By Thomas Corhern, TTU Sports Information
COOKEVILLE, Tenn. – As Doug Malone unpacked boxes in his office on Friday morning, it all seemed so familiar.
Even with the facelifts the football offices in Tucker Stadium have gone through in the last decade or so, it was still, for the most part, the same place he had spent years before.
The streets were the same, with maybe a few new additions and facelifts.
But make no mistake, Malone, who had spent roughly 11 years away from Cookeville, still knew it all like it was 2006, when he was the interim head coach after Mike Hennigan took a medical leave.
"I thought about that this morning as I was driving in," Malone said. "At least I know how to get to the office – where I have to go, what streets I have to go down, what shortcuts to take. The campus has changed over the years – it's really grown, it's developed, and it looks beautiful. All the things you would hope to see are here, and it's definitely something you can recruit to."
Now, in 2018, Malone is back, right where he was before, ready to help lead the Tennessee Tech football team to another Ohio Valley Conference championship as the Golden Eagles' associate head coach and tight ends coach.
And what is becoming a common thread for many of the coaches on head coach Dewayne Alexander's staff, it's a homecoming.
"It is home," Malone said. "Our kids grew up and graduated from high school here. Two of them still live in the area, so that makes it exciting to be back here to a place that is so familiar."
Alexander was thrilled to have Malone on board.
"First of all, he's a quality person," Alexander said. "Doug and I were on staff together here at Tennessee Tech – I had coached the defensive line in the fall of 2002, then Steve McAdoo left to go join the Canadian Football League and I moved over to the offensive line in the spring and was the offensive line coach when Doug was the offensive coordinator. When we traveled to away games, Doug was my roommate, and we've had a friendship ever since. We worked here together for only a year, but we have been close friends and kept in touch with each other. Doug's wife, Jenny, and my wife, Angie, have gotten to be really good friends over the years.
"Doug's a great person, a great recruiter, has excellent communication skills and relationships with his players and he's a very good X's and O's coach. He's going to be the associate head coach because of his experience and because he knows Tennessee Tech so well. He's going to be an excellent resource to delegate some of those responsibilities a head coach has to deal with. I think he's going to be an excellent resource for (offensive coordinator) Tre Lamb, Jake Thornton and our offensive staff. They're all going to work real well together."
Malone helps bring coaching experience to a staff that has a great mix of experience and youth.
"I'm really looking forward to getting to know them all," Malone said. "I know the people that Dewayne hired are all going to be quality people, rest assured.
"The biggest thing for us to do is to learn who we have as a team, learn their strengths, and that's what I think a good football coach is – someone who plays to those strengths."
Some of the names that came through the Golden Eagle program as Malone was the offensive coordinator and interim head coach are nearly legendary in the record books. During his tenure, 50 all-time offensive records were broken and Malone coached four of the all-time offensive statistical leaders. He instructed ten quarterbacks who are among the top 15 in passing yardage per game, seven receivers of the top 10 in receiving yardage per game and two of the career total offensive yardage leaders.
"You don't have to look too deep into the Tennessee Tech record books to see a lot of offensive players that were under Doug's tenure – Grant Swallows, Robert Craft, Lee Sweeney. There have been a lot of guys who have broken records here. Doug is a tremendous offensive coach.
"His experience at Western Illinois was a lot like mine when I was with East Tennessee in the Southern Conference. It's something that's going to help me here. I know Tennessee Tech well, but to know other Football Championship Subdivision leagues – Doug has been in arguably the toughest FCS league (the Missouri Valley Football Conference) with North Dakota State, South Dakota State and all the other schools that are up there. Western Illinois has been very competitive there and was in the playoffs this year. He certainly understands FCS football very well."
He had five offensive players named All-American while at Tech, seven first-team all-OVC and nine second-teamers.
In the 2006 season as the acting head coach, Malone led the Golden Eagles to their most conference wins since 2000 and most road wins since 1999.
After Watson Brown was named the Golden Eagles head coach for the 2007 season, Malone was named the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Western Carolina. With the Catamounts, he produced an Associated Press All-American wide receiver – the school's first in 14 years – and saw a 29-year-old single-season receiving yardage total fall and a running back break the school's single-season all-purpose yardage record.
The Catamounts averaged 29.8 points and 372.2 yards per Southern Conference game.
Between 2008 and 2010, Malone was the associate head coach, offensive coordinator and offensive line coach for Presbyterian College. While there, the Blue Hose ranked first in the Big South in passing offense, passing touchdowns and first downs gained.
After that run, Malone went international with the first of three stops in the Canadian Football League. As the offensive line coach for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, the team was first in the CFL in passing offense (5,367 yards), points scored (538, 29.9 per game) and passing touchdowns (43). They averaged 5.8 yards per rush. The Tiger-Cats reached the 2011 Eastern Conference championship game after winning their first playoff game in 10 seasons.
Malone then joined the Saskatchewan Roughriders as the offensive line coach for the 2013 and 2014 campaigns, helping the team earn the 101st Grey Cup Championship in 2013. The team had the CFL Offensive Lineman of the Year, while also leading the league in turnover ratio, was second in points scored and rushing yards and third in fewest quarterback sacks allowed.
Malone finished his Canadian tour with a season as the offensive line coach for the British Columbia Lions in 2015. The Lions reached the Western Conference semifinals with the tailback leading the league in all-purpose yardage and second in rushing yardage, while the team was second in fewest quarterback sacks allowed.
He returned stateside to the collegiate game as he spent two seasons with Western Illinois as the Fighting Leathernecks' co-offensive coordinator and tight ends coach. WIU reached the 2017 Football Championship Subdivision playoffs and averaged 410 yards of offense and 35.5 points per game. The team put together a plus-15 turnover margin – the best in the Missouri Valley Football Conference and fourth in the NCAA.
Malone graduated from Carson-Newman in 1982 with a bachelor's degree in physical education and health. He was a team captain for the Eagles and was twice an All-South Atlantic Conference center. He later earned his masters in sports science from the United States Sports Academy.
He spent 1982 and 1983 as a graduate assistant at the University of Texas-El Paso as an assistant offensive line coach, then, from 1983 to 1986, was the kicking game coordinator and linebacker coach for Cal State-Northridge.
Malone joined the staff at Wingate University in 1986 as the team's offensive coordinator and offensive line coach through 1993, then was promoted to head coach and quarterbacks coach until he joined the Tech staff in 1999.
"The biggest thing I have probably learned is patience," Malone said. "You expect things to already be done and ready to go, but sometimes it takes a lot of patience and some work to make things happen the way you want them to. Keep your head down and work and good things will happen."
One thing Malone is sure of is that the pieces are present in Cookeville for the Golden Eagles to be successful once again.
"No doubt," he said. "We know we have to go recruit and see where we can take it to, but we just have to work to get it back to where it was and where it has been in the past."
