Alex Golesh has been hired as Auburn’s 30th head football coach. He comes from South Florida, where he took a program that won FOUR games in the 3 previous seasons, and turned that around to a 23-15 record over the last 3 seasons, with 2 bowl wins. The Bulls were 9-3 this season.
Golesh was born in Russia and moved to the United States with his family when he was 7 years old. His family has a pretty amazing story documented here.
He did not play college football, instead coaching defensive line at a local high school after his own high school graduation. He then took a student assistant job at Ohio State, where he got his degree.
He moved up the ladder with graduate assistant stops at Northern Illinois and Oklahoma State, where he met Tim Beckman. Beckman was a graduate assistant at Auburn under Pat Dye in 1988-89 and eventually took the head job at Toledo, where he brought Golesh along.
Under Beckman, Golesh coached running backs and tight ends and was also named recruiting coordinator. Toledo had the #1 recruiting class in the MAC for 2 straight years with Golesh handling recruiting duties.
Golesh then followed Beckman to Illinois, where he once again was named recruiting coordinator and coached running backs and tight ends. He eventually was named special teams coordinator.
While at Toledo, he coached with Matt Campbell, who eventually took the head job at Iowa State. Campbell pulled Golesh from Illinois to Ames, Iowa to coach tight ends, and again, serve as recruiting coordinator. At Iowa State, Golesh took a non-existent tight end game and increased their receptions by 1400% from the previous year. Yes, 1400%.
He then moved to UCF and coached tight ends under Josh Heupel. When Huepel was hired by Tennessee, Golesh followed him there to serve as offensive coordinator and coach tight ends. In the 2021 season, his offense broke most every Tennessee offensive record. In 2022, he broke those records again and had the #1 offense in the nation.
After two years in Knoxville, he got his first head coaching gig at South Florida, where he went 7-6, 7-6, and 9-3, beating Syracuse 45-0 in the Boca Raton Bowl and San Diego State in the Hawaii Bowl.
Personally, he wasn’t on my radar of exciting hires, but nobody really was. After seeing him talk to the team, and looking at his hard nosed mentality, I’m on board.
Accountability Builds Discipline 🎯 @CoachGolesh | #WarEagle🦅 pic.twitter.com/hrUsGUgF4m
— Auburn Football (@AuburnFootball) December 1, 2025
Alex Golesh will be formally introduced as Auburn’s 30th head football coach following a special Tiger Walk on Monday at 12 pm CT.
