RAYMOND – Howie Long stood on the stage in Hinds Community College’s Cain-Cochran Hall on Monday, telling a funny story about his friend and mentor Earl Leggett. Long and the crowd laughed together at the memory, some shaking their head and agreeing that sounded just like the Earl they knew.

Once the laughter subsided, Long would pause for just a second to collect his thoughts. As he looked up, the casket in front of him, covered in the painted handprints of his children and grandchildren, brought one of the NFL’s toughest men to tears.

Leggett, who played on some of the NFL’s best defenses in the 1960s and 70s, and won two Super Bowls as an assistant coach with the Los Angeles Raiders, died Thursday in Raymond. He was 75.

He was laid to rest Monday with a memorial service at Hinds that honored the memory of a tough man with great sense of humor and a heart of gold.

“Twenty-eight years ago, a fat man with an accent I never heard in my life walked onto the Villanova campus and changed my life forever,” said Long, the former Raiders star who was inducted to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2001. Leggett served as his presenter. “He told me, ‘If you do what I tell you to, work as hard as you can, I’ll make you a household name in every house in America. Turns out he was right.”

Leggett was a household name in his own right.

A Florida native, Leggett came to Mississippi in 1951 and became a star at Hinds. He led the school to a 9-0 record in 1954, culminating in its only national championship and a win in the Little Rose Bowl. In his four years at Hinds – high school players were allowed to play junior college ball back then – the Eagles went 35-3-1.

Leggett went on to become an All-Southeastern Conference performer at LSU and a first-round pick of the Chicago Bears in 1957. He was part of the famed “Monsters of the Midway” defense that led the Bears to the 1963 NFL championship, and toward the end of his career he played with the Los Angeles Rams’ “Fearsome Foursome” defense.

Leggett was a member of the Hinds, National Junior College, Jacksonville (Fla.), and Mississippi Sports halls of fame. He was inducted to the MSHOF in 2002.

Leggett retired in 1970 after brief stints with the Rams and Saints, and became Hinds’ head coach. He went 2-8 in his only season at the helm, but it wasn’t because he had lost his intimidating presence.

“The way they’d sit on the bus in those days, the coach sat at the front. When they’d get to the stadium, Earl stepped off the bus and he was such a man that a lot of teams said (Hinds) had the game won right there,” Hinds president Dr. Clyde Muse, a longtime friend of Leggett’s, said with a laugh.

After his brief stay as Hinds’ head coach, Leggett found his calling as an assistant. He spent a few years in the college game and World Football League before landing a job in the NFL with the expansion Seattle Seahawks in 1976. He spent the next 24 years coaching with six different franchises and helped the then-Los Angeles Raiders to victories in Super Bowl XV and XVIII as their defensive line coach.

Leggett coached the defensive line for the Denver Broncos when they lost Super Bowl XXIV to the San Francisco 49ers, 55-10, in 1990. Leggett retired in 2000 after a stint with the Washington Redskins.

“He’s the best I’ve ever been around. He’s the best defensive line coach I’ve ever seen,” said Terry Robiskie, who worked with Leggett on the Redskins’ staff and was friends with Leggett for 25 years.

Along with his Super Bowl appearances, Leggett left a long legacy of talented players that he developed.

During his speech, Long rattled off a who’s who of outstanding defenders – himself, Sean Jones, Michael Strahan and Greg Townsend among them. Long, Jones, Townsend and Strahan won six Super Bowls among them, Long is in the Hall of Fame and Strahan is likely to make it whenever he retires, and Townsend was a Pro Bowl lineman in the early 1990s.

Robiskie, who along with Long and Jones attended the funeral Monday, said Leggett’s sense of humor complimented his football knowledge in a way that allowed him to get the most out of his players.

“Once he reaches out and touches you, you know you’ve been touched,” Robiskie said. “He knew how to touch people, how to handle people. He had a way with people.”

All of the speakers at Monday’s memorial service touched on Leggett’s biting sense of humor and loyalty to family, teammates and friends. Long recalled a preseason brawl with the Bears and coach Mike Ditka in the 1980s.

“Everybody’s fighting and Earl, who could barely walk, goes after Mike Ditka. Neither one of them could have landed a punch if they wanted to,” Long said. “I asked him later if he was really going to fight Mike. He said, ‘No, but I could sure give him a good cussing.'”

Leggett’s daughter, Cynthia, remembered a family trip when she was shooting a dart gun in the car. Leggett eventually grabbed it and tossed it out the window.

“Somewhere in Louisiana,” Cynthia Leggett said with a laugh. “Later on, you told me you saw it when you stopped for a sweet bun.”

Rev. Mike Sahler recalled one of his first meetings with Leggett at his home. Sahler, an ex-Mississippi State baseball player, was wearing an MSU cap. After chatting for a few minutes, Leggett pointed it out.

“We were talking, and all of a sudden he asks, ‘Where’d you get that hat? A garage sale?'” he said.

Even Long, who credits Leggett with changing him from a struggling rookie into a hall of famer, joked that his evolution could have been quicker.

“It took me two years to be an all-pro because I couldn’t understand a darn thing Earl was saying,” Long said. “Earl could get after us, and he did. In all my years in the film room … I don’t think he said two nice things to me. But each and every one of us knew he loved us.”