Dexter Coakley in SoCon Hall of Fame
Dexter Coakley, Appalachian State’s all-time leading tackler and a three-time Pro Bowl participant in the NFL, will be inducted in the Southern Conference Hall of Fame on May 24.
Coakley totaled 616 tackles as a linebacker at ASU from 1993 through 1996, and had seven games with 20 or more tackles. He was a three-time All-America selection, the only player to win the SoCon’s defensive player of the year award three times and is the only two-time winner of the Buck Buchanan Award, given annually to the top defensive player in the FCS.
“He’s very deserving,” Coach Jerry Moore of ASU said. “He played the game the way it was meant to be played.”
Coakley, from Charleston, S.C., was a running back in high school and was recruited by the Mountaineers out of Fork Union Military Academy.
“He even returned some kickoffs for us, he was that kind of athlete,” Moore said.
Moore said that Coakley was instrumental in the start of ASU’s summer program, getting players actively involved in that. “If they weren’t here, he’d get on the phone and call wanting to know why they weren’t here,” Moore said.
Coakley was a third-round draft pick by the Dallas Cowboys, and played eight season with the Cowboys and two with the St. Louis Rams.
He will join basketball player Valorie Whiteside and track-and-field stars Mary Jayne Harrelson and Melissa Morrison as SoCon Hall of Fame members from ASU.