Hank Lauricella, the last of the great football single-wing tailbacks and all-around players, who was known as Mr. Everything at the University of Tennessee, died March 25 in Jefferson, La. A Louisiana legislator for 32 years, he was 83.

His wife, Betty, confirmed the death.

From 1949 to 1951, when many other college coaches had switched to the T-formation offense, which emphasized speed and passing, Tennessee’s coach, Brig. Gen. Robert Neyland, stayed with the single-wing offense and had Lauricella run it. At a near-fragile 5 feet 11 inches and 175 pounds, he was the team’s main runner, passer, punter, punt returner, kickoff returner, offensive signal caller and, in his sophomore year, defensive safety.

The single-wing formation was introduced by Glenn S. Warner, also known as Pop Warner, while he was coaching at Cornell in 1906. It takes its name from the unbalanced placement of the four backs — wingback, quarterback, fullback and tailback — on one side of the formation. The snap, more like a toss, from the center starting the play could go to the quarterback, the fullback or the tailback, but it most often went to the tailback, who, like Lauricella, could be a triple threat: a runner, a passer or a punter.

“I wasn’t too good a runner,” he said years later, “and I really wasn’t that good a passer, either. But in the single-wing offense we used at Tennessee, if you could do all things fairly well, then you were better suited to play the all-around game it called for.”