13 Facts About Pepper Rodgers

Franklin Cullen "Pepper" Rodgers was an American football player and coach.

Pepper Rodgers coached collegiately for the Kansas Jayhawks and UCLA Bruins before leading professional teams in Memphis, Tennessee, in the United States Football League and Canadian Football League.

Pepper Rodgers became a head coach with Kansas in 1967, and later returned to UCLA and then Georgia Tech as their leader.

Pepper Rodgers was born in Atlanta, where he became a three-sport star in football, basketball and baseball at Brown High School.

Pepper Rodgers played college football at Georgia Tech under head coach Bobby Dodd, where he was a backup quarterback and placekicker as a sophomore in 1951.

Pepper Rodgers was selected in the 12th round of the 1954 NFL draft by the Baltimore Colts, but remained at Georgia Tech for a year, earning a BS degree in industrial management while serving as a student assistant on Dodd's staff.

Pepper Rodgers was later an assistant for Florida and UCLA before landing his first head coaching position with Kansas in 1967.

Pepper Rodgers returned to UCLA as its head coach in 1971.

Pepper Rodgers was the head coach of the USFL's Memphis Showboats from 1984 to 1985 and for the CFL's Memphis Mad Dogs in 1995.

At 69, Pepper Rodgers was considered for the Washington Redskins' head coaching position before Norv Turner's eventual firing during the 2000 season.

Pepper Rodgers was instead appointed the team's vice president of football operations, a position in which he served from 2001 to 2004.

Pepper Rodgers wrote Fourth and Long Gone, a novel published in 1985 that is a bawdy roman a clef of his experiences as a college football coach and recruiter.

Pepper Rodgers later lived in Reston, Virginia, where he died on May 14,2020, at the age of 88.