Florida Gators

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — He pops up from the chair in his new office as if ready to tackle a ballcarrier. It doesn't take long for a pair of visitors to see that Austin Armstrong, Florida's recently hired 29-year-old defensive coordinator, is a man on the move.

Still, Armstrong didn't expect two career relocations in a month.

In mid-December, the same day the Gators played in the Las Vegas Bowl, Armstrong called the defense for Southern Miss in the Golden Eagles' victory over Rice in the Lending Tree Bowl. A month later, reports surfaced that after two seasons as the youngest FBS defensive coordinator in the country at Southern Miss, Armstrong was headed home to Alabama to coach linebackers for Nick Saban. And then, in mid-February, after Gators defensive coordinator Patrick Toney departed for the Arizona Cardinals, UF head coach Billy Napier pinpointed Armstrong as Toney's replacement, officially announcing the hire on Monday.

Armstrong's youthful face glows when he considers that he is in the Heavener Football Training Center, reunited with Napier and other former colleagues on the campus where a statue of Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Steve Spurrier stands. "Very humbling to be part of an elite organization,'' Armstrong said. "Since [1964], there have been six schools to win the SEC, and Florida is one of them, and done it with different coaches in different eras. The opportunity to coach at an elite place in a leadership role is hard to turn down, regardless if you're 29 or 69.

"It's just been crazy. I'm from Alabama, about 45 minutes from Tuscaloosa. I grew up an Alabama fan. It was a really special place to me, and I had dreamed of the opportunity to work for Coach Saban my whole life. And you do something like that to get an opportunity like this. I just didn't think it was going to happen in a month. God obviously had different plans for you."

Armstrong's rapid rise in the coaching world did not happen by chance. The boy from York, Ala., has planned for this for as long as he can remember.

Young Austin Armstrong was a football junkie before he knew what a junkie was. He was different from an early age. Growing up, he would share the sports section on Saturday mornings with his father, David. They would study the day's games, reviewing the rosters in the annual preseason magazines to get a feel for the best options before kickoff.

Not even his elementary school classmates could change his mind as they hassled him on a memorable day the Armstrong family still talks about.

"I actually went to school on career day in third grade as Steve Spurrier," Armstrong said. "I got a lot of stuff thrown at me that day. I had the visor, headset, orange polo, everything. That's what I wanted to do. That's really why I wear a visor because of the respect I had for him."
 
Armstrong loved the game, and like so many who become coaches, he quickly realized that his future was on the sideline and not the field. Still, he played offensive line and linebacker at tiny Sumter Academy in his hometown and served as team captain. He played four years at Division III Huntingdon (Ala.) College in Montgomery, where he was a 200-pound linebacker and natural team leader.

Armstrong proved how much he wanted to be a coach after graduating college. Less determined souls would have turned to selling cars or going into real estate. Not Armstrong.

He took a job at Montgomery (Ala.) Catholic Prep after graduation in 2015, but Armstrong's dream was to be a college coach. He refused to be denied. He returned to York to live at home and attempted to push open all those closed doors. He drove around the state dropping off resumes. He made countless phone calls and e-mailed letters to nearly every college in the Southeast that had a football program.

Finally, with the help of a cousin who coaches baseball in Mississippi at the rival school of Bobby Hall, father of then-West Georgia head coach Will Hall, Armstrong got an interview to be a graduate assistant at West Georgia, the same school former Gators coach Will Muschamp got his first full-time job 25 years ago. The random call arrived around 5 p.m. Armstrong already had a clean suit on call. He got a message from SMU defensive coordinator Scott Symons, West Georgia's defensive coordinator at the time. He told Symons he could be there in four to five hours to interview for a graduate assistant position. Symons told him no rush. He could stop by campus the following day.

"The same job was open like two months before, and they hired somebody else. Didn't even return my calls or anything,'' Armstrong said. "It comes back open, man. I'm getting this job. I had to get a job."

The urgency resonates in Armstrong's voice as he tells the story seven years later.

"I drove over,'' he continues. "There was one hotel room in Villa Rica, Ga. I stayed the night before the interview in a smoking room. I smelt like a jukebox in a bar."

Hall hired Armstrong to set in motion one of college football's most unlikely coaching careers of the last decade.

He was at West Georgia for the 2016 season, and after then-Louisiana coach Mark Hudspeth hired Hall to be offensive coordinator in 2017, Armstrong came along as an offensive graduate assistant.

Once again, Armstrong revealed how much he wanted to be a college coach.

He sold his 1999 Toyota Tacoma pickup truck to pay for rent and food.

"The kicker was that they couldn't pay me until June,'' Armstrong said. "So, I just took [my grandmother's] car down there and volunteered there for three months."

Hudspeth was fired after the season and replaced by Napier, who arrived with plans to expand Louisiana's support staff. Napier kept the door open for Armstrong this time, and the up-and-coming coach carved out a spot as a defensive graduate assistant under the new regime.

