If you were to read the book on BYU’s Jernaro Gilford backward, the stirring success found in the last — now first — chapters wouldn’t seem to correlate with the initial — now final — pages.
His story, from start to finish and finish to start, has been flipped.
The grown man, the 45-year-old coach who’s turned the Cougars’ pass coverage into one of the best in the country is what became of the vulnerable kid who ducked under bullets on the streets of Hawthorne, Calif., wondering which path he should take, Crip blue or Blood red or neither, weighing his options while mourning his dead friends, and who as a cornerback at BYU was suspended from playing football for an entire year on account of a dumb decision.
But the connection is there. Triumph was born out of trial.
Not the casual trip-here-and-flop-there sort of juvenile hardship, rather the look-down-into-the-coffin-at-your-murdered-friends kind. To this day and forevermore, Gilford honors with a tattoo on his right forearm the memory of his close friend, Brandy Russell, who was killed by a bullet exploding from a gun during a party in Los Angeles in 2004. The tattoo includes the familiar benediction: Rest in Peace. “That’s part of my story,” Gilford says. “I don’t hide my story under a rock.”
No, he uses it like rocket fuel to launch himself and others forward. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves — or behind — considering our inverted chronology here.
BYU cornerbacks coach Gilford, recently praised and retained in that job while being promoted to coordinator of the defensive passing game, has impacted the program’s success in a major way, about as major as anyone, culminating in last season’s remarkable showing. Not only was the Cougars defense the best in the Big 12, finishing 13th nationally in total D, the back end of that resistance was, at least by some measures, better than any other secondary in the league. It limited opposing quarterbacks to a pass efficiency rating of 105.91, lowest in the conference and third-lowest in the country. It also allowed the fewest passing touchdowns — 13 — in the Big 12. The Cougars also led the nation in interceptions per game, at 1.69, totaling an FBS-best 22 picks (tied with Texas) on the season. Obviously, Gilford’s corners played a huge role in all of that, in an 11-2 season that surprised darn near everyone, except for maybe the players themselves.
“Jernaro has proved to be one of the top secondary coaches in the country,” says Jay Hill, BYU’s defensive coordinator. “He deserves everything in coaching that comes to him.”
Deserves is a most compelling word. Gilford has taken in and taught to his players on the near side football’s technicalities and on the far side significant lessons about life. He compliments all of BYU’s coaches, from Kalani Sitake on down, because they care about the athletes, teaching them with “criticism” and with “love.”
“With myself,” he says, “it’s easy for the guys to buy in because I’ve walked down that road. I wasn’t perfect, but I was able to be successful.”
Continuing backward, Gilford has been a coach at BYU since Sitake, a former teammate, hired him away from Southern Utah in 2016. Before that, he was a graduate-assistant at Whittier (Calif.) College, where he earned a Masters degree in education — “a blessing,” he calls it — on top of his already-received Bachelors degree in sociology from BYU. He also coached at a community college in Arizona. Prior to that, Gilford worked as a manager at a sporting goods store in L.A. A step back further had him crawling through dark spaces in houses and buildings as a professional termite inspector.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Cornerbacks coach Jernaro Gilford at BYU football practice in Provo on Monday, March 6, 2023.
That’s right. In the run-up to becoming a main cog in BYU’s football ascent, Gilford was wiggling on his knees and elbows, flashlight in hand, into residential corners hunting for bug infestations. Hey, it was a job, he says.
After graduating from BYU, Gilford spent a season with the Seattle Seahawks before injuring a knee and being released. He was physically and mentally done with football. Between leaving the game and chasing down termites, he fell into a period of depression that knocked him flat. Perhaps only those who have pulled out of that bleak state of being can fully understand the severity of the climb.
Gilford had been knocked flat in other ways in the years before.
With the support of family and friends, he persevered. He’d relied on that support before, too. It helped him navigate trouble he found while playing at BYU and also in those formative years in Hawthorne.
As a promising athlete at BYU, Gilford initially bumped and skidded in a culture that was foreign to him. He came from a school and a neighborhood that was 90% Black and found himself immersed in a mostly-white, LDS environment that seemed like it was perched on a different planet. He crash-landed there after high school, then returned home when it was discovered he was short a required English class, then re-entered the following year, then left again after getting booted from the football team for an additional year when he and an associate went into an equipment room on campus and stole a few items. His partner lifted a credit card and some socks. Gilford stuffed some T-shirts into a bag, but then, in a wave of guilt, left them behind before exiting the area.
