Martin Coaching Tree Takes Root in Oxford

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With nearly three-and-a-half decades of experience in the industry, the winningest coach in Miami Football history should have one of the largest coaching networks in the country.

But Miami's Chuck Martin doesn't see it that way.

"I probably know fewer people in coaching than anyone in history that's coached for 34 years," Martin laughed.

"I have a very tight-knit circle. I've had coaches that I've known for years say, 'I know you'll never hire me because I didn't play for you.'

"And I [respond], 'Yeah, you're probably right!'

Chuck Martin postgame celebration — *Martin*

"I know you and I like you, but I don't know you and like you that much!"

Now going into his 13th season leading the RedHawks, Martin has built a consistent winning program on the foundation of trust, loyalty and family. And the familiar faces on his staff in Oxford are a perfect example of that.

Nearly all of them either played at Miami (going all the way back to associate head coach James Patton '92), played for Martin previously, or worked for him before getting hired on as assistant coaches. In some cases, such as running backs coach Chris Hudson and safeties coach Zane Ries, they did all three.

(In fact, the only exception who doesn't check at least one of those boxes is Mitchell White...but White's twin brother worked for Martin!)

"Obviously, he's a great coach and extremely successful," Ries said of Martin. "But I think who he is as a person separates him from most coaches in this industry."

Hudson, a former Miami wide receiver, couldn't agree more.

"It was a no-brainer for me; when I had the opportunity, I was going to come back and coach for Coach Martin. [To illustrate] the type of man he is: When I broke my leg in 2016, he came to the hospital – the first guy I saw – and said, 'You're going to stay at my house,'" Hudson recalled. "I don't know many stories of head coaches doing that!

"He took care of me, and his wife took care of me, and they made sure I was okay for months on end when my family couldn't make it here...even called my mom to try and figure out what meals I liked specifically, just to make sure I was comfortable.

"I stayed at his house for eight months. And every Thursday night when they would get out of practice early during the season, he'd come home and we'd watch football together. He'd be picking my brain...and that's actually what propelled me into coaching...

"You talk about family...that's second to none here. It's just what we do. It's not even something that we preach; when it comes to our staff, that's who we are."

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The interview process for a former Martin disciple to join Martin's staff is pretty cut-and-dried. In fact, in many cases, there's not really an interview at all.

"If I could go back over 12 years with all the replacements [we've hired] and how much money we've saved the university not flying guys in for interviews, I bet it's in the hundreds of thousands of dollars," Martin joked.

"There have been some interviews, but most of the guys I know, and a lot of them played for me."

One recent example is Logan Plumley, who joined (or re-joined) the Miami staff in 2026.

"Everybody's like, 'Who's your new linebackers coach?' Seven of my 12 years, he worked for me at Miami," Martin said. "Student assistant for four years, GA for three; he's got two degrees from Miami. I guess he's new?'"

"When he knows you the way he does, it's not this big extensive interview process," Plumley commented. "Your interview process was what you did for him when you worked for him, and then the success you have at the other places you go."

Isiah Dunning, Miami's defensive line coach, is also in his first year as a full-time assistant with Martin in 2026. Like Plumley, he too, was a former Miami graduate assistant before coming full-circle to return to work for Martin.

"The one thing that I noticed, even as a young GA, is it makes it a lot better when you genuinely enjoy the people that you do it with," Dunning said. "That was a big reason that I wanted to get back to Miami because I know the people in this building.

"I know what Coach Martin's all about, how he runs his program, and that's the type of umbrella that I want to be under...

"It doesn't feel like work. I truly enjoy coming in and seeing these guys every day and the guys in my room and working towards that common goal."

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Martin was destined to be a coach. In fact, he often tells the story that 'I played football and basketball, and every coach I had in both sports told me I was going to coach.'"

"I was an auditor for two years with a public accounting firm in downtown Chicago," Martin said. "But after the first year, [I thought], 'There's no way I'm doing this the rest of my life.' It was a good gig, but kind of boring, playing with numbers all day."

After that, Martin's high school coach helped him become a graduate assistant at Mankato State University (now Minnesota State). And the rest is history.

