Energetic minority protons with ∼100 keV effective temperature are routinely created in Alcator C-Mod plasmas with the application of ion-cyclotron-range-of-frequency (ICRF) heating. A multichannel compact neutral particle analyzer (CNPA) is used to make measurements of these distributions in Alcator C-Mod's unique and reactor-relevant operating space via active and passive charge-exchange techniques. A radially injected 50 keV diagnostic hydrogen neutral beam is used for active analysis. Using a detailed model that accounts for beam, halo and impurity electron donors, core proton temperatures of ∼30–120 keV are directly measured for the first time in lower density (ne0 ∼ (0.8–1.5) × 1020 m−3) Alcator C-Mod plasmas with up to only ∼0.5 MW of ICRF power. The model found that the minority proton temperatures are peaked spatially away from r/a = 0, even for an on-axis resonance. Additionally, noticeable phase-space anisotropy is seen as expected for ICRF heating. The measured effective temperatures also scale approximately with the Stix parameter. The CNPA temperature measurements are compared with several leading simulation packages such as the TORIC/FPPRF and AORSA/CQL3D full-wave/Fokker–Planck (FW/FP) solvers. Preliminary comparisons with the AORSA/CQL3D code which include results from a new synthetic diagnostic show good agreement and demonstrate that accurate tracking of the minority distribution during iterations of the FW and FP solvers is required to simulate Alcator C-Mod's energetic minority populations with accuracy. Physically, poor wave focusing and preferential heating of trapped energetic protons are found to move the fast proton temperature profiles off-axis. These FW/FP analyses represent the first comparison between predictions of these detailed codes and core minority tail experimental measurements on Alcator C-Mod.