Dr. Guy Penny, 90, former Morehead State Football head coach, died April 8, 2019, in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
Penny was a native of Piedmont, Alabama, where he was an all-state football star at Piedmont High School. He went on to earn a scholarship at the University of Mississippi, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1950 and earned a Doctor of Education from the University of Southern Mississippi in 1969. After he graduated from Ole Miss, he embarked on his coaching career, holding positions in his home state at Collinsville High School and Geneva High School and later at the University of Tennessee at Martin.
One of the most successful coaches in Morehead State football program history, Penny (who led the Eagles from 1959 to 1967) orchestrated the first Ohio Valley Conference championship in program history when MSU won a co-title in 1962. Four years later, Penny’s Eagles won the outright OVC championship in 1966.
Penny was named OVC Coach of the Year in 1962 and 1966 and was the Kodak District 4 Coach of the Year in 1966. He later was a physical education instructor and the chair of the physical education department at Middle Tennessee State University from 1970 until retirement in 1993.
At MSU, he coached 15 student-athletes who were named All-OVC during his tenure, several of whom are now in the Morehead State Athletic Hall of Fame, as well as a pair of All-Americans. He was inducted into the MSU Athletic Hall of Fame in 1989 and later into the Ohio Valley Conference Hall of Fame in 1996.
He is survived by his wife of 69 years, Kay B. Penny, along with three daughters, a brother, eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
