AUBURN — Soon after Jeff Jones arrived at Dublin Scioto High School, he noticed the kid with the red hair at the football program’s offseason workouts. Soon after, Jones was driving through his neighborhood. And there was the redhead, walking down the street. He stopped and rolled down his window.
“From there though,” Jones told the Montgomery Advertiser, “he and I started connecting.”
The hair belonged to Alex Golesh — at the time, a 15-year-old defensive lineman for Dublin Scioto in central Ohio. Jones was the offensive coordinator, and the neighbors hit it off. Golesh visited the Jones family porch often. Jones also drove him to football workouts.
Two years went by and the relationship deepened. Jones and his wife came to home from the hospital with a newborn son, and Golesh was there, waiting. That’s when Jones knew how close this connection was.
“It was a very unique relationship, but he worked at it,” Jones said. “This wasn’t line into the water, pulling a fish out. He genuinely sought it out. … It really has just been a process of opportunity; being present, showing you care.”
The bond was strong and deep; near-familial. It’s still full-strength 26 years later, with Jones and Auburn football‘s first-year head coach sharing a hallway at the Woltosz Football Performance Center. It’s not the first stop at which Golesh’s former coach worked for him. At South Florida, Jones tagged along. He was the Bulls‘ Director of Player Development, identical to the role he holds on the Plains.
When Golesh got the South Florida offer, he asked Jones a question he’d often uttered since his aspirations to helm a program began.
“You’re going to come help me, right?”
This time, with an answer needed, Jones replied with some questions of his own. In particular, “What am I going to be doing?” The answer from Golesh was that the pair would figure it out when Jones got to Tampa, but Jones needed more. He kept asking. Eventually, Golesh had another answer.
“Just come here and give these guys the same experience you gave me,” he recalled.
What does Auburn football get in Jeff Jones? A labor of love
Golesh’s sentence was all Jones needed since the two reconnected in their current roles one school prior. It’s built into routine. Jones to gets to work at 4 a.m. He does his weight training, breaks out his journal and does a reflection.
“I literally, in my mind, say, ‘Give these guys the same thing you gave him,'” Jones said. “And I know what to do. No matter what shows up.”
The giving’s not one size fits all. It’s arrived in different tones and at different decibels. It can sound like, “I love you.” But it also sounds like, “Man, that ain’t it.”
“I can look these kids in the face when they get huffy about something, and I just say, ‘Man, I promise you I’ve had a similar conversation with your head ball coach. And he’s good,'” Jones said. “It’s really that simple.”
Jones admits it’s easy, but that’s for good reason. It’s his nature.
“This is the way I love on people,” Jones said. “Our definition in the program is love is the ability to tell people hard things,” Jones said. “It’s easy to say I love you, keep going, proud of you. That’s easy stuff, the leading the parade. But it’s trying to clean up from behind sometimes that’s tough. That phrase is the epitome of my direction, my orders, my purpose, depending on how you want to contextualize it every day, and it’s awesome.”
How Alex Golesh still feels — and sees — Jeff Jones’ impact today
Having known each other for more than two decades, there’s plenty of Jones instilled in Golesh. But sometimes, the roles of player and coach still show up at Golesh’s office door.
“It’s fascinating now,” Golesh said, grinning. “He’ll pick his moments, but he’ll still walk in and be like, ‘Hey, you’re jacking this up. I’m not telling you what to do, I know you’re the head coach at Auburn. But you’re jacking this up.’ And I still (go), ‘Damn man, still ripping my (expletive).’ You know, without actually ever ripping my (expletive).”
It’s a frequent reminder that what Jones poured into Golesh at 16 years old — showing him what he wanted to do with his life. It came through in coaching football, but it came to Golesh in a simpler sense.
“I wanted to help young people, and that’s where my passion for this thing even came from,” he said. “At that time, I wanted to be a teacher and a high school coach, and never once thought I’d be sitting up here, ever. That guy just gave me the confidence, one, to lead, but two, to work and be the best version of myself every single day.”
In the time they’ve worked alongside each other, Jones has been an in-house mentor for his longtime pupil, but he’s also embraced fulfilling that role for players.
“It’s been awesome to watch guys here kind of gravitate towards him and lean on him in a lot of ways,” Golesh said. “He always tells the guys like, ‘Man, I’m not a coach. I don’t control your playing time. So, whatever it is you need help with, I’ll help you.'”
Sometimes, Golesh said, that filters down to helping out other coaches. Most times, it’s dealing with some semblance of nonsense.
“But, man, he does it with a huge heart and expecting nothing in return,” Golesh said. “It’s been awesome for me to have him with me kind of helping me along the path. And he’ll just poke his head in, in the morning sometimes, like, ‘Need anything?'”
Most times, Golesh’s answer is no. Other times?
“He’ll walk in and tell me what I need,” Golesh said. “And that’s humbling, too, sometimes. We all need to be humbled every now and again.”
Adam Cole is the Auburn athletics beat writer for the Montgomery Advertiser. He can be reached via email at acole@gannett.com or on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, @colereporter.To support Adam’s work, please subscribe to the Montgomery Advertiser.
This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: How one of Alex Golesh’s biggest influences impacts Auburn football