Dave Williams

Chris Ash runs the #1 defense in college football. In 1997, he slept in a football building because he had nowhere to live. Saturday, he'll be on the sideline at Notre Dame Stadium, calling the defense against the No. 1 team in the country. It has been a long road, and he took more than one step back along the way. Ash grew up in Ottumwa, Iowa, a town of about 25,000. He got up at 4 a.m. to deliver newspapers, and after school and on weekends he painted houses or worked in the cornfields. At Drake he played safety through knee injuries. "He was not the fastest or the most skilled player, but he was one of those guys you couldn't take off the field," said Rob Ash, his head coach there and no relation. "He was smart and ruthlessly competitive." Drake kept him on as a graduate assistant in 1997, and the football building was the only place he had to stay. There was no TV. At night he read the coaching clinic manuals that lined the office walls, more than a thousand articles in about a month. Rob Ash noticed he was always there when he got in and always there when he left. "Coach, I'm sleeping here," Chris finally told him. The next year he was Drake's defensive coordinator. After two seasons in that job, he became a graduate assistant again, at Iowa State. Dan McCarney kept him for seven years, made him the secondary coach and then the recruiting coordinator. "Chris was willing to do anything," McCarney said. "It didn't matter how little a task might be or how big the responsibility might be, he'd jump in there and take it and go with it." From there he went to San Diego State, back to Iowa State, then to Wisconsin. The Badgers went to three straight Rose Bowls, the last two with him as co-defensive coordinator. He followed Bret Bielema to Arkansas in 2013. Then Urban Meyer called McCarney about him. "I don't need just a guy," Meyer told him, as McCarney tells it. "I don't need somebody solid. I don't need somebody good, Mac. I need somebody elite." Ohio State made Ash its co-defensive coordinator, and that season the Buckeyes won the national title. Before the title game, Meyer found McCarney on the sideline. "You were right, Mac," he said. "He's done a hell of a job." Ohio State beat Oregon 42-20 and held the Ducks scoreless for the last 22 minutes. A year later, Rutgers made him its head coach. He said the football facility felt like a prison the first time he walked in. He put $1.65 million into the weight room, added a nutrition program and brought more than 350 prospects to campus for three junior days before his first spring. If one player missed class, his whole unit spent Friday night in study hall from 10 to midnight. "We also grade players on everything—attitude, effort and even hydration," he wrote that summer. "Every coach you talk to says they want to build a tough, accountable and disciplined football team. But how many train to actually make it happen?" It never showed up on the scoreboard. Rutgers went 2-10, 4-8 and 1-11. On Sept. 29, 2019, the day after a 52-0 loss to Michigan, Rutgers fired him four games into his fourth season. He was 45 and 8-32. Tom Herman, who had worked with him at Iowa State and Ohio State, made him Texas' defensive coordinator for 2020. Then he went to the NFL. He coached safeties for Meyer in Jacksonville and defensive backs for two years with the Raiders. In 2024 he wasn't coaching at all. He was a pro scout in the Jaguars' personnel department. He was 50. Then Marcus Freeman needed a defensive coordinator. Al Golden had left for the Cincinnati Bengals. Freeman hired Ash in February 2025. "If it's not broke, don't fix it," Ash said at his first press conference. "That was really the conversation that Coach Freeman and I had." He didn't bring a single position coach with him. He kept the staff that was already there. "Show people you care about them, and they trust you, and you can explain the why of why you want to do something, and it makes sense to them," he said. He was clear about whose defense it was, too. "This isn't my defense. This is the Notre Dame defense," he said that August. "It's not about a call, it's not about a scheme, it's about the mindset of the players, how fast and how violent they play, the fundamentals they play with." It didn't start well. His first game was at Miami, and Notre Dame lost 27-24. Two weeks later, Texas A&M won 41-40 in South Bend. He had been out of college football for four years. "New players that I had not recruited or been around," he said later. "There was a big learning curve for me." Notre Dame didn't lose again that season. The Irish won their last 10 games and finished 10-2. He calls the defense from the sideline now, and he traces that back to Rutgers. "Where it changed for me is after I was a head coach at Rutgers on the sideline, and I became a lot more comfortable being down amongst the players and in the action," he said this September. "I could see the game better. I could talk to the players." This year he has his own staff. Charlie Partridge, who has known him since Drake and ran Wisconsin's defense with him, coaches the defensive line. Aaron Henry, who played for him at Wisconsin and was Illinois' defensive coordinator for three years, coaches the secondary. "Coach Ash does a great job opening up, taking comments and at the end of the day, he'll make that decision," special teams coordinator Marty Biagi said. "He thinks about everything," Henry said. When Notre Dame hired him, McCarney put it this way: "He'll coach 'em hard, but he'll love 'em up." Through eight games, Notre Dame is 7-1 and leads FBS in total defense at 236.2 yards a game. Since that 0-2 start, the Irish are 17-1. Saturday night, No. 1 Miami comes to South Bend. It's the team that beat him in his first game back.