Hall of Fame
- Induction:
- 1986
Don Salls won more games at Jacksonville State than any other football coach in history.
Salls posted a 95-57-11 record over a 19-year career as the head coach at JSU. He served in that role from 1946-52 and again from 1954-64 and won three won three bowl games and seven conference titles during his successful career. He was inducted into the Jax State Athletics Hall of Fame in 1986 and was later inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame (ASHOF) in 1992.
Salls was born on June 24, 1919, in Trenton, New Jersey. In 1941, he was a fullback for the University of Alabama on a National Championship team that won the Cotton Bowl before World War II interrupted.
After winning battle stars in Belgium and France, he was wounded, presented the Purple Heart and sent home with the rank of Captain. He returned to the University of Alabama for postgraduate work and in 1946 became the head coach at Jacksonville State. Salls led his new troops to a perfect 9-0-0 record in 1947 and lost only one game by one point in 1948. The 1947 team led the nation in rushing defense, allowing only 494 yards for the season, a Gamecock record still on the books over 70 years later.
The 1955 team finished 10-1-0 and won the Refrigerator Bowl in Evansville, Indiana, defeating a powerful Rhode Island team. That club shut out its first six opponents. In addition to the Refrigerator Bowl win, Salls' teams played in three Paper Bowl games in Pensacola, Florida, winning twice.
Coach Salls produced nine Little All-America players and in 1966, Jacksonville State named what was then the athletic dormitory "Salls Hall" in his honor.
He is also a member of the Westchester County, N.Y., Hall of Fame and the Calhoun County Sports Hall of Fame. Salls received the UA National Alumni Association's Paul W. Bryant Alumni-Athlete Award in 2003 and also received the Vaught Lifetime Achievement Award from the All-American Football Foundation.
Coach Salls passed away in January 2021 at the age of 101. He was the oldest living University of Alabama football player at the time and the oldest living member of the ASHOF.
March 2026
