Gideon adds feisty attitude to coaching staff
As player at UT, assistant picked a fight with employer Holgorsen and made impression
Back in the summer of 2011, Blake Gideon was not thinking about future job prospects.
All he wanted to do was fight.
A self-described “young, arrogant, cocky” Blake Gideon began yelling at an unsuspecting visitor to the University of Texas’ indoor facility.
“I walk in and Blake says, ‘What are you doing here?’ ” University of Houston coach Dana Holgorsen said. “He tries to fight me.”
Gideon was participating in a players-only 7-on-7 practice the summer before his senior season. Holgorsen, meanwhile, was entering his first season as head coach at West Virginia and had been invited to the Austin campus by Bennie Wylie, the Longhorns’ strength and conditioning coach.
“You can’t be in here, it’s a closed practice,” Gideon shouted at Holgorsen.
Then Gideon rounded up a few teammates.
“A few buddies that looked bigger and stronger than I do,” Gideon said. “We start walking over to try and intimidate him.”
Not long after, Gideon got a phone call. Coach Mack Brown wanted to see him in his office.
“What are you trying to fight a head coach for?” Gideon recalled Brown telling him.
All Gideon could remember is Holgorsen’s part, as Oklahoma State’s offensive coordinator, in a 33-16 win over the Longhorns the previous season.
“Well, that guy beat our tail,” Gideon said. “He shouldn’t be watching us.”
“(Blake) didn’t really understand that at one point I was going to try and hire him someday,” Holgorsen said to laughter as he told the story to the General Assembly at the recent Texas High School Coaches Association convention.
Later, Gideon relayed the encounter to his dad, Steve, a longtime Texas high school football coach.
“I know you want to get into coaching,” Steve told the younger Gideon. “I’ll tell you one guy that is never going to hire you — Dana Holgorsen.”
Fast-forward eight years. When Holgorsen began to assemble his coaching staff at Houston, one of his calls was to … Blake Gideon.
“I respected the way he played, the way he coached,” Holgorsen said.
Was it an uncomfortable job interview? Did he try to ignore the incident? No chance Holgorsen was going to let him forget.
“Dana knew,” said Gideon, who was hired as UH’s specialteams coordinator and nickels coach. “He recited that story immediately. He knew who it was and all that.”
It was that passion Holgorsen found appealing. He wanted to add Gideon to his staff.
“Dana told me that’s what I like about you,” Gideon, 30, said. “That you are going to speak your mind, you’re going to stand for your beliefs. That’s who I’ve always been.”
After a career as a four-year starter at safety at Texas, Gideon spent eight months with the Denver Broncos before deciding to begin his coaching career. He spent a season as a defensive quality control coach at Florida. Another season as a graduate assistant at Auburn. His first full-time job came as defensive passing game coordinator at Western Carolina in 2016-17. He moved the following season to Georgia State as cornerbacks coach.
“I’m always learning,” Gideon said of his climb up the coaching ladder. “I’m not afraid to pick up the phone and call some of my mentors and see how they are doing things, how they are teaching things and be able to bounce those ideas off people. I think whenever you stop doing that you’re done. You’re done improving and you’re topped out.
“I want to make sure I keep that student’s mentality throughout my coaching career. It is a little bit different. I’m not Blake the GA. I’m not the guy running to get the coffee and make the copies. It’s fun to be able to have my own deal going here. Coach Holgorsen has placed a lot of trust in me to do the right things on special teams and make sure we are sound.”
Gideon said Holgorsen sold him on a vision of a long-term commitment to Houston. It also helped that the job offered the chance for Gideon to return closer to his Central Texas home.
“I’ve been out on the East Coast for the first five years of my coaching career,” he said. “Now getting to recruit and not have to use my GPS, that was a draw.”
After landing the UH job, Gideon made a phone call.
“I called my dad,” he said.