William "Billy" Joe (born October 14, 1940) is a former collegiate and professional American football player and former college football head coach. He was the American Football League Rookie of the Year in 1963 with the AFL's Denver Broncos. In 1965, he was traded to the Buffalo Bills for their legendary fullback, Cookie Gilchrist, and made the AFL All-Star Team, starting for the Bills in their 1965 AFL Championship victory over the San Diego Chargers.
Joe later was a successful college head coach for 33 seasons. He coached at Cheyney University of Pennsylvania from 1972 to 1978, Central State University from 1981 to 1993, Florida A&M University from 1994 to 2004, and Miles College from 2007 to 2010. Joe achieved his greatest success at Central State, where his teams won 2 NAIA National Football Championships in 1990 and 1992 and made many appearances in the NAIA football playoffs during the 1980s and 1990s. He teams at Florida A&M have made various appearances in the Division I-AA (now FCS) playoffs during the 1990s and early 2000s.
In addition, Joe has won five straight Black college football national championships with Central State University (1986,1987,1988,1989,1990) and one Black college football national championship with Florida A&M (1998). In 2007 he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.
The number of players who were coached by Joe who went on to the NFL/CFL/Arena League are:
- Central State University: Vince Buck, Vince Heflin, Erik Williams and Hugh Douglas
- Florida A&M: Jamie Brown, Jamie Nails, Terry Mickens, Dexter Nottage, Wally Williams, and Quinn Gray
After a two-season absence as a coach, Joe was named head football coach at Miles College, a Division II school in Fairfield, Alabama on December 12, 2007. He resigned in October 2010, citing poor health. Assistant coach Patrick Peasant took over the team on an interim basis.
He finished his career with 243 wins 133 losses, 2 ties. His number of victories are second only to Eddie Robinson among coaches at historically black colleges and universities.
Famous quotes containing the words billy and/or joe:
““Oh, where have you been, Billy boy, Billy boy?
Oh, where have you been, charming Billy?”
“I’ve been to seek a wife,
She’s the joy of my life,
She’s a young thing, and cannot leave her mother.””
—Unknown. Billy Boy (l. 1–5)
“While we were thus engaged in the twilight, we heard faintly, from far down the stream, what sounded like two strokes of a woodchopper’s axe, echoing dully through the grim solitude.... When we told Joe of this, he exclaimed, “By George, I’ll bet that was a moose! They make a noise like that.” These sounds affected us strangely, and by their very resemblance to a familiar one, where they probably had so different an origin, enhanced the impression of solitude and wildness.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)