Roland Houston

Houston played football at Oxford High School for coach Jack Grizzard in 1968, 1969 and 1970. As a senior, he was a team captain and his teammates voted him the recipient of the first Jack Grizzard Golden Helmet award — recognizing the player who most exemplified the spirit, determination and pride shown by Grizzard during his time at Oxford.

Houston said he learned the fundamentals of the game — how to be aggressive, block and tackle — from Grizzard. As a senior, he was the Yellow Jackets’ leading pass receiver and earned honorable mention all-county honors at offensive end.

While as a student at Jacksonville State University, Houston was a volunteer coach at Oxford from 1971-1975. Following his graduation from JSU, he was an assistant coach for one year at Haralson County, Ga.

His big break came in 1977 when he returned to Oxford as an assistant under Burgess. For eight years, he worked with the offensive line and defensive tackles. When Burgess left Oxford prior to the 1985 season to become the head football coach at JSU, he asked Houston to join him as offensive line coach, a position he held from 1985-1991. He later served as the defensive coordinator from 1992-1996.

When asked about what he learned from Burgess, Houston said, “I think the big thing I learned from him was to stick with what you believe in. And if things didn’t go well, you know, to make it work.”

That mindset paid off in 1992 when the Gamecocks defeated Pittsburg State 17-13 to win the NCAA Division II national championship

That championship season was made even sweeter by the fact that JSU had been to the championship game twice before, losing to Mississippi College in 1989 and Pittsburg State in 1991.

After his time at JSU, Houston became the head coach at Childersburg High School, where he was chosen by his peers as Talladega County’s big-school coach of the year in 1999. He moved to Weaver in 2000 and spent four seasons as the Bearcats head coach. He was named the Calhoun County small-school coach of the year in 2002 and 2003.

Houston returned to JSU as defensive line coach in 2005 before becoming head coach at Jacksonville High School from 2006-11. He was named big-school coach of the year in 2009 after leading the Golden Eagles to a 7-4 record.

While Houston found success as a high school head coach more difficult to come by, more times than not, he left the program in better shape than when he arrived.