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Nevada Hires Former Oklahoma DE C.J. Ah You

Former Sooner star has coached with Vanderbilt and in the XFL, and last year was a quality control analyst for Clay Helton at USC.

John E. Hoover

Nevada Hires Former Oklahoma DE C.J. Ah You
Nevada Hires Former Oklahoma DE C.J. Ah You /

Former Oklahoma defensive end C.J. Ah You is back in the game as a college football coach.

Ah You, who played for the Sooners from 2005-06 after starting his career at BYU and transferring in from Snow Junior College in Utah, is the new defensive line coach at Nevada.

He replaces former Sooner and OU assistant Jackie Shipp, who worked under former OU aide Jay Norvell in Reno. Norvell last month took the head coaching job at Colorado State.

Ah You spent parts of five seasons in the NFL with the Bills and Rams before getting into coaching. At Oklahoma, he was Big 12 Defensive Newcomer of the Year in 2006 and first-team All-Big 12 in 2007.

Bob Stoops hired Ah You at OU in 2015 as a special teams quality control coach. After a year at his alma mater, Ah You was hired at Vanderbilt in 2016 to coach defensive line for three seasons. In 2020, he joined the New York Guardians of the XFL, and a year ago, he joined Clay Helton’s staff at USC as a quality control defensive analyst, but he was not retained by Lincoln Riley.

Ah You is the fifth former Sooner to take a Division I assistant coaching job in recent weeks.

Sunday, former OU defensive end Chuka Ndulue was hired to coach defensive line at New Mexico State.

On Jan. 4, former OU safety Julian Wilson was hired to coach defensive backs at Abilene Christian.

On Dec. 14, former Sooner cornerback Marcus Walker was hired to coach corners at Louisiana Tech.

Also last month, OU defensive tackles coach and former Sooner defensive end Calvin Thibodeaux β€” who wasn’t retained on Brent Venables’ new staff in Norman β€” was hired to coach d-line at SMU.

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John E. Hoover
JOHN E. HOOVER

John is an award-winning journalist whose work spans five decades in Oklahoma, with multiple state, regional and national awards as a sportswriter at various newspapers. During his newspaper career, John covered the Dallas Cowboys, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Oklahoma Sooners, the Oklahoma State Cowboys, the Arkansas Razorbacks and much more. In 2016, John changed careers, migrating into radio and launching a YouTube channel, and has built a successful independent media company, DanCam Media. From there, John has written under the banners of Sporting News, Sports Illustrated, Fan Nation and a handful of local and national magazines while hosting daily sports talk radio shows in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and statewide. John has also spoken on Capitol Hill in Oklahoma City in a successful effort to put more certified athletic trainers in Oklahoma public high schools. Among the dozens of awards he has won, John most cherishes his national "Beat Writer of the Year" from the Associated Press Sports Editors, Oklahoma's "Best Sports Column" from the Society of Professional Journalists, and Two "Excellence in Sports Medicine Reporting" Awards from the National Athletic Trainers Association. John holds a bachelor's degree in Mass Communications from East Central University in Ada, OK. Born and raised in North Pole, Alaska, John played football and wrote for the school paper at Ada High School in Ada, OK. He enjoys books, movies and travel, and lives in Broken Arrow, OK, with his wife and two kids.

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