Russ Huesman filled his University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football coaching staff with two additions Tuesday.
Having already hired Rob Spence as the wide receivers coach, Huesman announced that Carey Bailey will be the new defensive line coach and that former Moc Kadeem Wise will become the director of football operations.
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football player Kadeem Wise rests during a Mocs' practice.After signing day, the staff is going to get together and determine the direction of the recruiting coordinator position that was vacated by former wide receivers coach Will Healy, now the Austin Peay head coach.
Bailey played from 1988 to 1991 at Tennessee as a defensive tackle and was on the 1989 and 1990 Southeastern Conference championship teams. He has over 20 years of coaching experience at the collegiate level, including four years as a head coach at Howard University.
He also had coaching stops at West Virginia, Virginia Military Institute, Louisiana-Lafayette, Middle Tennessee State, Oklahoma State, Minnesota and most recently at Lamar University, where he coached a defensive line that led the Southland Conference in turnovers and was third in tackles for loss.
Fifteen of his former players have played professional football. He has produced six All-Americans and 26 all-conference players.
"He has a lot of experience," Huesman said. "We talked to quite a few people that had worked with him in the past, and all had extremely positive things to say about him as a coach and as a person. The feedback we got on him was really good."
Wise was in Huesman's first recruiting class at UTC. The former defensive back is the only player in school history to be named All-Southern Conference in each of his four seasons. He started all 45 games and totaled 204 tackles, 11 interceptions and 6.5 tackles for loss in his career.
Huesman called the Wise choice "the most rewarding hire I've made."
"I remember sitting in Kadeem Wise's house and telling his parents I was going to take care of him," Huesman said. "For us to have an ability to send a message that we take care of our own, it's a way to say we appreciate everything he did for us. We are in the business of taking care of people that have made a commitment to us, so I thought that was pretty neat."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him at twitter.com/genehenleytfp.