giese resumed college at the University of Oklahoma, where he played college football as an end under head coach Jim Tatum in 1946. That season, he was named a first-team All-Big Six Conference player. Giese graduated from Oklahoma in 1947. That year, he returned to Central Michigan to play football for his final year of college eligibility. Coaching career Giese began his coaching career at the Sacred Heart Academy High School in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, where he coached for one season and compiled a 3–4 record. From 1949 to 1955, Giese served as the ends coach at Maryland. During that time, under Jim Tatum, Giese's former mentor at Oklahoma, Maryland was awarded the consensus national championship in 1953 and has been retroactively awarded the 1951 national championship by several selectors. In March 1951, Giese declined the head coaching position at Central Michigan University, for which he had already been approved by the school administration, after Maryland offered him a pay raise. Giese co-authored a book with Tatum entitled Coaching Football and the Split-T. In 1955, University of South Carolina athletic director and head football coach, Rex Enright, compiled a 3–6 record and his health was in decline. As a result, he resigned as football coach and hired Giese as his own replacement. At the time, Giese was the youngest head football coach in the nation. He remained as South Carolina head coach for five