Pepper Rodgers helped guide Georgia Tech to a share of the 1952 national championship with the Yellow Jackets going 12-0 that season, capping it with a 24-7 win over No. 7 Mississippi in the Sugar Bowl. A year later he’d cap his college career with three touchdown passes and a Sugar Bowl MVP performance in a win over West Virginia.
Rodgers would go on to be drafted by the Baltimore Colts in the the 1954 NFL Draft but Rodgers instead chose to serve five years in the United States Air Force. While at the Air Force he got into coaching, ultimately working his way to the head spot at Kansas in 1967, a spot he’d hold for four seasons, winning the Big 8 Coach of the Year Award twice and leading the Jayhawks to a 1968 Orange Bowl appearance.
He’d spend three seasons at UCLA, winning two Pac 8 Coach of the Year Awards before returning to Georgia Tech.
Rodgers would spend six seasons as the head coach of the Yellow Jackets, going 34-31-2 and earning a Peach Bowl bid in 1978 as Georgia Tech finished 7-5.
For Notre Dame fans curious about the connection, Rodgers coached against the Fighting Irish six times at Georgia Tech, including the “Rudy Game” in 1975, a 24-3 Irish victory. In his six games against Notre Dame, Rodgers and the Ramblin’ Wreck went just 1-5.
Rodgers would also spend time as a head coach for the USFL’s Memphis Showboats and the CFL’s Memphis Mad Dogs before serving as the Vice President of the Washington Redskins from 2001-2004.
Rodgers died Thursday at 88 years old.