Hall of Fame
Lewisville native Charlie McClendon was voted a member of the 2003 inaugural Southern Arkansas University Sports Hall of Fame class as a player. Since Lewisville had a basketball program but no football at the time of his high school graduation, McClendon came to SAU (then Magnolia A&M) in 1946 to play basketball for Coach Elmer Smith.
Instead, he was an instant success on the gridiron and after playing for the Muleriders for two years when it was still a junior college, he was sent by Smith to play for his good friend, Paul (Bear) Bryant, who was putting the Kentucky Wildcats on the map as a football program and not a basketball-only university. McClendon played on two bowl teams at Kentucky.
After assisting at Kentucky and Vanderbilt, McClendon became an assistant at LSU and tutored the legendary “Chinese Bandits,” the defensive unit that was the catalyst for LSU’s 1958 national championship season in 1958 under Paul Dietzel.
After Dietzel’s departure, McClendon (known at LSU as “Cholly Mac”) was promoted to head coach where he served for 18 seasons from 1962 until 1979. He remains the winningest coach in LSU history with 137 wins, 59 losses and seven ties, a .692 percentage. His Tigers won the Southeastern Conference championship in 1970 and appeared in an impressive 13 bowl games where LSU won seven and lost six. He was also National Coach of the Year in 1970 and was the Executive Director for the American Football Coaches Association for 10 years.
McClendon passed away December 6, 2001 and is buried in Stephens, the hometown of his wife, the former Dorothy Faye Smart. He is a member of both the Louisiana and Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame.
