Rudy Hubbard was the former head football coach at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, Florida, from 1974 to 1985. Hubbard was born in Hubbard, Ohio, a small steel mill town near Youngstown, Ohio. He attended Ohio State University, where he was a running back from 1964 to 1968. After graduation, Hubbard was hired by then Head Coach Woody Hayes as an assistant coach in 1968, making Hubbard the first African-American on the coaching staff of the Ohio State Buckeyes football team. He stayed on the coaching staff for six seasons before moving on to take the head coach position at Florida A&M University in 1974. Hubbard received the chance to coach the Rattlers, out of situational circumstance, as the football program at the time was losing ever since the end of the 1969 season, when legendary coach Jake Gaither retired. The FAMU athletics department was looking for someone to turn the FAMU program around, and took the chance on someone, even though he wasn't an HBCU alumnus, who came from a known coaching pedigree.