'He’s a genius': How Jim Knowles became a mad scientist, torturing the Big 12 with Oklahoma State's defense
Jacob UnruhOklahoman
STILLWATER — The piles of large yellow notepads cover the desk and nearly overtake the laptop in the center.
Notes and drawings fill each notepad, much like the white board on a wall next to a dark TV.
Oklahoma State defensive coordinator Jim Knowles finds solace in his office’s messiness.
“It’s kind of stupid, to be honest with you,” Knowles said. “There’s s--t everywhere. But it is a comfort thing.”
Any idea or piece of advice becomes a note on something somewhere. Front and back of each yellow paper. Sometimes the cardboard backing. An envelope becomes a notepad. Even sticky notes are used, though not often. Those are “a pain in the ass.”
“It’s really a lot like that movie, ‘A Beautiful Mind,’” Knowles said.
Beautiful mind or beautiful chaos, the concept is essentially the same, and a peek into Knowles’ mind is quite revealing.
The creative process is what makes him great.
The 56-year-old Knowles is the mad scientist formulating one of the nation’s top defenses. He is a quirky Ivy League graduate raised in the inner city of Philadelphia who very well could win the Broyles Award as the nation’s top assistant coach this season.
He has won the hearts of OSU faithful with a unique balance of brawn and brains. Heading into Saturday night’s huge Bedlam matchup, there might not be a more important figure on either side.
In the land known for high-flying offenses, Knowles has his Cowboys believing in defense more than ever.
“Even the great teams we had before, they were giving up a lot of yards and forcing a lot of turnovers and just surviving,” OSU safety Kolby Harvell-Peel said. “Whereas Coach Knowles kinda has more of an approach — you see it in his play-calling and his aggressiveness — he wants to win games defensively.
“I think that attitude and that mindset fares well for us.”
Under Knowles, the Cowboys are playing arguably their best defense in decades, perhaps ever. Nearly through his fourth season, OSU ranks third in FBS allowing 267.8 yards per game, second in scoring defense allowing 14.9 points per game and first in third-down conversion percentage (24.5%).
OSU’s primary defenders have not allowed a touchdown in four games.
Knowles brings a tough persona that carries over to his players. But there is no character quite like Knowles. He does things differently but also with an old-school approach. He’s regarded as a mad scientist for a reason.
“I’ll go into his office on a weekday and he’s damn near in a sweat from the scheme he’s got,” OSU defensive lineman Brendon Evers said. “He looks like a doctoral student with papers everywhere. But he sells out for this team and this program.”
‘A creative process’
OSU coach Mike Gundy often goes nearly 48 hours without seeing Knowles.What Knowles does between Sunday night’s practice and Tuesday’s staff meeting in his closed-off office, Gundy isn’t sure.
“He could be watching cartoons, for all I know,” Gundy said.
There is no Bugs Bunny, unless he knows how to get to the quarterback.
Each notebook became about trial and error.
What worked and what didn’t. What he would do or not do against this or that.
“It’s that 10,000-hour rule,” Knowles said. “It’s like becoming a great musician or whatever.”
Throughout his coaching path that led to Western Kentucky, Ole Miss, Cornell — as the head coach — and Duke before OSU, Knowles wanted to have answers not only in the highest times but also the lowest.
He believes there is nothing worse than being a coach without answers.
“That happens a bunch in our profession,” Knowles said. “It’s happened to me before. That’s what drives that, I guess you would call it, fear of ever getting to that position. It happened to me early on here.”
So, he continued to fine-tune his process. Nowadays, the process is tedious.
He closes the door to his office, which becomes his personal laboratory. He keeps things old school. But he keeps young blood around, tapping into grad assistants and quality control coaches who often bring analytics that Knowles welcomes.
Knowles encourages other ideas, but they need to be prepared, fleshed out and detailed. There is little time for errors, especially in practice.
“You can have some mistakes in practice and be like, ‘OK, that doesn’t work. Throw it out,’” Knowles said. “But you don’t want to waste a lot of your time doing that.
“People say practice makes perfect. I always say, ‘No, it doesn’t. Perfect practice makes perfect.’”
‘That ain’t it, bro’
Recently, Knowles was determined not to yell at a practice. So, he brought a coffee mug to do his talking.After each Cowboys defensive mistake in the October practice, Knowles got the attention of the player and pointed to the white cup with black letters.
“That ain’t it, bro,” the mug read. (Take note Texas DL Coach)
“He’s like a cartoon character,” OSU safety Tanner McCalister said.
Knowles often doesn’t wear his shoes entirely on his feet, opting to put his heels on the back. That draws questions and jokes from his players.
“That’s like something a little kid would do,” cornerback Jarrick Bernard-Converse said.
Knowles’ persona is tough but quirky. He is a vegan. He loves to smoke cigars and take pictures with his players following wins.
It all might seem strange, but there is a method to the madness.
Everything he does resonates with players.
“Driven, excited, maybe bizarre at times,” said Duke coach David Cutcliffe, who hired Knowles as his defensive coordinator in 2010.
“But that is a bizarreness about him that you learn to love quickly.”
Four years ago, OSU players were not sold on their new coordinator. Knowles entered with a temperament they did not expect. He yelled a lot. He broke clipboards on the sideline.
And the Cowboys’ defense was a mess, holding one Big 12 team — Kansas — below 30 points while going 3-6 in conference play.
The players did not quite understand Knowles’ complicated system.
Knowles went back to his lab. He examined the notebooks, determined what was good and bad.
He adjusted. So did the players.
Now, they are on the same page.
OSU, as a result, is now in a rare position. The Cowboys are in the Big 12 Championship Game for the first time in program history. They could eliminate OU from the game with a Bedlam win and Baylor win on Saturday.
If they do, the mad scientist will have won again.
“Leave a place better than you found it,” Knowles said. “I thought that when I left Duke that I left it better than when I found it. I feel like I’m doing that here, too.”
Jim Knowles bio
Age: 56Hometown: Philadelphia
Education: Cornell University, lettering in football three years
Coaching history
1988-96: Cornell (Defensive line, 1988; Running backs, 1989-94; Linebackers and recruiting coordinator, 1995-96)
1997-2002: Western Michigan (Defensive coordinator 2001-02)
2003: Ole Miss (linebackers and recruiting coordinator)
2004-09: Cornell (head coach)
2010-17: Duke (safeties, 2010; Defensive coordinator 2011-17)
2018-present: OSU (defensive coordinator and linebackers)
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