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You want to run fast? Fine. But this man’s idea is to develop “functional athletic speed.”

And he’s done it better than anyone in these parts ever has.

That’s why Boots Garland is a legend.

Mention Murrell Eugene Garland, and you might get some blank looks.

But in Baton Rouge sports circles simply refer to Boots and most anyone knows who you mean: The quipster who knows how to teach athletes how to get from point A to point B better than anyone.

The list of athletes he’s helped, particularly high-profile quarterbacks, is a veritable Who’s Who—from Bert Jones to Major Applewhite to Peyton Manning.

Jones helped Garland launch his career as a speed specialist when the LSU quarterback approached him in 1972 wanting to get faster. “He got me some pub in the spring, because I guess he looked faster than he had the season before,” Boots recalls. “Bert was a good athlete, and the next fall he looked even better.”

That brought a phone call from Baton Rouge strength coach Alvin Roy, who had since moved on to the NFL. Roy hooked Boots up with the Dallas Cowboys. Mel Didier, a Louisiana baseball legend, brought Boots to the Montreal Expos and later the Los Angeles Dodgers. In 1976, his spring-training roommate in Vero Beach was Tommy Lasorda. People still wonder how either got a word in edgewise.

The native of Haughton, who spent part of his youth in Venezuela and Peru, has been head track coach at high schools from Istrouma to Baker to Baton Rouge High (where his team won the 1969 state title) to Parkview Baptist. He was head track coach at LSU in the early 1980s.

Boots was so respected as a consultant and innovator for Strength Shoes that then-Indiana coach Bob Knight had him visit Bloomington nine times in three years in the 1990s to speak. And the LHSAA still has him address the state-finalist football teams every year about life and the choices athletes can make.

Oddly enough, his greatest triumphs might have been associated with LSU baseball. Coach Skip Bertman brought Boots in annually to work with his team. The only championship ring Garland wears is emblematic of one of LSU’s NCAA baseball titles.

At a strong 6-foot-1 and 170 pounds, Boots will be 73 on June 23. But three years ago, he wasn’t sure he’d see 70: Boots learned he was suffering from heart failure. Longtime friend Billy Cannon met Boots and his wife at the hospital.

The doctor asked Boots if he was a smoker. “I was,” he responded.

“When did you quit?” the doc asked. Boots looked at his watch.

“Forty-five minutes ago.” Cannon nearly fell out with laughter.

But Boots never had another smoke again. “I adjusted my lifestyle.”

These days, his health couldn’t be better. The man who played Pete Maravich’s high school coach in the movie Pistol and a football coach in Everybody’s All-American works out on a treadmill and still trains athletes. In 1992, he started Boots Garland Speed Camps. He’s still for hire—and he’s not cheap: “If you want me to work with your kid, sell your car and four or five acres of land, and I’ll make it happen.”

And he laughs because Boots knows how many athletes he’s helped over the years for nothing more than the praise. He not only made them faster, he tutored them to get better grades.

And you just have to ask: Why Boots?

“I was three-months-old. My uncle, Murrell, who I was named after, saw me one day wearing an oversized pair of booties. Boink! I was Boots.”