Armstrong considers it one of the many fortunate breaks of his career and a huge reason the opportunity to reunite with Napier in Florida appealed to him.

"I believe in what he's doing," Armstrong said. "The opportunity to come here, and the familiarity with how he does things, being there from Day 1 at Lafayette, leaving and then coming back, had a lot of conviction about that."

While he considers his first stint with Napier a huge stepping stone in his career, Armstrong left Louisiana after the 2018 season to work under Kirby Smart and then-Georgia defensive coordinator Dan Lanning as a defensive analyst. The following season, he returned to Louisiana to coach linebackers for Napier. Finally, in 2021, Hall and Armstrong reunited at Southern Miss.

In two seasons as defensive coordinator at Southern Miss, Armstrong directed a defense that improved from 60th nationally to No. 42 in 2021, and last season allowed 23.5 points per game, a 10-point improvement from the season before Armstrong arrived in Hattiesburg.

He takes over a Florida unit that has a lot of promise from what he has watched on film.

"And then the systematic carryover I thought Coach Toney laid down,'' Armstrong said. "I mean, he's as good of a football coach as you will ever meet. The transition, to come in and work on a day-to-day basis with Coach Napier and defensively with all your staff members, your players, have been a year in it. Certainly, they're differences, but a lot of it is similar. Like I told the defense in the first meeting, I'm going to change for you. You don't need to change for me. It's easier for one person to learn something instead of 70 people. Tremendous opportunity."
 
As Armstrong settles into his new job and life at Florida – he is living in a local hotel until he and his wife Tiffany close on their house in Hattiesburg later this month – a critical member of his journey is missing.

Ruth Armstrong, Austin's mother, died at 59 from complications of COVID-19 on Sept. 14. Ruth and David are the ones who laid the foundation of Armstrong's unwavering commitment to becoming a college coach. He delivered the eulogy at Ruth's memorial service at York Methodist Church.
 

Armstrong was on the sideline for a victory over Northwestern State the week she died.

He reflected on their days of watching John Wayne movies growing up, of her unconditional support of his brother Tanner and twin sister Taylor. When he had to move back home for that year after college, Ruth and David stood in their son's corner.

"I had two great parents,'' Armstrong said. "They're the hardest-working people I ever met. Didn't miss work. Found a way to do something, and when you've got to find a way to do something, you find a way to do it if you're really committed. I saw it every day for my whole life, so I didn't think much about it."

Armstrong might be young, but that has never held him back. He returns to those old movies of "The Duke" his mom loved. They impact in him in ways that he is still discovering.

"I was just always enamored by that, somebody who could take charge,'' he said. "My mom loved John Wayne, this leader, this dynamic-type personality. 'Hey, let's go.' That's all I ever wanted to do. That's all I ever did.

"She would have been really excited. My mom loved Steve Spurrier, too."
  AUSTIN ARMSTRONG Q&A
 
Q: How difficult a decision to come to Florida from your native Alabama?
A: The two closest schools to where I grew up were Alabama and Southern Miss. I left Louisiana to go to Southern Miss, and then my mom passed away. And the next job you get is Alabama. My brother lives in Tuscaloosa. My dad lives 45 minutes away. If you don't think I'm committed to being at the University of Florida, you're crazy.

Q: What is the most notable difference between the coach you are today and when you started at Southern Miss?
A: There are things that you learn every day. I think people have skill-sets. Experience does matter. It totally matters. And as you gain it, you realize that wisdom and experience do matter. But there's a hell of a lot of people that's got bad experience, too. You know what I'm saying. I was able to be there, and Coach Hall was the HC and offensive play-caller. He empowered me on defense. You had your staff, you managed your staff, and you got to make every decision and get comfortable doing that. It's all you know. Being a coordinator, the easiest part to me is calling the game. It's planning. It's scheduling. It's having a specific detail in the way you do everything you do from a year-round standpoint.

Q: What's your best day ever in football?
A: We made the state championship in my senior year of high school. You're a little 1A school, and driving to the state championship, driving from Livingston to Troy, you're pulling out of the little town of Livingston, and people are lined up on the sidewalks. And then you pass hay bales, and they say, 'Go Eagles.' That's the purest form.

Q: What's a perfect meal?
A: New York Strip, medium rare.

Q: What's your music?
A: I'm an old soul. I'm 29 going on 59. When you grow up in the South, you are exposed to so much music and culture. I'm an old rock guy. I love Bob Seger, the Rolling Stones. I love all the old Motown stuff. The greatest generation ever is '90s country. And then obviously the rap and hip-hop when I was growing up. I have an affinity for the late to mid-2000s, because that's when I was in high school.

Q: What's the last book you read that struck home?
A: I'm a history buff. I love leadership because I think decision-makers, there is so much in making a decision, not even in that decision, but in things that lead up to that decision in skill-sets. Specifically, George H.W. Bush, the one John Meacham wrote ["Destiny and Power"]—service to people. I got into coaching to help young people become positive contributors to society.