John Ferguson: Steve Franz, LSU Sports Information.


Scott Purdy: Which players can you think of that have been the most fun for you to watch over the years?

John Ferguson: Well, [Billy] Cannon, [Bert] Jones, [Johnny] Robinson, [Warren] Rabb. It’s not fair to name just a few because all of them . . . and I’ve become personal friends with a lot of them. But all of the . . . all of the guys really have done . . . a lot of them have done . . . done a huge job in athletics here. And there was a time, now, when some of these boys like . . . well, Gaynell Tinsley, for example, is a longtime friend from Claiborne Parish, graduated at Homer [High School] up there and was . . . his first coaching job in high school was at Haynesville High School up there. My father gave him his job, his first coaching job after he got hurt in the pros. There’s no greater player in history, in my opinion, than Gaynell Tinsley. He’s surely the greatest player LSU has ever produced and he still lives here in town. You saw Charlie Alexander perhaps? He works here in the office. There really has been no greater running back in the history of the game here at LSU than Charles Alexander from Galveston, Texas. So there are just a lot of them. Billy Cannon, of course, lives here. He’s a great, great player. But I mean you could . . . We could sit here for two or three hours and name players and I could tell you something about each one of them. But the overall picture that I get when I think about things like is that all of these fellows helped to make LSU, really . . . In past years - though I’m quick to say it’s not that way right now [1993] - made LSU’s past years the scourge of the Deep South. You know, other teams would come in here to play football and they’d be scared to death. The players would really fear for their own lives when they come in here. And for good reason, because we had great teams.

-- John Ferguson, interviewed by Scott Purdy, 1993