MOBILE – The University of South Alabama football program added another significant piece to its coaching staff this week, announcing that Major Applewhite has been hired as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach under new head coach Kane Wommack. The hire is one of several moves Wommack has made in recent days as he builds his first staff with the Jaguars.
For a program still assembling itself for a new era, landing a coordinator with Applewhite’s experience is a statement hire. His arrival gives the Jaguars an offensive play-caller who has run major-college offenses, coordinated in the Southeastern Conference and served as a head coach – credentials that stand out at any level of the Football Bowl Subdivision, and especially in the Sun Belt Conference.
Applewhite, 42, brings one of the more decorated resumes in the sport to Mobile. A former standout quarterback at the University of Texas, he has spent nearly two decades coaching at the major college level, including stops at Texas, Syracuse, Rice and Houston.
He served as head coach at Houston for two seasons, from 2017 to 2018, compiling a 15-11 overall record with the Cougars, including a bowl appearance that capped his first season in charge. His path through the profession – graduate assistant to position coach to coordinator to head coach – traces the conventional ladder of college football, but few climbers reach each rung as young as Applewhite did.
Deep Alabama ties
Applewhite’s ties to Alabama football run deep. He was Nick Saban’s first offensive coordinator in 2007, the year Saban took over the Crimson Tide program, and he most recently worked as an offensive analyst at Alabama.
Serving as Saban’s inaugural offensive coordinator placed Applewhite at the foundation of the most consequential coaching era in modern Alabama football. The 2007 season was a rebuilding year by design, but the staff Saban assembled – with Applewhite, then in his late twenties, directing the offense – set the structure for the national championships that followed. His subsequent return to the Alabama staff as an offensive analyst kept him close to the program and kept his name circulating whenever coordinator positions opened across the region.
Earlier in his career, he returned to his alma mater and spent three seasons as Texas’ assistant head coach and running backs coach before being promoted to co-offensive coordinator for the Longhorns from 2011 through 2013. He then spent two seasons as offensive coordinator at Houston prior to taking over as the Cougars’ head coach.
That progression gave him a resume unusual for a Group of Five program like South Alabama: coordinator experience in the Big 12 and the American Athletic Conference, a head coaching tenure in a major media market, and years of exposure to the recruiting networks of Texas and the Deep South. Wommack, building his first staff, could not have found a more experienced teacher for his quarterbacks.
A surprise in the coaching carousel
The addition comes as something of a surprise to those following the coaching carousel in the Sun Belt Conference. Applewhite had reportedly given a verbal commitment to become offensive coordinator at conference rival Arkansas State under new head coach Butch Jones, with whom he had worked as an offensive analyst at Alabama.
However, no contract had been signed with Arkansas State, leaving him free to join Wommack’s staff in Mobile instead. The last-minute switch sent a ripple through the conference, where Arkansas State and South Alabama will compete in the same division and on the same recruiting turf. Coaching carousels produce these reversals every winter, but rarely does one land so directly at a division rival’s expense.
For South Alabama, the practical effect is immediate: the Jaguars’ quarterback room will be coached by a former major-college head coach, while a conference opponent restarts its coordinator search in the closing weeks before spring practice. In a league decided by narrow margins, the edge in staff experience can matter as much as anything that happens on Saturdays.
The rest of the offensive staff
Along with Applewhite, the Jaguars announced three additional offensive assistants. Earnest Hill, the head coach at McGill-Toolen Catholic High School in Mobile, will coach running backs.
Hill has been highly successful leading the Yellow Jackets, posting a 40-8 overall record in four seasons as head coach, including a 28-3 mark against regional opponents and a 5-4 record in playoff games. His deep ties to prep football in the Mobile area are expected to make him a key contributor to South Alabama’s recruiting efforts.
McGill-Toolen is one of the storied programs of Alabama high school football, and Mobile’s high school scene has produced decades of college and professional talent. Hiring a sitting head coach from that world signals where Wommack intends to fight his recruiting battles first: in the city and county around campus, where relationships with high school coaches often determine whether the best local players stay home or sign elsewhere.