"I didn't really know; everyone else around me knew [I'd become a coach]," Martin said this summer. "Thinking back, I used to game plan with my coaches in college, which I didn't know was not normal. I used to skip all my classes every Monday morning and go into the football office to game plan with our head coach and my DBs coach...I was thinking, 'We've got a big game this week! I can make up the work in class!'"

"I was always into it, always loved it and always loved sports. It's been my life."

Since then, Martin has intentionally been on the lookout for the next generation of coaches, just as his mentors helped point him in that direction post-graduation.

"A huge correlation is how much they love the game," Martin said. "I think [my coaches] saw how much I loved every part of the game and that my whole day was about [the sport]. When I see players that just have this incredible passion for the game – Gus Ragland, Zane Ries, Chris Hudson, Andy Cruse— there's so many guys out there that you see how much they love it and [wonder], 'Is this kid really going to be happy away from the game of football?'"

"Some, like Coach Brechin, did things as a player that were very coach-like. He played field corner, and he'd be making checks. We'd always be like, 'How does he even see things from way the heck out there?'

"The game made sense to him."

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Perhaps no one epitomizes the Chuck Martin coaching tree like Miami defensive coordinator and assistant head coach Bill Brechin. Or as Martin described him, "the most loyal assistant coach in America."

Brechin, who played for Martin at Grand Valley State nearly 20 years ago and helped the Lakers win a pair of national titles, admitted he didn't know how to get into coaching after graduation.

"Coach Martin called me into his office after my last game and asked if I ever thought about coaching," Brechin recounted. "I told him, 'I don't know – I don't have any connections other than you.' He said, 'Why don't you try to be a graduate assistant and see if you like it?' I said, 'Well, I've got a job lined up for $70,000 – how much are you going to pay me?'"

The answer: $3,000.

And that's how Brechin got his start in coaching.

He's been working for Martin ever since.

"So I was a GA at Grand Valley for two years out of college, and I basically turned down around $140,000 over that time to coach football," he smiled. "Thankfully I did, because I'm in a great place and working with good people every day...

"When he hires people, he hires people he knows and trusts. I think that's the reason why we've had a lot of success," Brechin continued.

"He's always tried to get me to raise my own level of expectations for myself...[with] his intensity, his passion and his drive to make people better every day...

"My biggest growth in my life has been from being around Chuck Martin."

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On the other side of the ball, former RedHawk quarterback Gus Ragland, Martin's first recruit at Miami, is now serving as offensive coordinator for his one-time college coach.

"I love the instant feedback from Coach Martin," Ragland said. "He's very 'black and white': It doesn't matter if you're a coach, a player or a manager – he's going to tell you on the spot what needs to be done different or what's done well. And if you want that feedback and want to learn from that and grow from that, he's a great guy to work for. He's extremely passionate about what he does."

"He cares about developing people; that goes for his players, but it also goes for his coaches," Plumley pointed out. "He wants things done in a very specific way. He's very convicted in what he believes is going to make a really good football team.

"And he trusts the people that he knows have those same beliefs that learned and developed under him, that they're going to have those as well and build the team in the vision that he has for it.

"It's worked for a long time, so I think he keeps coming back to that."

"Hiring guys that you know and trust definitely helps carry the message," said director of football operations Matt Yoches, who played at GVSU a quarter-century ago when Martin was a defensive assistant there. "The big part is communicating and everybody being on the same page.

"Sometimes when you hire guys from outside, they don't have the same message because they come from a different tree."

"In our sport, 50 percent of us lose every week," Martin added. "And they love to hire and fire us. So having that trust factor and that belief and knowing who's in your foxhole is pretty important...

"When things are going [well], you can have anybody on your staff...everybody's drinking the Kool-Aid and singing the song and locking arms: 'We have the greatest culture!' I always say, 'Culture means nothing when you're winning.'...

"When you're losing, your culture is everything because that's who you are. You find out [with] everybody in the building who they are. If you have that trust factor [where coaches] believe in me and I believe in them, we don't blame.

"We're going to stick together, and we're going to find a way to get better. We've done it year after year after year."

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The 'Martin way' might boil down to one word – although Martin himself isn't even sure it's a word.

Purposefulness.

