Retaining Jason Jackson was 'no-brainer' for Rob Vaughn, Alabama baseball

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – When Alabama announced Rob Vaughn would be its next baseball coach on Monday, it also shared that Jason Jackson, who served as the Crimson Tide’s interim head coach after Brad Bohannon’s dismissal, would stay on staff as the associate head coach.

Director of athletics Greg Byrne said he offered Jackson a 2-year contract to continue working for UA’s baseball program and praised the job of the pitching coach, who helped lead the Tide to a 13-6 close to the season, which ended with the team’s first Super Regional appearance since 2010. It’s why Byrne shared the same advice he gave Nate Oats four years ago with Vaughn.

“Because he hadn’t been from this area, I said, ‘Nate, you’ve gotta have somebody on your staff who knows what sweet tea and grits are,’” Byrne said Tuesday. “And so he kept (Antoine) Pettway. When I was talking to Rob and it was starting to get serious, I told him the same line that I said to Nate Oats, and I said, ‘I’m not from the South originally, but I had been in Starkville before and knew what sweet tea and grits were. That helps you in this part of the country,’ just like it does anywhere, right, to have familiarity with the surroundings.

“He said to me, ‘I’d be really interested in JJ being part of the staff.’ I said, ‘That’s mutual. I think that’d be a really good thing.’ And so they ended up connecting probably a week and a half, two weeks ago for the first time, and they really hit it off right off the bat. I could tell when I was talking to Rob on the phone before I got in front of him in person that I thought the two of them would gel very well together and that was the case. It worked out really well.

“JJ is a guy that has been in demand, will be in demand. That’s why we wanted to offer him a multi-year contract to get him to stay here, and he has just been first-class through this entire process.”

Jackson has been the Alabama pitching coach since the 2017 season after holding the same position at Florida Atlantic (2009-16), South Alabama (2007-08), Mercer (2003-06) and North Florida Community College (2002). His career highlight is arguably how he navigated the last month after Bohannon was fired on May 4 due to his involvement in a gambling scandal.

With Vaughn taking over as head coach, he said it was a “no-brainer” to retain Jackson.

“My conversation with Greg was we have to do whatever we had to do to make sure that guy doesn’t leave,” Vaughn said Tuesday. “Once this thing started kind of getting up a little bit, I was watching things, and you never knew which direction this search was gonna go. I didn’t know if I was the guy for Greg or not, but I wanted to kind of dive in and start to really get to know what made this place tick. And I sat there and listened to every single press conference that JJ did in Hoover after every single one of those games, and it took me about five minutes to be like, ‘Good gracious, this guy’s different.’

“I mean, I knew how talented he was as a pitching coach, but to look at the way he talked about his players, the way he communicated, how much he cared about them, how much he loved them – I just sat in those exit meetings, and every kid that left, he gave them a hug and told them he loved them. That’s what makes JJ who he is, that really is. You can take the skill set of developing pitchers and put it in one bucket, but the reason he’s created what he’s created is those things. And when I saw that, I sat down with Greg and said, ‘Man, we can’t let this guy leave. This guy is too vitally important to what we’re doing here.’”

Jackson can help re-recruit Tide roster

Having a coach that not only knows the current roster but the incoming players could also help Vaughn avoid a mass of departures from the program via the transfer portal or de-commitments.

“It’s gonna get us moving because recruiting is relationships, that’s just the reality of it,” Vaughn said. “Recruiting is developing these relationships so that when they have players, man, they’re reaching out to you. ‘Hey, I’ve gotta guy you’ve gotta come see.’ That doesn’t happen overnight, and having a guy like JJ, I think, expedites that. But it also helps you with the current team.

“… We’re sitting in those exit meetings, when the guys walk out, I’m like, ‘OK, give me some feedback on him. Talk to me about this.’ I think it just expedites what we’re trying to do here. I don’t think this is one of those situations where you look up and you’re like, ‘OK, man, we’re gonna have to go back to the drawing board and start over and figure it out.’

“No, there’s talent in that locker room, there’s talent coming in next year, and it’s our job to capture, make them believe and start coaching them up. Having a guy like JJ stick around does nothing but expedite that.”

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