LaVern Torgeson
American football player and coach (1929-2015)
LaVern Earl "Torgy" Torgeson (February 28, 1929 – March 20, 2015) was an American professional football player and coach in the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Washington State Cougars from 1948 through 1950. Torgeson played in the NFL for seven seasons, principally as a linebacker, for the Detroit Lions from 1951 to 1954 and for the Washington Redskins from 1955 to 1957.
After retiring as a player, Torgeson worked for 35 years from 1959 to 1993 as an assistant coach in the NFL. His coaching positions included stints with the Washington Redskins (1959–1961, 1971–1977, 1981–1993), Pittsburgh Steelers (1962–1968), and Los Angeles Rams (1969–1970, 1978–1980). He was a coach on three Super Bowl championship teams in 1982, 1987, and 1991. As a player and coach, he spent 42 years in the NFL, 26 of them with the Redskins.
Early life
Torgeson was born in La Crosse, Washington, a small town in the eastern part of the state, and attended La Crosse High School, and excelled in football, basketball, and baseball.
College football
After graduating from high school in 1947, Torgeson enrolled at nearby Washington State College in Pullman, where he played college football on the Cougars' varsity from 1948 through 1950. He played on both offense as a center and on defense as a linebacker. Torgeson was the team captain in 1950, and he was selected by the Associated Press (AP) as the first-team center on the All-Coast team.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “LaVern Torgeson” as american football player and coach (1929-2015). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6460968. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1929, 2015, 1948 and 1950.
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This entry incorporates text from “LaVern Torgeson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.