Jake Gaither, the longtime Florida A&M coach turned a generation of “mo-bile, a-gile and hos-tile,” youngsters into some of the National Football League’s fiercest competitors from the 1940’s to the 1970’s.”
My boys,” as Gaither called them, may have come to him raw, but by the time they graduated to the N.F.L., as more than 40 of them did during his 25-year-run — including Bob Hayes and Willie Galimore — they knew how to play football and win.
From 1945 to 1969, his teams compiled a 203-36-4 record, an .844 winning percentage that is the highest for college coaches with 200 victories. As the coach of a historically black college, Alonzo Smith (Jake) Gaither turned Southern segregation to his advantage, recruiting with a religious zeal.
As Ken Riley, a former Gaither player put it, “Back then it was the dream of every black kid in Florida to play for F.A.M.U.”
Gaither, who called the football field his laboratory for manhood, was a powerful motivator who stressed character over talent. “You knew he cared more about you as a person than as a football player,” said Riley, who is an associate athletic director at Florida A&M.
In his 1993 book, “Black College Football, 1892-1992,” (Donning), Michael Hurd tells how Gaither quelled team resentment over attention being paid Hayes, “the world’s fastest human,” after he won two gold medals at the 1964 Olympics. “Tell you how you can get just as much publicity as he gets,” Gaither told the team. “Outrun him.”
For all his emphasis on character, Gaither knew his football. His book “Split-Line T” was widely hailed by major college coaches.
Gaither introduced the Split-T formation in 1963, and it was soon adopted at other colleges. In 1969 FAMU defeated the University of Tampa 34-28 in the South’s first football game between a white college and a predominately Black college.
Thirty-six players from Gaither’s teams were All-Americans, and 42 went on to play in the National Football League. During his 25 years as head coach, FAMU won 22 Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference championships. Gaither teams also won six Black College National Championships, in 1950, 1952, 1954, 1957, 1959 and 1961.
Gaither was named Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Coach of the Decade. He was named College Division Coach of the Year by the American Football Coaches Association in 1962, and was voted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1975. He also received the Amos Alonzo Stagg Award that year, and the Walter Camp Football Foundation Man of the Year Award in 1974. The Jake Gaither Trophy has been awarded to the best Black collegiate football player each year since 1978.
Gaither died in Tallahassee in 1994.