War daddy?

I had never heard the term before i read this piece in Slate. But this passage is not to be missed:

When Bill Curry was head coach at Georgia Tech in the early 1980s, he instituted a war daddy head count. Before every game his assistants would declare that the Yellow Jackets should be ready for a tough game as they were facing, say, a six-war-daddy defense. Curry says his players would titter during the weekly announcement. But no one was laughing after Tech ran into the war daddy to end all war daddies, Tennessee's Reggie White. After the Minister of Defense tormented Tech's linemen, Curry heard one of his huge tackles weeping. "War daddies can make a grown man cry," he says.