Georgia Tech’s Blake Gideon, a standout safety at Texas, quickly rose through coaching ranks

Work has been a staple of Gideon’s reputation since his youth, when he was a standout athlete in Leander, Texas, about 27 miles north of Austin. Gideon played baseball, ran track, and starred for the Leander High School football team coached by his father, Steve Gideon (who played cornerback at Stephen F. Austin in the late 1970s).

Gideon, 35, worked to overcome a broken back during his prep career and started three seasons at safety. He was a first-team all-state selection as a senior and made more than 300 tackles at Leander High.

Rivals tabbed Gideon as a two-star prospect before he signed to play at Texas in the recruiting class of 2008. Gideon then worked himself into a starting spot on the Texas defense, a spot he never let go of over four seasons. Gideon made 52 consecutive starts and graduated in December 2011 with a degree in physical culture and sport. A four-time all-Big 12 honorable mention, Gideon spent the 2012 and 2013 seasons with the Arizona Cardinals and Denver Broncos, respectively, before deciding to go a different direction.

Gideon enlisted in the United States Air Force in 2013, hoping to pursue a career in the special forces, according to “Dave Campbell’s Texas Football.” But he was medically discharged, leaving him at a crossroads.

“I was probably going to end up somewhere around athletics because of my personality and mindset,” Gideon said in January at the Peach Bowl. “I don’t think someone with my level of franticness would bode well working at Bank of America. There’s an edge in sports that is addicting to me.”

Gideon’s rise to prominence in coaching wasn’t as quick as his rapid success as a player, but it has been just as impressive. His first three stops were in the SEC at Florida, Auburn and South Carolina, respectively, before landing his first full-time position at Western Carolina in 2016 as the team’s defensive passing game coordinator and defensive backs coach.

A year later he was promoted to assistant head coach and outside linebackers coach before taking his first full-time gig with an FBS program in 2018 as the cornerbacks coach at Georgia State (where he worked with current Tech wide receivers coach Trent McKnight).

Houston hired Gideon in 2019, and he became the 2019 FootballScoop special-teams coordinator of the year. Then, after coaching special teams for the 2020 season at Ole Miss, he returned to his alma mater.

In January, FootballScoop also named Gideon, who reportedly made an annual salary of $600,000 at Texas for the 2024 season, as defensive backs coach of the year.

“(Gideon) is an outstanding coach who has worked extremely hard for the opportunity to be a defensive coordinator,” Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said in a statement. “We couldn’t be more grateful for all he did to coach and develop our safeties the past four years. He has great knowledge of the game, is detail-oriented and driven, passionate about the players and builds great relationships with them on and off the field. He is an awesome staff member who was an incredible resource for us as a former player here and in all aspects of our program. We’ll certainly miss him but are excited for this opportunity for him and his family. He’ll do great things for Georgia Tech.”

Born in DeLeon, Texas, Gideon lived in the Texas towns of Comanche, Groesbeck, Munday, Midland and Athens before his family settled in Leander. During Gideon’s playing days at Texas his mother, Ralene Gideon, was diagnosed with breast cancer, and the Longhorns honored her fight against the disease in October 2010 during a game against Baylor.

Now Gideon has left his family, home state and alma mater once again, this time to take charge of the Tech defense — a unit on the rise playing for a coach on the rise.

“We’re going to have to try hard to maintain his employment,” former Houston coach Dana Holgorsen told the Houston Chronicle in 2019. “He is going to be really sought-after. I think he is going to be a superstar in this profession.”