It’s official: Willis joins Red Raiders

TUSCALOOSA | Texas Tech’s courtship of University of Alabama assistant coach James Willis has ended in the 37-year-old linebackers coach becoming the Red Raiders’ new defensive coordinator.

The Tuscaloosa News reported Wednesday that Willis agreed in principle to join the Tech staff. Willis visited the Lubbock, Texas, campus on Tuesday and returned to Tuscaloosa on Wednesday as new Red Raiders coach Tommy Tuberville’s latest hire, but according to a source close to the situation, the deal could not be finalized until Texas Tech president Guy Bailey signed a waiver allowing Willis’ new contract to avoid a standard 10-day hold.

Texas Tech was expected to announce Willis’ hiring later Thursday evening.

Willis coached for one season at Alabama, tutoring the Crimson Tide’s inside linebackers for one of the nation’s top-ranked defenses. Coming from rival Auburn, where he was either a player, staffer or assistant coach for roughly 10 years, Willis made an in-state switch when he left AU for the Crimson Tide that few coaches have dared to make.

“I didn’t think it would get as dirty as it did from some different areas, especially some people who are really close to me,” Willis said just before UA’s national championship win over Texas. “People I thought were very open, and more in the camp of football as a business, as a profession, instead of the whole mystique of Alabama-Auburn. When that’s all you know, that’s all you know. The thing that benefitted me and helped me prepare for this was my time in the NFL, where you begin to understand this is a business. When you understand that, you’re able to move on. It was hard for my kid. My son cried — he didn’t want to go to school the next day.”

Willis, 37, coached linebackers for Tuberville at Auburn from 2006-2008. When then-Alabama assistant coach Lance Thompson left to join a new staff at Tennessee roughly a year ago, Nick Saban hired Willis, who had just been retained by new AU coach Gene Chizik. Willis said he wasn’t necessarily an Auburn fan as a child, and made the difficult decision to take a job with the Tigers’ archrival after lengthy discussions with his family.

“Once I went, talked to (Saban), met him, met his staff and had a chance to look around, the light turned on. Everything wasn’t what I’ve been brought up to believe,” Willis said. “I grew up just a football fan. I liked both teams. I didn’t get into the whole Alabama-Auburn thing until later in my high school career.

“One of my favorite players was Derrick Thomas, and Cornelius Bennett, and of course everybody loved Bo Jackson. The whole tradition of football in our state is what I always had an appreciation for.”

Willis takes on the first defensive coordinator role of his career at Texas Tech. Tuberville hired Troy assistant coach Neal Brown for the offensive coordinator role.

Willis played linebacker at Auburn from 1990-1992, and returned to AU after a six-year NFL career to work under Tuberville as a student assistant, then as a graduate assistant.

Willisreplaces Ruffin McNeill, who was Tech’s interim coach after the controversial firing of Mike Leach, and was also a candidate for the head coaching position until Tuberville accepted the job. Willis’ departure leaves UA coach Nick Saban in search of both a linebackers coach and a recruiter for the Mobile area, which was one of Willis’ designated recruiting responsibilities.

Reach Chase Goodbread at chase.goodbread@tuscaloosanews.com, or at 205-722-0196.