London Names Reid Defensive Coordinator and Associate Head Coach

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CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA – Virginia head football coach Mike London announced Jim Reid has joined the Cavalier football coaching staff. He becomes the sixth member of London’s staff and will serve as the defensive coordinator and associate head coach.

“I am very pleased to announce that Jim Reid will be the defensive coordinator here at Virginia,” said London. “He is a former head coach and is a well respected person throughout the state of Virginia. Coach Reid brings passion and energy to the program, and is an excellent ‘people person’ guy. I feel confident our defensive players will come to love and respect him.

“In addition to his defensive coordinator position, Jim Reid will also serve as the associate head coach. My relationship with Coach Reid goes back to my early coaching career and I am excited about what he will bring to the entire organization.”

London served as the recruiting coordinator and outside linebackers coach at Richmond during Reid’s first two seasons as the Spiders head coach (1995-96).

“The first attraction to any job is who you work for,” Reid said. “Coach London and I go back to when I first worked at Richmond. He was on my staff and did an unbelievable job of organization and of coaching the players and showing interest in their academics and did a marvelous job in recruiting with his high energy and his personality.

“I’ve been around the University of Virginia for a long time and I have an idea of what the University is about,” said Reid. “Recruiting in-state, you see the type of special player that comes here for the great football experience and the great education Virginia offers. As a life-long football coach I believe in the principles and ideals of football. The University of Virginia stands out among the very best schools in the country at what football is meant to be. This is a challenge I wanted to accept. I am absolutely privileged to be a part of this staff.”

Reid joins London’s staff after spending the past two seasons as the outside linebackers coach for the Miami Dolphins. In Reid’s first season overseeing the Dolphins’ outside linebackers, Joey Porter produced a career-high 17.5 sacks, a figure that ranked second in the NFL during the 2008 season, as Miami hoisted the AFC East Division Championship banner for the first time in eight seasons. It also was the most-ever sacks by a Dolphins linebacker and third-most overall. For his performance, Porter was named to the AFC Pro Bowl squad, the first Dolphins outside linebacker to earn this accolade since Bryan Cox in 1992.

Of Reid’s 36 seasons as a coach, almost half were spent as a head coach, most recently at VMI, where he guided that program in the two years preceding his appointment with the Dolphins. He also served as head coach at Massachusetts from 1986-91 and Richmond from 1995-2003. Reid returns to the Commonwealth where he spent 13 of his 36 career seasons.

In Reid’s six years as the head coach at UMass, the school produced a composite record of 36-29-1 as he guided the Minutemen to three Yankee Conference titles. In 1988 and 1990, he was named the Yankee Conference Coach of the Year.

His nine-year run at Richmond included a pair of Atlantic 10 Conference championships and five finishes in the Top 20 in the FCS ranks. He also was selected as the Atlantic 10 Coach of the Year on two occasions (1998, 2000) and the Yankee Conference Co-Coach of the Year once (1995). Reid left Richmond as the program’s third-winningest coach with 48 victories, including leading the Spiders in 2000 to their first 10-win season in program history.

Prior to taking over the head spot at UMass, Reid spent the previous 13 seasons at the school as an assistant, including the first two as a graduate assistant. Six of those 13 seasons resulted in a Yankee Conference title. Following his tenure at UMass, he spent the next three seasons as a defensive coordinator, the first two at Richmond (1992-93) and the final one at Boston College (1994), helping the Eagles to the Aloha Bowl Championship. After his stint as head coach with the Spiders, Reid spent the 2004 season as an assistant at Syracuse when the Orange were Big East Co-Champions, appearing in the Tangerine Bowl, and 2005 as an assistant at Bucknell.

Reid, a native of Medford, Mass., earned a bachelor of science in education from Maine in 1973 where he was a three-year starter as a safety on the school’s football team (1970-72). He earned a master of science in sport management from Massachusetts in 1975. He and his wife, Judy, have two daughters, Meghan and Molly, and a son, Matt.

Reid joins Anthony Poindexter, Vincent Brown, Jeff Hanson, Mike Faragalli and Chip West as assistant coaches London has previously announced as members of his staff. This will mark the third time that Reid and Hanson have worked together. Hanson served as an assistant coach under Reid during head coaching stints at Richmond and VMI.