Feb. 9, 2007
ATLANTA–John Bond, the offensive coordinator at Northern Illinois University the last three years, has been named Georgia Tech’s offensive coordinator, head coach Chan Gailey announced Friday. Bond will call the offensive plays and will also coach Tech’s quarterbacks.
During his time at Northern Illinois, Bond coached one of the nation’s most prolific rushing teams, led by all-America running back Garrett Wolfe, who led the NCAA in rushing in 2006 after ranking second as a junior and fifth as a sophomore.
Bond spent the previous four seasons (2000-04) as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Army, where he fashioned a wide-open offense that broke 35 school records.
“John’s success with both the running game and the passing game sets him apart,” said Gailey. “The last three years at Northern Illinois, he put together one of the best rushing attacks in the nation, but before that at Army, they threw the ball all over the place.
“His experience at Army also shows that he can recruit the type of student-athletes that we recruit at Georgia Tech.
“We had a very strong pool of candidates. I personally interviewed three people and talked with many others, and John was clearly the best fit for our situation.”
Bond helped Northern Illinois to three winning seasons and two bowl games, highlighted by a 9-3 record in 2004. That year the Huskies ranked 11th in the nation in rushing offense, 13th in scoring offense and 14th in total offense.
Bond boasts 24 years of coaching experience, including two seasons as a student assistant (1983-84) and one year as a graduate assistant (1985) at his alma mater, Arkansas, where he worked under Lou Holtz and Ken Hatfield.
His first full-time coaching position was at Southwest Missouri State, where he served as running backs coach and recruiting coordinator from 1986-90. The Bears won two conference championships and participated in the NCAA I-AA playoffs twice, reaching the quarterfinals in 1989.
He served as quarterbacks coach at UTEP from 1991-93 and then quarterbacks coach and passing game coordinator at Delta State in 1994-95.
From there, Bond moved to a four-year stint at Illinois State, serving as wide receivers coach in 1996 before he was elevated to offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach for his final three years (1996-99). The Redbirds ranked in the top 10 in the nation in scoring his final two years, averaging 36.1 points per game in 1998 and then 34.8 per game in 1999, the top two scoring averages in school history. In 1999, Illinois State reached the I-AA national semifinals, and Bond was a finalist for the American Football Coaches Association’s Assistant Coach of the Year award.
A native of Rogers, Ark., Bond was an all-state quarterback for his father, Gary Bond, at Rogers High School. The elder Bond is a member of the state’s high school federation Hall of Fame, and John was inducted into the Rogers High Hall of Fame.
Bond played one season at Arkansas before a career-ending injury, and earned a bachelor’s degree in physical education in 1985.
Bond, 44, is married to the former Jennifer Wilder and has two daughters, Mackenzie and Mallory, and one son, Brody.
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