He installed the Colts' wide-open passing game at Baylor, helping make All-Americans of quarterback Don Trull and wide receiver Lawrence Elkins after a record-breaking 1963 season.

In the Bears' 1966 season opener against Syracuse at Baylor Stadium, Bridgers sent in John Hill Westbrook, making the sophomore running back the first black athlete to play for a Southwest Conference school.

[1] Bridgers spent a year on Chuck Noll's first Pittsburgh Steelers staff, where he urged the coach to consider drafting a player he tried to recruit for Baylor, a quarterback named Terry Bradshaw.

Despite inheriting a $1 million athletic deficit, he turned the program around with the single most important hire in school history, convincing another talented coach from Alabama, Hall of Famer Bobby Bowden to leave West Virginia for the Seminoles.

Turning around another struggling athletic program, Bridgers left Florida State for the University of New Mexico in 1979, where his win brother Frank was a principal of a major engineering firm.