The Early Years

Born on January 12, 1962 in Holden, Missouri, James Allen (Jim) Cheney is a former college football player, NFL coach, and currently serves as offensive analyst at Texas Agricultural and Mechanical (A&M) University.

Chaney went to high school in his hometown of Holden, Missouri, and subsequently attended Central Missouri University. In college he played as a defensive lineman for the Mules, and graduated with a degree in physical education in 1985.

With a strong passion for football, he had his mind set on pursuing a career as a professional coach, and immediately found a position after graduating from high school.

Coaching History & Timeline

Chaney started his journey at Cal State Fullerton for three seasons as an assistant coach before being picked up by Western Michigan University to be their Offensive line coach in 1988.

It quickly became apparent that he had a natural ability not just as a coach, but specifically as an offensive strategist.

After just one season at Western Michigan, he returned to Cal State as their Offensive coordinator and offensive line coach, where he gained momentum and produced strong results for the various head coaches between 1988 and 1992.

It was then that he found himself spending a season as assistant coach at Wyoming University, before becoming the offensive line coach as well as the recruiting coordinator between 1994-1996.

By this point Chaney had made a name for himself in the industry, and was hired by Purdue University as their offensive coordinator for what was one of his longest stints at a single institution. Along with being the recruiting coordinator for the first five seasons, Chaney remained at Purdue between 1997 and 2005, at which point he entered the NFL arena as an offensive line coach for the St. Louis Rams.

He spent two seasons in this role before becoming their tight ends coach for one season.

2009 saw Chaney make the move back to college football, taking up the position of offensive coordinator and running backs coach for the Volunteers ad the University of Tennessee. After three seasons, he also became the quarterbacks coach and was appointed the interim Head Coach in 2012 after Derek Dooley was famously let go without being able to finish the season.

Whilst it wasn’t a traditional Head Coach role for Chaney as it was a last minute “promotion”, he was able to lead the Volunteers to a final game victory giving him a 1-0 record for his short time as Head Coach.

He left the Volunteers after 2012, before spending two seasons at the University of Arkansas as the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, a combination which he found worked very well for him. He worked in the same capacity at Pittsburgh in 2015, and then moved on to The University of Georgia for three seasons before returning to Knoxville as the offensive coordinator at the University of Tennessee in 2019 and 2020.

The NFL came calling again in 2021, where Chaney spent one season as an Offensive analyst, and ended up at Georgia Tech University for the 2022 season in the same role.

Present Day

Over the course of his career Chaney has clearly been a hot commodity for both the NFL and college football teams, and earlier this year, he began his new role at Texas A&M University, where he currently serves as the Offensive analyst.