Who is BYU football coach Jernaro Gilford? It has a story full of tragedy and triumph

If you were to read BYU’s Jernaro Gilford book backwards, the rousing success found in the final—now first—chapters would not seem to correlate with the opening—now last—pages.

His story, from beginning to end and from end to beginning, was turned upside down.

A grown man, the 45-year-old coach who turned the Cougars’ pass coverage into one of the nation’s best is what happened to the vulnerable kid who hid from bullets on the streets of Hawthorne, Calif., wondering which way to go, Crip blue or Blood red or neither, weighing his options while mourning his dead friends, and who was banned from the football.

But the connection is there. Triumph was born from a test.

Not the random trip-here-and-fall-there kind of teenage misery, more of a casket-down look at your murdered friends. Gilford still honors the memory of her close friend Brandy Russell, who was killed by a gunshot during a party in Los Angeles in 2004, with a tattoo on her right forearm.The tattoo includes the family blessing: Rest in Peace. “That’s part of my story,” Gilford says. “I will not hide my story under a rock.

No, he uses it as rocket fuel to propel himself and others forward. But we’re getting ahead of it—or behind—given our reverse chronology here.

BYU cornerbacks coach Gilford, who was recently lauded and retained while being promoted to defensive coordinator, has made a major impact on the program’s success, perhaps as majorly as anyone, culminating in a remarkable showing last season. Not only was the Cougars’ defense the best in the Big 12, finishing 13th nationally in total D, but the back end of that opposition was, at least by some measures, better than any other secondary in the league. It limited opposing quarterbacks to a 105.91 efficiency rating, lowest in the conference and third lowest in the nation. It also allowed the fewest receiving touchdowns — 13 — in the Big 12. The Cougars also led the nation in interceptions per game with 1.69, a total of 22 FBS picks (tied with Texas) on the season. Clearly, Gilford’s horns played a huge role in all of this in an 11-2 season that surprised pretty much everyone except perhaps the players themselves.

“Jernaro has proven to be one of the best secondary coaches in the country,” says BYU defensive coordinator Jay Hill. “He deserves everything that comes his way in coaching.

They deserve the most impressive word. Gilford embraced and taught his players on the near side of football technicalities and significant life lessons on the other side. He compliments all of BYU’s coaches, from Kalani Sitake on down, for taking care of the athletes and teaching them with “critique” and “love.”

“With me,” he says, “it’s easy for guys to relate to because I’ve walked this path. I wasn’t perfect, but I was able to be successful.”

Gilford has been the coach at BYU since Sitake, a former teammate, hired him from Southern Utah in 2016. Before that, he was a graduate assistant at Whittier (Calif.) College, where he earned a master’s degree in education — “a blessing,” he calls it — in addition to his bachelor’s degree in sociology. He also coached at a community college in Arizona. Prior to that, Gilford worked as a manager at a sporting goods store in LA. A step back, he crawled through dark spaces in houses and buildings like a professional termite inspector.

it is so. In advance of becoming a cog in BYU’s football rise, Gilford crawled on his knees and elbows, flashlight in hand, into residential nooks and crannies hunting insects. Hey, it was work, he says.

After graduating from BYU, Gilford spent a season with the Seattle Seahawks before injuring his knee and being released. He was physically and mentally done with football. Between quitting the game and chasing termites, he fell into a period of depression that brought him down. Perhaps only those who have emerged from this bleak state of being can fully understand the difficulty of the climb.

Gilford was knocked down in a different way in previous years.

With the support of family and friends, he persevered. He used to rely on that support too. It helped him overcome the difficulties he found playing at BYU as well as those formative years at Hawthorne.

As a promising athlete at BYU, Gilford initially stumbled and skidded into a culture that was foreign to him. Coming from a school and neighborhood that was 90% black, he found himself immersed in a predominantly white LDS environment that looked like it was left on another planet. He crash-landed there after high school, then returned home when it was discovered he was short an English class, then re-enrolled the following year, and after being kicked off the football team for the next year, left again when he and a co-worker went to the campus equipment room and stole several items. His partner picked up a credit card and some socks. Gilford stuffed a couple of t-shirts into his bag, but then left them behind in a wave of guilt before leaving the area.

