A veteran of 48 years as a football coach, John Durham enters his eighth season working with the defensive secondary at Cal U. He has worked with the Vulcans’ secondary in each of their five-straight PSAC West title seasons.
Last year, he helped the Vulcans transition to a midseason switch to from a 3-4 front to a 4-25-5 defense with three safeties. The impact yielded instant results as two of the top three tacklers were safeties and Rontez Miles, who played sparingly early in the season, was named the PSAC West Freshman of the Year.
Prior to his time at Cal U, Durham worked as a defensive consultant and secondary coach at Washington & Jefferson, a perennial Division III powerhouse in nearby Washington, Pa. In five of his six seasons at W&J, the Presidents won the Presidents’ Athletic Conference (PAC) Championship.
Durham spent 32 years coaching at the high-school level at Keystone Oaks and Bradford before joining the college ranks in 1997.
An author of five books on technical football, Durham is a 1960 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy before earning his master’s degree at Duquesne in 1966.
