By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
Jerry Stovall, the LSU football coach, was an intense, exacting, relentless taskmaster and disciplinarian. But when he ordered wayward players to run the steps of Tiger Stadium, he often ran each step right with them.
Because Jerry Lane Stovall, the man, was devoutly religious who could be soft and understanding.
“I remember the man behind the legend,” said lifelong friend Roland Toups, executive chairman of Turner Industries in Baton Rouge, at funeral services for Stovall at the First Presbyterian Church downtown Friday. He died Monday in Baton Rouge at age 85.
The legend of Stovall was as a two-time All-American who played halfback and defensive back for LSU from 1960-62 and finished second for the Heisman Trophy as a senior in ’62. After being named an All-Pro defensive back three times with the St. Louis Cardinals, he became a coach. As LSU’s head coach, he was named the Walter Camp national coach of the year in 1982 during an 8-3-1 Orange Bowl season that included LSU’s first win over Alabama and coach Paul “Bear” Bryant following 11 straight losses to the Tide.
“He put on no false airs or pretense,” Toups said. “What you saw was what you got.”
And at least one time when someone thought they saw someone else when they saw Jerry, he went all Jerry.
“He was always very nice to fans,” Toups said. “We were at dinner once not too long ago, and this very frail little old lady came up to Jerry and said, ‘I know you. I know you.'”
Stovall stopped to greet the woman warmly.
“I know you,” she said again. “You’re Dale Brown.”
Stovall’s wife Judy, whom he married in February of 1962 before his final season at LSU, and daughter Jodi and son Jay couldn’t stop laughing.
“Honey,” Jerry told the lady. “You’re not far off. I know Dale Brown. I worked with him.”
In fact, Stovall, who was LSU’s head football coach from 1980-83, and Brown, now 90 who was LSU’s basketball coach from 1972-97, lived in the same Westminster/Pine Park neighborhood in Baton Rouge off Jefferson Highway in the 1980s.
“Judy and their two kids and grandchildren referred to Jerry as Dale for weeks after that,” Toups said. “He had an amazing ability to stay humble his entire life despite all his accomplishments, if someone saw him on the street or at Frank’s (on Airline Highway) for breakfast on Saturdays.”
Jerry Stovall would give his players the shirt off his back, or in Dalton Hilliard’s case – the jersey number.https://t.co/MDWnxQfhAS
— Glenn Guilbeau (@SportBeatTweet) September 3, 2026
And there were times when Jerry inadvertently stole the spotlight from another man more famous.
When Stovall was the running backs coach at LSU under Charles McClendon in the 1970s, he and Toups happened to attend a Georgia Tech alumni function with former Tech coaching legend Bobby Dodd speaking. Dodd was Georgia Tech’s head football coach from 1945-66 with a national championship in 1952 and entered the College Football Hall of Fame posthumously in 1993.
Stovall attended, as he said, “despite being in the enemy’s camp” in Atlanta.
And Stovall was introduced to the crowd not by his name, but by what he did on Oct. 6, 1962, at Georgia Tech against Dodd. Stovall returned the second half kickoff 98 yards to beat the No. 5 Yellow Jackets, 10-7, on the CBS Saturday Game of the Week on national television.
“There was a big silence in the room as they looked at this professorial-looking guy, Jerry,” Toups said. “Then Bobby Dodd cut me off and said, ‘My God, Jerry Stovall, I’ll never forget you. I followed your entire career. I hope my son will be just like you.’ How’s that? And Bobby Dodd didn’t even know Jerry other than from that game. We went to a Georgia Tech alumni meeting, and it turned into a Jerry Stovall pep rally.”
That is how much of the ceremony on Friday went as well.
“And it all started with this scrawny crew cut kid from West Monroe coming to LSU,” Toups said. “There was no quit in Jerry Stovall.”
Stovall tried to instill that into his players.
“Blood,” Stovall once told star linebacker Lawrence Williams after a practice in 1982, “I can whip you.”
Williams looked surprised.
“Because I can get up one more time than you can knock me down,” Stovall said.
Then he yelled, “To the cones, men,” as he closed each practice with the players running laps.
McClendon, who was Stovall’s assistant coach on defense in 1960 and ’61 and his head coach in 1962, called him “the most complete football player I have ever seen.”
LSU head coach Paul Dietzel, who recruited Stovall and coached him in 1960 and ’61, said Stovall “was the type player who got faster as the game went on. A lot of players started the game faster than he was, but they weren’t in the end.”
Stovall went on to become the second player picked in the 1963 NFL Draft by the St. Louis Cardinals and was a three-time All-Pro defensive back. After his coaching career ended at LSU in 1983, he went on to become the CEO of the Baton Rouge Sports Foundation and dedicated his life to helping others as the president of the Associaton of Special Needs Citizens and worked with people with chemical dependency, a drug task force, the Baton Rouge Food Bank, hospice services, the United Way and as a minister at the Angola penitentiary.
“Jerry Stovall knew how to lay down his life for his team,” said First Presbyterian Chuch pastor Scott Graham. “He always showed up. Even when he disciplined players as a coach, he would run the stadium steps with that player being punished. And his family always was the top priority when he was coaching or not. When he was LSU’s head coach, he had a bumper sticker on his car in the LSU parking lot that said, “My son and my money go to Baylor.”
Graham said Stovall loved two sayings, “Work as hard as you can for as long as you can.”
And this, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose,” from the Book of Romans 8:28.
“Jerry was the real deal,” Graham said in conclusion. “The total package. He had the intangibles. No tape measure could do him justice. You needed a mighty special tape measure.”
Stovall will be honored during LSU’s season opening game against Clemson (6:30 p.m., ABC) Saturday night at Tiger Stadium in front of 102,321.
“But today we say goodbye to Everybody’s All-American,” Graham said. “Goodbye my brother, until we all meet again in the heavenly kingdom.”
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