Gordon Steele will coach the offensive line for the Jaguars. Steele is the son of Kevin Steele, Auburn’s interim head coach and defensive coordinator. He played offensive line at Valdosta State and has coaching experience as an offensive line coach at Murray State, in addition to serving as a graduate assistant at LSU. He also spent time recently as an offensive analyst at Alabama.
The younger Steele’s path runs through some of college football’s most prominent programs. Growing up the son of a longtime SEC assistant and head coach gave him an early education in the profession, and his stops at LSU, Murray State and Alabama reflect both his own development and the network that surrounds his family. For South Alabama’s offensive line – the unit that must anchor a new system in Applewhite’s first season – his blend of playing background and SEC-adjacent experience was the profile Wommack was seeking.
Rob Ezell has been added as tight ends coach. Ezell was an all-state quarterback at Athens High School before walking on at Alabama, where he played sparingly at quarterback and wide receiver. He worked as a graduate assistant at Alabama and later spent three seasons as a graduate assistant at Colorado State before returning to Tuscaloosa as an offensive analyst.
Ezell’s road from walk-on to full-time coach is a familiar one in the sport, and his years as an offensive analyst at Alabama put him alongside Applewhite on the same Tuscaloosa staff. That shared background should ease the installation of the offense, since both coaches arrive with a common vocabulary and a common set of experiences from the same program.
The defensive side takes shape
The offensive hires follow the earlier announcement of three defensive assistants for the Jaguars: defensive coordinator and safeties coach Corey Batoon, cornerbacks coach and recruiting coordinator Dwike Wilson, and linebackers coach Will Windham.
Batoon’s appointment as defensive coordinator set the tone for that side of the ball, with Wilson and Windham rounding out the position groups in the secondary and at linebacker. With the offensive staff now largely in place around Applewhite, Wommack has filled the key positions on both sides of the ball in his first weeks on the job – a pace that matters in college football, where spring practice follows closely on the heels of the hiring season.
Recruiting calendars wait for no one. Signing periods and the spring evaluation window arrive within weeks of a new staff’s assembly, and every vacancy left unfilled is a relationship left untended. Wommack’s early moves, culminating in the Applewhite hire, were designed to put coaches on the road and in high school field houses before the cycle leaves the Jaguars behind.
Building a first staff in Mobile
With both sides of the ball now taking shape, Wommack’s inaugural South Alabama staff is quickly coming together as the program looks ahead to its next season in the Sun Belt Conference.
First head coaching jobs are won or lost on the staff a coach assembles, and Wommack’s approach has blended experience with local roots. Applewhite brings head coaching and major-conference coordinator credentials; Hill brings Mobile’s high school coaching world; Steele and Ezell bring SEC program pedigree. The mixture is deliberate – enough established credibility to run a modern college offense and defense, and enough area knowledge to recruit the region that has always powered the program’s roster.
The staff also reflects the way Alabama football’s coaching tree continues to spread across the sport. Three of the new hires – Applewhite, Steele and Ezell – worked on Alabama’s staff in recent years, arriving in Mobile with shared experience from Tuscaloosa. That common background can shorten the onboarding process, since installing terminology and expectations across a staff usually takes an entire offseason.
For Jaguars fans, the hires renew interest in a program that has been a fixture of Mobile’s sports scene since its founding. The team plays in a market saturated with college football – Alabama and Auburn on Saturdays, a major high school scene every Friday – and a staff with recognizable names and local ties gives the program a stronger claim on the city’s attention.
What comes next
Winter remains a season of change in college football, and further moves are possible before the staff is finalized. But the architecture is now clear: an experienced offensive coordinator running the offense, a veteran defensive coordinator running the defense, and a group of assistants chosen for recruiting reach as much as for coaching ability.
The measure of a coaching staff, of course, comes later – in the spring game, in signing classes, in November standings. What the past week demonstrated is that South Alabama, often overlooked in a state dominated by two college football giants, intends to compete for attention and talent with a staff assembled from the highest levels of the sport.
Between now and the season, the work shifts to the field: installing Applewhite’s offense, shaping Batoon’s defense, and introducing a rebuilt staff to a roster learning its third system in a short stretch. Mobile will be watching.