Jim Knowles has a new chapter off the field.
The former Ohio State defensive coordinator has married his longtime girlfriend, Andi, adding a personal milestone to a year that has already taken him from Columbus to Penn State and now to Tennessee.
Knowles remains one of the more polarizing figures in Ohio State circles. He arrived and helped steady a Buckeye defense that was struggling, then gradually turned that group into the best in football. That climb peaked in 2024, when Ohio State won the national championship.
But the title celebration didn’t keep him in Columbus. Knowles left immediately after the championship, even though Ryan Day wanted him back, and headed to Penn State.
That move made him the highest-paid coordinator in college football, though it didn’t last long. He was fired after James Franklin was canned.
Now he’s on to Tennessee, where expectations will be heavy from the start. Volunteer fans believe he can be transformational right away, but Ohio State fans know his defenses usually take time.
Penn State’s defense struggled in the first year of his system, just as Ohio State did in his first season there. His approach tends to be a slow build, and the source material says he needs at least three years to turn a defense into a truly strong unit.
If he gets that kind of runway in Knoxville, Tennessee should eventually have a strong defense. Knowles is also described as a very strong recruiter. The real question is whether the Volunteers will be patient enough to wait for the long haul or demand quicker results.
Ohio State, meanwhile, has reason to feel good about moving forward with Matt Patricia running the defense. The Buckeyes were at or near the top of the country in just about every statistical category last season in Patricia’s first year, and the defense is expected to be nasty again now that he’s back. The source material even says that unit was statistically better than the one Knowles led during Ohio State’s title-winning 2024 season.
Players have praised Patricia’s teaching style, especially the way he explains why certain plays are called and why they work. Knowles, by contrast, was more direct: he told players to run the plays and trust that they would work. They did, but not every player loved that method.
There’s also still some edge between Ohio State and Tennessee after the 2024 season. Tennessee fans tried to call the Shoe “Neyland North” and got shut down hard, and since then they’ve kept poking at Buckeye fans. Ohio State would love to answer back again, this time on the recruiting trail, with David Gabriel Georges as the target that would make the win especially satisfying.
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