The coach’s coach: Auburn director of player development Jeff Jones

AUBURN, Ala. – Auburn director of player development Jeff Jones met Alex Golesh when the Tigers’ first-year head football coach was 15 years old. 

Back then, Jones was Golesh’s coach. 

An undersized lineman in the Ohio Capital Conference in Columbus, Golesh still found ways to contribute, even when he wasn’t on the field. 

“He knew what to do,” Jones said. “If I put him in a game, I knew nobody was going to mess up an assignment because he was going to tell them what to do. He was a great teammate. He was never on the sideline pouting because he wasn’t playing. He was always ready to go.

“He was a model player and teammate because he knew what to do, was ready when he got his chance and was always rooting for his teammates, whether he was playing a ton or not.”

A quarter century later, Jones and Golesh are part of the same team once more.

“There’s still a lot of that same person in him,” Jones said, “which he’s harnessed very well to be youthfully energetic with these young people.”

During the two decades Golesh climbed the coaching ladder – from student assistant to GA to assistant to coordinator – he and Jones stayed in touch.

When Golesh earned his first head coaching opportunity at South Florida in 2023, he hired Jones.

“’Just give the kids the same experience you gave me,’” Golesh told Jones, who nearly teared up hearing those words from his former player. “I know the assignment. I got it. Anything and everything that touches these kids, we touch it, and that’s a great responsibility.”

In his introductory press conference Dec. 1, Golesh explained why he became a football coach.  

“I wanted to coach because I had incredible coaches growing up,” Golesh said. “I had elite examples of men of character, who care about young people, who give more of themselves than they ever take.”

Jones, a teacher, coach and administrator for 29 years, receives Golesh’s affirmation on behalf of his profession.

“I think any educator worth a darn does that,” Jones said. “We just want to – as he says – pour into others. I was just doing what I thought was the right thing. He’s very kind with his words and I certainly appreciate them. I’m grateful and humbled.

“Whatever we did to help him find that path, that’s great, that’s what we’re supposed to do. I’ve always felt he was built do something like this. He’s wired for it.”

The Joneses and Goleshes were neighbors, building houses in the same Columbus subdivision before Alex’s junior year of high school.

On one of their rides to summer workouts, Golesh’s passion for football and his ability to teach at such a young age impressed Jones.

“One day I said, ‘Hey I know you love football, and I know you can teach. Would you like to be a football coach?’” Jones recalled. “He said yes. When he graduated, I took a job at another high school in Columbus and offered him a job.

“AG is super smart, not only book smart but aware, able to work with people, understands environments. I offered him a job based on the idea I knew he could teach.”

Jones recommended Golesh, then an undergraduate, to Ohio State head coach Jim Tressel and defensive line coach Jim Heacock for a student assistant position, an opportunity that jumpstarted Golesh’s career.

“Jim (Heacock) trusted him early on,” Jones said. “He’s in the middle of drills as an 18 or 19-year-old and was trusted to coach even one of his own high school teammates, Jay Richardson.”

After Golesh graduated from Ohio State, Tressel helped the prodigy land graduate assistantships at Northern Illinois and Oklahoma State, leading to his first assistant coaching job at Toledo from 2009-11. 

It was there where Golesh first floated the idea of Jones one day working for him. 

“’Hey Coach, you’re going to come help me when I get my job, right?’” Jones recalls Golesh asking. “’Yeah, no problem. I got you.’ At the time it seemed far in the distance. Did I think it was going to happen? Yes, I did.”

Fast forward another decade, after assistant coaching stops at Illinois, Iowa State and UCF, Jones visited Golesh in 2022 before his second season as Tennessee’s offensive coordinator. 

“Sitting there watching him, I’m like, man, we’re getting close,” Jones said, noting the trust Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel had placed in Golesh.

After the Vols led the nation in offense in 2022, Golesh got the call from South Florida and Jones got the call from Golesh. 

“’Coach, they’re coming,’” Jones remembers Golesh saying about South Florida’s delegation arriving to formally offer Golesh USF’s head coaching position. “Before we closed the phone call, he said, ‘You’re still going to come help me, right?’” 

That’s how an administrator, coach and teacher with three decades on the job in Ohio found himself in the middle of helping engineer a turnaround at a D-I program in Tampa, Florida.

“We love this young man like he’s our own,” Jones said. “He in some ways was our first practice at being parents because he let us be mentors. His parents did awesome things for their two kids.”

At Auburn, Jones says his role resembles that of a high school principal. 

“We can have the ultimate impact which is to help them go out and play football fast and violently for Auburn University,” he said. “Our primary role other than loving hard on these kids is to communicate, to tie the whole process together. We take a holistic approach to student-athletes. We work with anybody who touches those kids.”

That includes collaborating with academics, sports medicine, communications and strength and conditioning, as well as one of Jones’ first jobs on the Plains, onboarding early enrollees and transfers.

“I’ll tell anybody who will listen that I’ve got the best job in the building because I get to work with the most valuable resource that the university has and it’s these kids,” he said. “Coaching is almost like being a classroom teacher. I get to coach everybody.

“I can go into a meeting room and watch how they go about learning material. Are they note takers? How are you grabbing this information? It’s helping each learner engage with the curriculum.”

So impressed was Alex Golesh with his high school coach, hiring the man known to all as “Jonesy” was one of his first priorities, first at South Florida and now at Auburn. 

The one who coached the coach can’t wait to introduce his former player, whom Jones calls a “great man, great father and great spouse,” to the Auburn family.

“I’m excited for the Auburn community to get to know this young man like I do,” Jones said. “He’s an awesome human being. He genuinely cares about these kids. I can’t wait for this community to see that in motion. They will absolutely fall in love with him because he cares about people.

“No job too big, no job too small, not afraid of anything. Works hard. His mantra: outwork everybody. He doesn’t say it, he does it. It’s fun to try to keep up with him.”

Jeff Shearer is a Senior Writer at AuburnTigers.com. Follow him on X: @jeff_shearer