The two were subsequently confronted by police and Gilford was busted for trespassing, ordered by a Provo court to complete 80 hours of community service, and facing the wrath of the Honor Code office, which allowed him to stay in school while on probation, but he would not be permitted to play football.
At the time of the offense — April, 2000 — Gilford realized he had done wrong, but also hacked through some lingering bitterness, believing he was being harshly penalized for a stupid mistake. He holed up in Hawthorne, considering his options, thinking about transferring to Arizona State or Wisconsin. His friends encouraged him to go to ASU, but pulled in by some inexplicable force, Gilford decided he wanted to finish what he started at BYU.
That’s exactly what he did.
“That [punishment] made me think that maybe I should leave and not come back,” he said at that time. Even Gilford’s mom, Alberta Cummings, a loving-but-tough woman who had raised her son to be honest and honorable, even as he was surrounded on the outside by different influences, thought the punitive action by the school was harsh.
“I thought his penalty was kind of stiff,” she said back then. “I thought they should penalize him. He did something wrong. I was upset with Jernaro. I told him he did the error, so he had to be penalized. But maybe not like that.”
She was pleased, though, when her son decided to learn and return.
Brian Mitchell, BYU’s cornerbacks coach over that span, was thrilled to have Gilford back in the fold. He said back then: “Jernaro was the best corner here. He’s got all the qualities you look for — he’s confident, a leader, driven, he’s 6-foot-2, weighs 190 pounds and he’s fast. He has all the intangibles, he has a presence on the field. …”
Mitchell continued.
“… Jernaro was embarrassed by what happened. He’s always been a role model for his family and his friends. He was remorseful. Now he’s doing well again. He’s more mature, he’s battled through the adversity.”
Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune Brigham Young cornerbacks coach, Jernaro Gilford walks off the field with Brigham Young Cougars running back Jamaal Williams (21), who rushed for 210 yards, and won the offensive MVP trophy, as BYU defeated Wyoming 24-21in the Poinsettia Bowl, at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, December 21, 2016.
That’s what Gilford did at BYU, where he played from 1999 to 2003, what he did thereafter, and what he’d done before. That’s what he did when his friend, Brandy, and earlier another friend, Persevelt Larkin, the younger brother of former Major League Baseball player Barry, were cut down in separate shootings in L.A.
“I’ve never been a part of a gang,” he says, reiterating what he said some 24 years ago, underscoring that he had “no interest in those things.” But when those things came barging into his life, he had to face what was so real, so cruel, so sad.
“That hurts you,” he says. Even with the hurt, Gilford saw some friends veer off onto troubled roads. In avoiding the same dead-end routes, he relied, in part, on sports, his prowess and promise in football, and the guidance of Alberta. That’s one of the reasons he wanted to go to BYU, to get out and get away.
And now he’s back again, fully accustomed after so many years to BYU and the good things he finds there. Asked what he, as a coach and as a lifelong Baptist, teaches and preaches to his athletes, he lists four things, attributes, beyond the technical aspects of playing cornerback, that apply to activities on the field and off it.
“No. 1 is discipline,” he says. “No. 2 is respect. No. 3 is learning to trust those 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: “That all applies to me, too. I have to do those things every single day.”
Gilford says BYU coaches are recruiting higher-caliber players — “LDS athletes and non-LDS” — and now drawing them in at a greater rate, but he makes clear and certain what most Cougar coaches deal with and understand: “We are a unique university. We still have to emphasize the lifestyle here.”
As a Black Baptist coach at a largely white Latter-day Saint school, he can help build a bridge to athletes who are unaccustomed to what surrounds them at BYU, and he’s grown comfortable doing that.
“There are rules athletes might 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, there’s an outcome that can set them up for a successful life. I made mistakes, I overcame obstacles. I don’t hide from it. That’s my story.”
Told from the satisfying ending to the uncertain beginning and back again, Jernaro Gilford punctuates the past, relishes the present and looks ahead to the future, to the chapters yet unwritten, with three words contracted into two:
“I’m thankful.”
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