Georgetown hires Lindsey Wilson’s Chris Oliver as football coach
Now ex-Lindsey Wilson College football coach Chris Oliver celebrated the Blue Raiders’ 45-13 NAIA National Championship Game victory earlier this spring over Northwestern College with his family, wife Wendy; daughter Samantha; and son Patrick. Georgetown College announced Tuesday morning it had hired Oliver away from its in-state rival.
Lindsey Wilson College Athletics
In a move that shakes up Kentucky small-college football, Georgetown College announced Tuesday morning that it has hired national-championship-winning Lindsey Wilson head man Chris Oliver to be the Tigers new head football coach.
Oliver will replace another national-title-winning head man, Bill Cronin, who retired as Georgetown coach following the 2021 season after spending 25 years leading the Tigers program.
“This is a great day for Tiger football and Tiger Nation,” Georgetown College Athletics Director Brian Evans said in a news release. “Oliver knows how to win, as we’ve come to expect, but he also knows how to shape and mold men in the full student-athlete model we hold in high regard here as well.”
In 2010 at Lindsey Wilson, Oliver restarted a Blue Raiders program that had been dormant since 1935. He built LWC into a perennial NAIA playoffs contender.
By the team’s fifth season, Lindsey Wilson earned its first postseason bid. Over the past three seasons, the Blue Raiders have posted a 35-2 record, winning the 2020 national title and finishing in the national semifinals in both 2019 and 2021.
Oliver is 105-34 in 12 seasons with one national title and six national tournament appearances. He was recently announced as the American Football Coaches Association Region 1 Coach of the Year — his seventh time earning that honor.
Before Lindsey Wilson, Oliver served as assistant head coach, offensive coordinator and recruiting coordinator for Ohio Dominican University from 2003-08.
The Panthers were 26-7 from 2006-08. In that stretch, the team had three consecutive finishes in the Top 17 of the NAIA Coaches’ Poll and won the Mid-States Football Association championship in 2007, the program’s fourth season, with a 12-1 record.
Oliver got his start in college coaching as an undergraduate assistant at Ohio State under Jim Tressel from 2001-02.
At Georgetown, Oliver will inherit a tradition-rich program. The Tigers won NAIA national titles under former coaches Kevin Donley (1991) and Cronin (2000 and 2001).
In what turned out to be Cronin’s final season this past fall, Georgetown went 8-2. One of the Tigers’ defeats came against Oliver and Lindsey Wilson, a 35-0 loss Oct. 16.
Lindsey Wilson finished 12-1 this fall, losing to Grand View University 34-28 in the NAIA playoffs semifinals.
It was the second college football season Lindsey Wilson played in the calendar year 2021.
On May 10, Oliver coached Lindsey Wilson to a 45-13 pasting of Northwestern College in the NAIA national championship game in Grambling, La. The Blue Raiders earned their first football national title by going undefeated (11-0) in the spring season.
“I told my wife the other night, ‘This all feels like a movie scene,’” Oliver told the Herald-Leader in May of the national title aftermath.
By winning it all, Oliver joined Eastern Kentucky’s Roy Kidd (1979 and 1982 FCS titles), Western Kentucky’s Jack Harbaugh (2002 FCS) and Georgetown’s Cronin and Donley as coaches who have won a national title determined via playoffs at a Kentucky college.
According to Georgetown’s news release, Oliver informed his Lindsey Wilson team Monday night that he was leaving the program he had restarted for an in-state rival.
Oliver has “done exciting things in getting the Blue Raiders going, and I know he’ll be able to keep what we have going here as well,” Evans said in the Georgetown College news release.
Support my work with a digital subscription
