Rudy Hubbard

Who is Rudy Hubbard?

Rudy Hubbard was the former head football coach at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, Florida, from 1974 to 1985.

Hubbard was born in Hubbard, Ohio, a small steel mill town near Youngstown, Ohio. He attended Ohio State University, where he was a running back from 1964 to 1968. After graduation, Hubbard was hired by then Head Coach Woody Hayes as an assistant coach in 1968, making Hubbard the first African-American on the coaching staff of the Ohio State Buckeyes football team. He stayed on the coaching staff for six seasons before moving on to take the head coach position at Florida A&M University in 1974. Hubbard received the chance to coach the Rattlers, out of situational circumstance, as the football program at the time was losing ever since the end of the 1969 season, when legendary coach Jake Gaither retired. The FAMU athletics department was looking for someone to turn the FAMU program around, and took the chance on someone, even though he wasn't an HBCU alumnus, who came from a known coaching pedigree.

After a 6-5-0 mark in Hubbard's first year in 1974, the Rattlers went 9-2-0 in 1975, 6-3-2 in 1976, then began a stretch from the 1977 to 1979 seasons, where they went 30-5-0. The Rattlers went unbeaten 11-0-0 in 1977 and in 1978, the Rattlers went 12-1 and wrapped up the season winning the inaugural NCAA Division I-AA Football Championship held in Wichita Falls, Texas on December 16, 1978, defeating the University of Massachusetts Amherst by the score 35-28, making Florida A&M the first and only HBCU today to have accomplished this feat. In 1979, the Rattlers went 7-4-0 but made an exclamation mark in the season with a 16-13 defeat of the Division I University of Miami Hurricanes. Hubbard spent 12 seasons with the Rattlers, and posted an 83-48-3 overall record, the third most wins in school history behind fellow FAMU head coaches Jake Gaither and Billy Joe. The Rattlers also won 2 Black college football national championships in 1976 and in 1978. The successes achieved by Hubbard during his tenure enabled FAMU football to transition from the Division II Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference to Division 1-AA independent status, and in 1980 the Rattlers joined the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference.