Arkansas Business

This story is from the archives of ArkansasSports360.com.

The past two winners of the Broyles Award for the year's best college football assistant coach also saw their teams go on to win the BCS national championship. John Chavis is the defensive coordinator for top-ranked LSU, which will play Alabama in the national title game on Jan. 9. Does he like the odds, knowing his two predesssors for the award shared in the championship crystal?

"Only if we win the final game," he said with a laugh Tuesday at the Peabody Little Rock ballroom. "We'll see if we can make it three in a row."

Chavis, a seven-time nominee and a first-time finalist, was presented with the 2011 Broyles Award on Tuesday. The other finalists former Arkansas offensive coordinator Garrick McGee, just named as the head coach at Alabama-Birmingham; two-time finalist Paul Chryst, the offensive coordinator at Wisconsin who was unable to attend last year's banquet after being snowed in up north; Michigan defensive coordinator Greg Mattison, and Alabama outside linebackers coach Sal Sunseri.

The trend for the award has been that the winner was a coach on one of the two teams vying for the national championship. The last coach to win the Broyles Award but not be part of the national title team was former Oklahoma offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson, who edged out then Florida defensive coordinator Charlie Strong and others for the 2008 award but saw his Sooners dismantled by Strong's Gators defense in the BCS title game.

Kirby Smart, defensive coordinator at Alabama, won the 2009 award, and the Crimson Tide beat Texas for the national title. Last year's winner was Auburn offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn, whose team beat Oregon 22-19 in the championship game.

Chavis already has a BCS championship ring from coordinating the 1998 Tennessee defense, and now he has a Broyles Award trophy that, he said Tuesday, he would place "somewhere that I can see it every day."

"It's a great honor," he told the media after the presentation sponsored by the Downtown Rotary Club. "It's the highest in our profession as an assistant coach. And, to me, it represents the full body of work. It's what our football team has done, what our defensive staff, our entire staff, what our head coach has done. It represents the entire body and I'm proud of those young men that I have an opportunity to work with each day ... I understand my responsibility to them and certainly hope I'm upholding that part of it as well."

Chavis joined Coach Les Miles at LSU in 2009 after spending most of his coaching career at Tennessee until Phil Fulmer was let go there as head coach in the 2008 season.

He said that LSU sophomore defensive back Tyrann Mathieu, who was invited to Saturday's presentation of the Heisman Trophy in New York, is unlike any defensive player he's ever coached in his storied career.

"And I got asked after the [SEC] championship game this and what I thought about his impact and should he be in the Heisman race," Chavis said. "I don't know all the criteria for the Heisman Trophy and I'm not trying to get him votes or anything of that nature, but I know this: I've coached a lot of really, really good football teams and I've seen a lot of really good football teams ... but I don't know if anybody in recent years has had the impact that he's had on our football team at LSU. It's been tremendous."

As Chavis rubbed the bronze heads of Frank Broyles and longtime Broyles aide Wilson Matthews on the Broyles Award trophy beside him, he added, "He's got a part in this, a big part. Every single player at LSU, every coach at LSU, and also the university. ..."

TEARS FLOW: At one point, it was probably hard for the crowd of 700-plus in the Peabody Ballroom to believe it was listening to battle-tested, Division I college football assistants. These guys are supposed to be hard-edged, tough guys. John Chavis, for example, on Saturdays on the LSU sideline rarely smiles and looks like he could tear someone's head off.