LSU Football
The premier runner in Louisiana State University and Southeastern Conference history, Charles Alexander is the 1978-79 winner of the Sugar Bowl’s Corbett Award as the top amateur athlete in the state of Louisiana.
James J. Corbett Awards
A 6-1 by 215 tailback, Alexander finished his LSU career with 27 Tiger and nine SEC records, including a career total of 4,035 yards, 42 touchdowns, and 254 points.
With exceptional durability and blazing 4.35 speed to go along with great power, Alexander strung together rushing years of 301, 876, 1,686, and 1,172 in racking up over twice the yardage that Billy Cannon, the 1959 Heisman Trophy winner, did in his LSU career.
In fact, during Alexander’s junior year, when he swept to the nation’s second-best running total of 1,686 lengths, the Galveston, Texas, education major came within 181 yards of equaling Cannon’s career mark. And, if his 197 yards against Stanford in the Sun Bowl that year were added, he eclipsed the great Cannon’s career stats in that one season.
An adept receiver, too, Alexander caught 49 passes for 431 yards and a pair of touchdowns during his career, including a high of 28 for 263 yards his senior year.
The Associated Press National Back-of-the-Week after gaining an LSU-record 237 yards against Oregon as a junior, Alexander was also the 1977 SEC Player of the Year.
A two-time consensus All-America, Alexander is the fifth athletes from LSU (Pete Maravich won the award twice) to gain the special honor named in memory of the late Jim Corbett, the LSU director of athletics at the time of his death.
[Reprinted from the 1979 Sugar Bowl History Book]
