Knowles brings diverse background to role
Ohio State football hired Jim Knowles on Tuesday to be the team’s new defensive coordinator as the Buckeyes try to bounce back from missing the College Football Playoffs for the first time in coach Ryan Day’s three-year tenure. And Knowles has a different background from the coordinator he’s about to replace.
Kerry Coombs, who lost his defensive play-calling duties following a loss to Oregon in Week 2, is a lifelong football coach. In his hometown of Colerain, Coombs built one of the most successful high school programs in the state’s historybefore spending time at both the college and NFL levels.
Knowles’ path is different in that he hasn’t always been a coach, and he’s not coached in the state of Ohio before.
Here are five things to know about Jim Knowles, Ohio State’s new defensive coordinator.
Knowles is a vegan from Philadelphia
Jim Knowles was born on April 16, 1965 in Philadelphia.
“I’m just a kid from inner-city Philly who went to an Ivy League school, wears plaid blazers, smokes cigars, doesn’t wear my shoes all the way,” he said in an Oklahoma State promotional video. Knowles added that he is a marathon runner and is vegan.
Knowles worked on Wall Street before coaching
Knowles played football for Cornell in the 1980s and was a three-year letterman and All-ivy League selection.
After graduating with a bachelor’s degree from Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, he went to work on Wall Street.
“I used to wake up from nightmares that I didn’t get into coaching,” Knowles said. “So (10 years later) I gave it all up to make $3,000 and get free meals from the cafeteria.”
Knowles was head coach at Cornell
He began his coaching career at Cornell working with both offensive and defensive position groups. He was hired as Western Michigan’s defensive coordinator in 1997 and left to be the linebackers coach at Mississippi in 2003.
In 2004, Knowles became the head coach at Cornell and went 26-34 from 2004-2009, his best season coming in 2005 when the Big Red went 6-4.
He made a name for himself at Duke
Knowles became the defensive coordinator at Duke in 2010 where he helped coach David Cuttcliffe turn around the struggling Blue Devils.
The team’s best performance under Knowles came in 2017 when Duke finished No. 21 nationally in scoring defense and total defense while giving up an average of 20.23 points per game, the lowest at Duke since 1977.
“Driven, excited, maybe bizarre at times,” Cutcliffe told The Oklahoman. “But that is a bizarreness about him that you learn to love quickly.”
Knowles is a Broyles Award finalist at Oklahoma State
Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy hired Knowles in 2018 to help slow down the high-powered offenses of the Big 12.
The 2020 defense allowed just 379 yards of offense per game, the fewest by a Cowboys’ defense since 2009.
The unit continued to improve in 2021 as OSU nearly made the College Football Playoff by holding opponents to 20 or fewer points nine times and limiting them to an average of 278.4 yards a game. As a result, Knowles is a candidate for this year’s Broyles Award, which goes to the top assistant in college football.