Ellis Johnson (American football coach)

Ellis Johnson (born December 23, 1951) is an American football coach and former player. He is the current defensive coordinator at Auburn University. He served as head football coach at Gardner–Webb University in 1983, The Citadel from 2001 to 2003, and the University of Southern Mississippi in 2012, compiling a career college football record of 17 wins and 40 losses.

Assistant coaching career
Johnson began his coaching career following his graduation from The Citadel in 1975, as the defensive ends coach at his alma mater under Bobby Ross in 1975. In 1976, Johnson accepted an assistant coaching position at Gaffney High School. He served as an assistant at Gaffney through the 1978 season before taking the defensive coordinator position at Spartanburg High School in 1979. After one season as defensive coordinator at Spartanburg, Johnson was promoted to head coach in 1980 and held the position through the 1981 season. As head coach he led the Vikings to a pair of playoff appearances and an overall record of 16 wins and eight losses (16–8). Johnson resigned his position to take the linebackers coach position at The Citadel.

After his one season at Gardner–Webb, Johnson served as an assistant at Appalachian State, East Carolina and Southern Miss before being hired at Alabama by Gene Stallings for the 1990 season. At Alabama, Johnson served as linebackers coach and was on the staff that won the 1992 national championship. He resigned from Alabama after the 1993 season to become the defensive coordinator at Clemson. After only two years at Clemson, Johnson returned to Alabama in January 1997 to serve as defensive coordinator for head coach Mike DuBose. He served at Alabama through the 2000 season when he was hired as head coach at The Citadel.

After his three-year tenure with The Citadel, Johnson served as defensive coordinator at both Mississippi State (2004–2007) and South Carolina (2008–2011). In December 2011, Johnson took the head coaching position at Southern Miss. After one season, Johnson was fired from that position following the school's only zero-win season. After his dismissal from Southern Miss, on December 5, 2012, Johnson was hired as the defensive coordinator at Auburn.

Gardner–Webb
After serving one season at The Citadel, on January 6, 1983, Johnson was named head coach at Gardner–Webb University. During his only season at Gardner–Webb in 1983, he led the Runnin' Bulldogs squad to a five wins and six losses (5–6). He resigned his position on January 10, 1984, to become the defensive coordinator for Mack Brown at Appalachian State.

The Citadel
After serving three seasons as defensive coordinator at Alabama, on December 21, 2000, Johnson was named head coach at The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina. During his three seasons at The Citadel from 2001 to 2003, he led the Bulldogs to 12 wins and 22 losses (12–22). He resigned his position on December 15, 2003, to become the defensive coordinator for Sylvester Croom at Mississippi State.

Southern Miss
Johnson was hired on December 20, 2011, as the Golden Eagles head coach. At his introductory news conference he noted USM’s 18 straight winning seasons and said: "I am convinced you can always be successful." He signed a four-year contract on August 20, 2012 (twelve days before the start of the 2012 season) that payed him a minimum of $740,000 annually, and was to run through December 23, 2015. In the event that Southern Miss decided to terminate the contract, Johnson would be paid $700,000 for each year left on his contract.

Prior to Johnson's tenure, the Southern Miss football team had recorded eighteen straight winning seasons and been to ten consecutive postseason bowl appearances. In 2011, under Coach Larry Fedora, the Golden Eagles won a school record 12 games and finished in the Top 20 of both major polls after a victory in the 2011 Hawaii Bowl. Fedora departed for North Carolina after the 2011 season, yet the Golden Eagles were expected to experience continued success due to the fact that they would return 13 starters from the previous season. But the 2012 season quickly came unraveled due to a rash of injuries, and as a result, Johnson found himself dealing with an increasingly angry Golden Eagle fan base.

The October 20, 2012, Marshall game resulted in the most points scored against USM at home since 1987, Brett Favre's freshman year. Following USM's loss to Marshall, Paul Myerberg of USA Today wrote, "Southern Mississippi is having an awful year. Just a terrible, horrible, awful, disheartening, disappointing, aggravatingly horrendous year". Dave Bartoo, owner/operator of the website cfbmatrix.com (College Football Matrix), a site that analyzes college football statistics based upon a given mathematical formula, recently told Bo Bounds of 105.9 The Zone in Jackson that Johnson had done “probably the worst coaching job I’ve seen in the matrix this century in (Football Bowl Subdivision) football.” Southern Mississippi: minus-77. Sagarin Rating 122nd. Combine participant rating: tied for 45th (two).

Yahoo Sports writer Pat Forde developed a forumla that measured the number of players invited to the 2013 NFL Combine against a team's wins for the 2012 football season. Forde's conculsion was that the USM team was "not completely bereft of talent" and therefore the reason "they fired Ellis Johnson after just one season."

The Golden Eagles finished the 2012 season as the only winless team in the Football Bowl Subdivision, going 0–12 and losing their final game to Memphis—the worst record in school history. On November 27, 2012, after just one year at the helm of the Southern Miss football program, Johnson was fired by athletic director Jeff Hammond.

Personal life
Johnson is married to the former Caroline Courie, a Columbia, SC native, and Clemson University graduate. They have two sons, Eli and Charlie, and a daughter, Sandra Elliott.