Jerry Cole

He was a three-year starter in football for the Golden Eagles, earned honorable mention all-county status at tackle as a junior in 1951 and was first-team all-county as a tackle in 1952, his senior season. Cole’s junior and senior seasons were two of the best the Golden Eagles enjoyed under coach Ernest (Banty) Newman, 7-2-0 in 1951 and 8-2-0 in 1952. After graduating from high school in May 1953, Cole played for the North team in the Alabama High School Athletic Association’s sixth annual North-South all-star football game that August.

A man named Ernest Stone was principal at Jacksonville High at the time. Cole got to know him and he got to know Cole. More about that relationship later.

Jacksonville State football coach Don Salls offered the 215-pound Cole a football scholarship and Cole accepted.

At Jacksonville State, Cole became a four-year football letterman and two-year starter for the Gamecocks. He was a part of the 10-1-0 team in 1955 that upset previously undefeated and highly favored Rhode Island 12-10 in the 1955 Refrigerator Bowl in Evansville, Ind.

Cole received an ROTC commission and after graduation in 1957, he spent about three years in military service. When he was discharged from the army, he and Ellen returned to Weaver where they built a home in 1960. They raised their three children there and were living in that home when he died. Mrs. Cole still lives there.

Back in Calhoun County, the Coles attended many of Jacksonville State’s sporting events and he became active in the alumni association. He was a territorial sales representative for National Gypsum in February 1974 when Jacksonville State University president Dr. Ernest Stone, the same Ernest Stone who had been Cole’s high school principal, told Cole he wanted him to become JSU’s first full-time athletics director.

Charley Pell had been both head football coach and athletics director for five years before leaving for a coaching position at Virginia Tech. Two days after hiring Clarkie Mayfield as head football coach, Stone named Cole athletics director.

Before accepting the job, she said her husband wrote a letter to her and their three children — son Byron, 17; daughter Kelly 16 and son Jason 9 — telling them he had been given a chance to work for Jacksonville State and he thought the position would make a better life for all of them.

Cole officially became director of athletics in March 1974. During his tenure, the Gamecocks won two NCAA national titles in gymnastics, two NCAA Division II national championships in baseball, one Division II title in basketball and one Division II championship in football.

The Gamecocks won 37 Gulf South Conference championships under Cole’s watch. With Cole as athletics director, Jacksonville State’s athletics program developed a well-earned reputation as one of the most well rounded in the country. The Gamecocks won twelve Gulf South Conference all-sports trophies and at one point in the late 1980s and early 1990s won both women’s and men’s titles four consecutive years.

In August 1997, Cole announced he would retire at the end of the 1997-98 school year.

written by Joe Estep