Doug Porter, the longtime HBCU football coach and College Football Hall of Famer, died at age 94.
Porter went 163-106-5 as the coach at Mississippi Valley State, Howard and Fort Valley State. Most of those wins came in 17 seasons at Fort Valley State, where Porter went 112-66-3 and won four Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference titles. He was named the SIAC’s Coach of the Year seven times and spent 16 years serving as Fort Valley’s athletic director.
“Doug Porter was a remarkable person, crafting an impressive career in coaching and athletics administration among the HBCU ranks,” National Football Foundation chairman Archie Manning said in a statement. “A great football mind, he was a top-flight recruiter who cared deeply about his players and put them in a position to succeed.”
Porter began his career as an assistant coach at Father Bertrand High School in Tennessee in 1954, working for his father, W.P. Porter, before becoming the backfield coach at Xavier University of Louisiana. His first head coaching job came at Mississippi Valley State in 1961.
After five seasons at MVSU, Porter spent eight seasons under fellow Hall of Fame coach Eddie Robinson as an assistant at Grambling State before returning to a head coaching role at Howard for the 1974 season. Porter was named the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference Coach of the Year in 1974 after leading Howard to an 8-2-1 record. Following his tenure at Fort Valley State, he returned to Grambling as an adviser and helped create the school’s Eddie G. Robinson Museum.
Porter was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2008 and was the oldest living member before his death.
