LaVell Edwards, who coached BYU for nearly 30 years, dies at 86.

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College Football Hall of Famer LaVell Edwards, who coached the BYU Cougars for 29 seasons, died Thursday at the age of 86 from complications after breaking his hip, his wife said.
Patti Edwards told the Provo Daily Herald that her husband suffered the injury on Christmas Eve.
Edwards won the 1984 national championship during his tenure from 1972 to 2000, and he had an overall record of 257-103-3 with the Cougars. He ranks seventh all-time in FBS coaching victories and second behind Joe Paterno among those who coached at just one school during their career.
He twice was named national coach of the year (1979, 1984), and he coached 1990 Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Ty Detmer among his 34 All-Americans.
Edwards took BYU to 22 bowl games and won 20 conference championships. Other quarterbacks who flourished under his guidance include Gifford Nielsen, Marc Wilson, Jim McMahon, Steve Young, Robbie Bosco and Steve Sarkisian.
"It's a tough time for all of us," Young, a Hall of Fame quarterback and ESPN analyst who played for Edwards from 1980-83, said Thursday. "The No. 1 quality that Coach had was a gift -- I'm going to say it was from heaven -- that he had the ability to look at you and get a sense of you and be able to have a vision for your future. To see things that you didn't see, to see potential in you that you didn't know about. ... It was personal to you.

"He had the ability to see around the corner and it was individual. Football is the ultimate people sport and you have to have people skills, and he had the ultimate people skills. It was a gift."
His legacy also is left through his coaching tree, which includes Mike Holmgren, Andy Reid, Brian Billick, Kyle Whittingham, Mike Leach, Norm Chow, Ted Tollner and Tom Holmoe.
"He was like Johnny Appleseed ... just spreading seeds of goodwill and positivity," said Young, who had talked to Edwards' wife and was driving to Provo, Utah, when he got the news of his death. "Another thing he did was he took a program that was not obscure, but the WAC in 1965 or '70 was not well-known, and by the time he left that program, it was nationally recognized. There's not many great coaches that took programs from obscurity to national prominence. ... He's in many ways a pioneer."
Edwards was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2004, and BYU's stadium bears his name.
"LaVell not only changed the program, but he changed a lot of lives," current BYU head football coach Kalani Sitake said. "He's a great man, very wise, but I think more than anything he is so humble and such a great example. I hope I can be just like him. There are a lot of great things about him that I love."
 

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