Listen Here
By Pulse Staff
University of Findlay’s new head football coach Tyler Johns could only imagine his new adventure starting in one place.
“Seventeen years ago, I walked through that arch. Four years later, I walked out it, and you best bet when I got here last night, I walked back through that arch,” Johns said. “It is the start of a journey. It is the start of what will shape our players’ lives.”
From 2008 to 2012, Johns was a member of the UF football team, weathering two out of three losing seasons with head coach Jon Wauford to a new head coach, Rob Keys, and a slightly-more-than-500 season.
“That offseason was the hardest offseason of my life. It was designed that way. It was designed to test what we were made of. It was designed to see if a one and 10 team was going to be able to turn this into a championship program,” Johns said.
After graduating with a strength and conditioning degree in 2012, he became an assistant offensive line coach at Iowa Western Community College. He went on to earn his master’s in educational policy studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2016 where he was a graduate assistant coach for two seasons.
In 2017 he became the offensive line coach / recruiting coordinator at Ohio Dominican University before moving on to Tiffin University in 2019. At TU he started as the run game coordinator and offensive line coach but eventually became the offensive coordinator. The Dragons won three G-MAC titles and went to the NCAA Division II Playoffs twice in five seasons.
He spent the last two seasons as the offensive coordinator and offensive line coach at Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs, N.C., where he was most recently served as the interim head coach.
But his dream was clear: becoming head coach at the University of Findlay.
“That’s been my truth every day that I’ve worked in this profession. This is truly the dream come true for me. I do not take this dream lightly,” Johns said. “There’s a gravity that comes with being the head coach of this program. There’s a gravity that comes with leading our student-athletes.”
At a news conference Dec. 30 at Gardner Football Complex on UF’s campus, Athletic Director Jim Givens officially introduced Johns as the new leader of Oiler football.
In August 2022, Kory Allen was named head coach of the Oilers. He resigned on Dec. 14 this year after a 10-2 season where the program saw its highest national ranking ever at No. 8, finishing at No. 19. Allen is now associate head coach and tight ends coach at the University of Toledo.
Five days later, UF announced Johns as the new head coach. As a former player, and assistant coach within the Great Midwestern Athletic Conference for several years, Johns was already on the radar for UF.
“It was a really crazy 72 hours. I don’t know how much sleep any of us got those 72 hours,” Johns said. “There was a lot of 1 a.m. text message exchanges and checking in back with each other at about 4.30 a.m.”
Givens says he’s aware the expedited process was different than want most people are used to.
“I did not want to be responsible for setting a program back a couple of years and sitting on my hands and not doing anything about it,” Givens said. “So, it was very important that we did not let that happen. We have a portal, transfer portal, we have NIL, all of those things affect what we do day to day.”
Givens said moving the program forward fast is important.
“I think he’s already put together an unbelievable staff and very quickly,” Givens said. “And come next week he’s going to be out on the road, and that is vital to the continuous success of our program.”
Johns said Thomas Rebholz will continue as the defensive coordinator, and defensive line and recruiting coordinator Anthony Gore Jr. will expand some duties.
Throughout his career, Johns has been the offensive play caller but hopes to give up that duty.
“I would like to pass that on to a coordinator,” Johns said. He says he thinks splitting his time between offensive coordinator and head coach is not in the best interest of the athletes.
Johns said he wants the student-athletes in his program to be proud of their experience, and he wants them to live the core values he believes in, effort: discipline, grit, and energy, on and off the field. But above all he wants the players in his program to be proud of the degree they earn during their time at UF.
To watch his players walk out through the arch, with degree in hand, is important to him.
“That is the first step that they take when they become Oilers,” Johns said. “It is the first step, and we will continue to strive to build these young men in the way that this place shaped me.”
