Ilaisa Tuiaki is back in college football, and at a place he is familiar with.
The former BYU Cougars defensive coordinator was hired on Tuesday to be the new defensive line coach of the Oregon State Beavers, the school announced.
Tuiaki, 45, was the linebackers coach and special teams coordinator at Oregon State for the 2015 season prior to going to BYU (Cougars head coach Kalani Sitake was OSU’s defensive coordinator that season before becoming BYU’s head coach and bringing Tuiaki with him).
Following the 2022 season, Tuiaki was fired after the Cougars went just 7-5 in the regular season.
Tuiaki will be joining an Oregon State program that was No. 19 in the final College Football Playoff rankings of the 2023 regular season but is undergoing a great deal of transition both off and on the field.
First and foremost, Oregon State and Washington State were left behind in the latest round of conference realignment and must find new homes (they have a scheduling agreement in place with the Mountain West Conference for next season, and former head football coach Jonathan Smith left for the same job at Michigan State.
The Beavers don’t yet have a permanent defensive coordinator in place, as former DC Trent Bray was elevated to head coach following Smith’s departure.
Tuiaki has also been a coach at Utah and Utah State.