Best Mind in CFB: "Coach Black" of NSU

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Who is Coach Black of Northwestern State? Well for one thing, he's not a coach. And his name isn't Black. This will come as news to some of his closest friends, but Coach Black's real name is Harris Wilson Jr., after his daddy, a cement mixer who died 10 years ago of a heart attack.

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His brain doesn't work like yours and mine. There are times it works so much … better. Coach Black is an autistic savant, capable of staggering feats of memory, and while the Northwestern State athletic department has taken him in like family, the school gets as much out of Coach Black as he gets from them.

"More," says New Orleans basketball coach Mark Slessinger, a former Northwestern State assistant. "Black does more for us than we could ever do for him."

Slessinger is talking about unconditional friendship and loyalty, but there's more here than that. A brain like Coach Black's, it comes in handy.

"He's a human daytimer," says Northwestern State assistant AD/sports information director Doug Ireland.

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Coaches at Northwestern State buy his meals and take him for medical and dental care. They feed him so well during the school year that Black typically reports to football down 25 of 30 pounds after being away all summer. He goes on road trips, he hangs around the office, and he fills down time by playing solitaire on a coach's computer.

"He wins like that," Slessinger says. "Rain Man stuff."

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