The two were subsequently confronted by the police and Gilford was arrested for trespassing, ordered by a Provo court to complete 80 hours of community service and faced the wrath of the Honor Code office, which allowed him to remain in school on probation but would not be allowed to play football.

At the time of the offense – April 2000 – Gilford realized he had made a mistake, but he also harbored some lingering bitterness, believing he was being severely punished for a stupid mistake. He lingered in Hawthorne, weighing his options and thinking about transferring to Arizona State or Wisconsin. His friends encouraged him to go to ASU, but Gilford decided he wanted to finish what he started at BYU, drawn by some inexplicable force.

He did exactly that.

“That [punishment] it made me think that maybe I should leave and not come back,” he said at the time. Even Gilford’s mother, Alberta Cummings, a loving but tough woman who raised her son to be honest and upright even though he was surrounded by various influences on the outside, found the school’s punitive measures harsh.

“I thought his sentence was severe,” she said at the time. “I thought he should be punished. He did something wrong. I was angry with Jernar. I told him he made a mistake so he had to be punished. But maybe not like this.”

However, she was pleased when her son decided to study and return.

Brian Mitchell, BYU’s cornerbacks coach that season, was excited to have Gilford back in the game. At the time, he said, “Jernaro was the best corner here. He’s got all the qualities you look for — he’s confident, he’s a leader, he drives, he’s 6-foot-2, 190 pounds and he’s fast. He’s got all the intangibles, he’s got presence on the field. …”

Mitchell continued.

“…Jernaro was embarrassed by what happened. He was always a role model for his family and his friends. He had remorse. Now he’s doing well again. He’s more mature, he fought through adversity.”

That’s what Gilford did at BYU, where he played from 1999 to 2003, what he did after and what he did before. That’s what he did when his friend Brandy and formerly another friend, Persevelt Larkin, the younger brother of former Major League Baseball player Barry, were killed in separate shootings in LA.

“I’ve never been part of a gang,” he says, repeating what he said some 24 years ago, stressing that he “has no interest in these things.” But when those things invaded his life, he had to face what was so real, so cruel, so sad.

“That hurts,” he says. Despite the injuries, Gilford has seen some friends turn down troubled paths. He relied in part on sports, his prowess and promise in soccer and Alberta leadership to avoid the same dead ends. That’s one of the reasons he wanted to go to BYU, to get out and get away.

And now he’s back, fully acclimated after so many years to BYU and the good things he finds there. When asked what he teaches and preaches to his athletes as a coach and lifelong Baptist, he lists four things, attributes, beyond the technical aspects of playing cornerback, that apply to activities on and off the field.

“No. 1 is discipline,” he says. “No. 2 is respect. No. 3 is learning to trust the people around you. No. 4 is hard work. I can coach these guys hard because I love them and we trust each other.”

And he adds: “All of this applies to me as well. I have to do these things every day.”

Gilford says BYU coaches are recruiting higher-caliber players — “LDS and non-LDS athletes” — and are attracting them at a greater rate now, but he makes it clear and certain what most Cougar coaches deal with and understand: “We’re a unique university. We still have to emphasize the lifestyle here.”

As a Black Baptist coach at a predominantly white Latter-day Saint school, he can help build a bridge to athletes who aren’t used to what surrounds them at BYU, and it’s worked for him.

“There are rules that athletes may have to learn here – and that’s not a bad thing. Things they have to get used to. But through that tunnel and at the end of it is a result that can set them up for a successful life. I’ve made mistakes, I’ve overcome obstacles. I don’t hide from that. That’s my story.”

Told from a satisfying ending to an uncertain beginning and back again, Jernaro Gilford highlights the past, savors the present, and looks ahead to the future, to the chapters yet to be written, in three words divided into two:

“I’m grateful.

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