"The purposefulness of what we do: Whether the plan is good or bad, there is a plan for everything we do and practice," Martin explained. "That sounds simple, but other coaches have come in and told me, 'There's more purpose to that drill than when we did it (at a different school).'

"We don't check boxes around here...I think our assistants learn, 'The ball security drill is done right, or we just keep doing it.' It's not about practice; it's about what's it going to be like in the season. That's what we try to stay focused on: 'Is it game-like or not? Would we do this in a game? If we wouldn't do it in a game, let's not do it in practice.'"

"It's not as much about the Xs and Os as it is getting your guys to play to the best of their ability," added special teams coordinator Johnny Aylward. "I think he's done an unbelievable job of getting the most out of every player he's had here."

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As the famous Cradle of Coaches, Miami is known for coaches getting their start in Oxford and then scattering around the country to make an impact at the highest levels of collegiate and professional football. It's somewhat ironic, then, that many of Martin's proteges have remained nearby to help the RedHawks chase MAC championships (including three-straight trips to Detroit for the conference title game).

Still, for as many of his former assistants and players that are on the Miami staff today, Martin's coaching tree has also spread far beyond southwest Ohio over the past decade. There are head coaches (like Ohio's John Hauser). There are NFL position coaches (including Ravens quarterbacks coach Israel Woolfork). There are Power Four assistants (such as special teams coordinators Evan Crabtree and Jacob Bronowski in the SEC and assistants George Barnett, Eric Koehler and E.J. Whitlow in the Big Ten). There are offensive coordinators like Tyler Walker (Temple) and defensive coordinators like Spence Nowinsky (New Mexico). The list goes on and on: Pat Welsh...Autry Denson...Lamar Conard...even Miami's Week 1 opponent, the University of Pittsburgh, has a former Chuck Martin assistant on staff in linebackers coach Joe Bowen.

"It's cool to see all these people that you believed in and you trusted and did a great job when they were here then go on and have more success after they left," Martin said as he looked ahead to the matchup against the Panthers with Bowen on the opposite sideline. "It's pretty awesome to watch that...

"The Cradle of Coaches is real. The reputation is real; guys come here...and they get all sorts of opportunities because Miami is on their resume.

"I like to think that because of our success and consistency, other staffs are looking to add our guys, because we've been consistently winning."

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Miami's recent success –bowl-eligible in nine of the last 10 seasons and 55-21 against MAC schools over the past decade– is undoubtedly a product of not only Martin's leadership, but the cohesion of the staff he's assembled.

"I can say there's nine guys on our staff, including a strength coach, that played football here," Cruse said. "That's unheard of across the country.

"And because of that, I think we approach things differently and we're probably tighter than guys that didn't play football here. Most of [us] have been at Miami for a long time, so that creates a lot of staff continuity and you're on the same page.

"You get the most out of your players, I think, because of it."

"I'd do anything for [Coach Martin], and I think you could probably say that about anyone on our staff," Brechin said. "With everyone on our staff either playing at Miami, playing for Chuck Martin, or working for Chuck Martin at some point, I don't think there's many staffs in the country that could say that.

"In fact, I would probably argue that there's no staffs in the country that can say that."

And with the 2026 season right around the corner, the homegrown recipe for success in Oxford that Martin has planted and developed throughout his tenure seems set to pay off once again for the Red and White.

"It's fun to watch that guy come into work and see how much, even in year 35 coaching, he's still growing as a coach and how important it is to him," Ragland mentioned. "One thing he says all the time is, 'If you come in with the right mindset and you want to get better, it's impossible to not get better...There's no way I'm not going to be a better coach in year 35 or whatever it is than I was in year 34.'

"For me, who has one-millionth of the experience and knowledge he has from the game, it just challenges me to come in every day and really push myself as a coach...

"Because I know that in year 35, he's still doing it!"

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Miami opens the 2026 football season on Saturday, Sept. 5 at Pittsburgh. The RedHawks will play six home games at Yager Stadium this fall, including four Saturday contests: Sept. 12 vs. Holy Cross, Sept. 26 vs. UConn (Homecoming), Oct. 3 vs. Bowling Green and Oct. 17 vs. Akron (Family Weekend). Click here to get your tickets today!

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