Gambo: Justin Wilcox is new frontrunner for ASU

Seemingly back at square one following the mishaps
surrounding June Jones on Wednesday, another reported
frontrunner has emerged for the Arizona State football
head coaching
job.

Arizona Sports 620’s John
Gambadoro sent out the following
tweet Thursday morning:

While its impossible to determine how many
cooks are in the ASU kitchen — I am being told that Tenn
DC Wilcox is a frontrunner for the job

That’s Justin Wilcox, the 36-year-old defensive
coordinator under Derek Dooley at the University of
Tennessee.

Wilcox was a defensive back at Oregon from 1995 to 1999
and got his start coaching as a graduate assistant at
Boise State in 2001. In 2003, he took the job as a
linebackers coach at Cal before moving back to Boise State
as the defensive coordinator under Chris Petersen in 2006.

In 2010, Wilcox joined Tennessee’s staff and this past
season, the Volunteers’ defense ranked 28th in the nation
in total defense and 35th in scoring defense.

Following the 2010 season, Wilcox had been mentioned as a
candidate to step into the defensive coordinator spot at
Texas to replace Will Muschamp, who took the Florida head
coaching job.

“I believe 100 percent in what Coach Dooley is doing here,
the direction of the program, and we’ve still got a lot of
work to do,” Wilcox said at the time of his decision.
“It’s going the right way, and I think all of us are
committed to doing it the right way. That’s where we’re
headed.”

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