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Who are the men running the SEC West’s offensive lines? Get to know the seven coaches’ backgrounds.
Alabama — Mario Cristobal
Regarded as one of the best recruiters in the nation, Cristobal has coached the Crimson Tide offensive line for the last two seasons. He has head coaching experience, coming to Alabama after a six-year stint running the show at Florida International. A Miami (Fla.) alum, Cristobal worked as offensive line coach for the Hurricanes for three years. He also spent three seasons at Rutgers after starting his career as a graduate assistant at Miami.
Arkansas — Sam Pittman
Pittman has spent 30 years in the coaching ranks, working his way up from high school assistant to big-time college offensive line boss. Pittman joined Arkansas along with Bret Bielema, and offensive line wizard in his own right. Prior to his time with the Razorbacks, he’d spent time coaching the offensive line at Tennessee (2012), while holding down a dual associate/assistant head coach title at North Carolina (2007-11) and Northern Illinois (2003-06). Pittman has made 10 stops in total as an offensive line coach.
Auburn — J.B. Grimes
Another coach with more than 30 years in the game, Grimes has been with Auburn since 2013, and he’s already helped produce several award winners and NFL draft picks. His resume includes eight different coaching stops at seven schools at the Division I-A/FBS level, most recently at Mississippi State (2004-08) and Kansas (2010-11).
LSU — Jeff Grimes
No relation to Auburn’s Grimes, LSU’s Grimes just wrapped up his first season at LSU and is already developing a stellar reputation in Baton Rouge. It helps that he was the offensive line coach for Auburn’s 2010 national title team, moving to Virginia Tech for a year after that before joining LSU’s staff. Since 1998, he’s held down eight total offensive line coaching jobs at the college level, working with several future NFL players, including Levi Jones (Arizona State), Tyler Polumbus (Colorado) and Brandon Mosley (Auburn).
Mississippi State — John Hevesy
Hevesy has molded several groups of talented offensive linemen in his time at Mississippi State, with some of his finest work coming with former walk-on Ben Beckwith, an All-SEC selection in 2014. He’s been with the Bulldogs since Dan Mullen became head coach in 2009. He moved around to seven different positions before coming to Starkville, and has worked with Mullen (and Urban Meyer) at Bowling Green (2001-02), Utah (2003-04) and Florida (2005-08).
Ole Miss — Matt Luke
A co-offensive coordinator for the Rebels, Luke heads into his fourth season on Hugh Freeze’s staff. Luke is an Ole Miss graduate, having played four seasons as a center for the Rebels and coached offensive line and tight ends in Oxford for four seasons (2002-05) early in his career. From there, he went to Tennessee (2006-07) as a tight ends coach, assistant OL coach and recruiting coordinator, then helped lead a resurgence as an OL coach and offensive/run game coordinator at Duke before returning to Ole Miss.
Texas A&M — Dave Christensen
The only new OL coach in the West, Christensen comes to the Aggies after a year as offensive coordinator and tight ends coach at Utah. Prior to that, he was a head coach at Wyoming from 2009-13, compiling a 27-35 record over his five seasons. Christensen spent 17 years as an offensive line coach for current Missouri coach Gary Pinkel, first at Toledo (1992-2000), then at Mizzou (2001-08). In 2007, Christensen was the runner-up for the Broyles Award, given to the best assistant coach in college football.
A former freelance journalist from Philadelphia, Brett has made the trek down to SEC country to cover the greatest conference in college football.
