Former Bethel Coach Named Head Football Coach At North Alabama

FLORENCE, Ala. – Former Bethel great and coach Brent Dearmon has been named head football coach at the University of North Alabama.

North Alabama Director of Athletics Dr. Josh Looney made the announcement Saturday, concluding a month-long national search.

UNA will officially introduce Dearmon as the new coach at a 2 p.m. press conference on Monday.

Dearmon, a 37-year-old Saraland, Ala., native, joins UNA after serving as offensive coordinator at Florida Atlantic during the 2022 season. He was the offensive coordinator at Middle Tennessee State in 2021 and was the offensive coordinator, quarterbacks coach, and senior offensive consultant at the University of Kansas in 2019 and 2020.

Dearmon was a four-year starting quarterback at Bethel. He then began his coaching career as a student coach at Bethel in 2007.

Dearmon’s first head coaching experience came at B.C. Rain High School for two seasons, 2011-12, before being hired as an analyst at Auburn University for the 2013-14 seasons. He served as a running backs analyst in 2013 and a wide receivers analyst in 2014 under Gus Malzahn. While he was at Auburn, the Tigers posted a combined 20-7 record, including an 11-5 mark in SEC play. The 2013 Tigers captured the SEC title en route to an appearance in the BCS National Championship Game.

He joined the staff at Arkansas Tech in 2015 as offensive coordinator under former UNA assistant coach Raymond Monica. After averaging 36.5 points in 2015 and 31.5 in 2016, Dearmon’s offense racked up 40 points per game to lead the Great American Conference. He also had a quarterback earn all-conference honors in each of his three seasons at Arkansas Tech.

In his one season as head coach at Bethel in 2018, Dearmon guided the team to an undefeated regular season mark. Bethel posted a 10-0 regular season mark and a No. 3 ranking while averaging 540.3 yards and the second-highest scoring average in the country at 55.0 points per game. He was named Mid-South Conference Coach of the Year.

Dearmon then made the rare jump from the NAIA to the FBS when he joined Les Miles’ staff at Kansas in 2019 as a senior offensive consultant. He took over as the program’s offensive coordinator in the middle of the season and led the team to a 24.1 scoring average and more than 400 yards of total offense per game.

Dearmon is a 2008 Bethel graduate with a B.S. in Mathematics.