Wittenberg football: John Hauser introduced as head coach of Ohio Bobcats

ATHENS — In the first week of September in 2001, John Hauser sat down with a Springfield News-Sun reporter at the Wittenberg facility then known as the HPER Center.

Hauser, a redshirt junior safety, made five tackles days earlier for the Tigers in a 44-13 season-opening victory against Urbana. The team would play Heidelberg the following Saturday.

Those games were not the focus of the interview because weeks earlier on Aug. 20, Hauser’s dad Chris died at 47, just 2½ weeks after being diagnosed with lung cancer. Chris, a Columbus police officer for 23 years, was survived by his wife Susan, his eldest son Chris Jr., John and his daughter Colleen.

The grief was still fresh, but John opened up about the tragedy.

“I think about it in practice, when things are going wrong,” he said then. “It makes things a lot more simple. If something bad happens, how bad is it really? That’s how I think about it. Nothing can really happen that’s that bad.”

More than 24 years later, Hauser talked about his late dad again after being introduced as the head football coach at Ohio University on Friday at the Sook Academic Center, which overlooks Peden Stadium, the home of the Bobcats.

During his introductory press conference, Hauser sat alongside Slade Larscheid, Ohio’s director of athletics. In the first row of seats facing them was Hauser’s family, including his wife, Seanna, and their kids, plus his mom, brother, sister and brother-in-law.

Hauser was asked after the press conference what his dad would have thought of this moment.

“He would be sitting in the front row,” he said. “I’ve thought about this a lot in these big life moments. He’d be elated to be here. He never missed any of my games. It would be pretty special. One of the cool things about this job is my mom lives an hour away. As a college coach, that always concerned me — having to move around and not being close to family — so this is kind of my dream job."

Here's a story I wrote on Ohio's new football coach, John Hauser, in 2001. It was a memorable story because his dad Chris had died a couple weeks earlier at 47. John was a three-time first-team All-NCAC safety at Wittenberg. pic.twitter.com/USUmjnjKnG
— David Jablonski (@DavidPJablonski) December 26, 2025

Hauser grew up on the east side of Columbus and graduated in 1999 from Bishop Hartley High School, where his dad also went to school. He spent four seasons (1999-2002) at Wittenberg after redshirting his freshman season at Ball State in 1998.

Wittenberg won the North Coast Athletic Conference championship in Hauser’s first three seasons and earned NCAA Division III playoff bids in all four of his seasons. He talked Friday about what he learned about winning at Wittenberg while playing for coach Joe Fincham.

“I learned it was fun,” Hauser said, “because I was at Ball State for a year, and we didn’t win a game. I learned a lot of things from coach Fincham, I had a great relationship with him. When I got there, there were 10 free safeties, and I had to beat nine of them out. So there was a lot of competition. I did learn that.

“I talk to recruits about this a lot. I thought I was a pretty good player because I always had a guy behind me that was pushing me. I tell our guys that all the time, ‘Don’t be afraid of competition.’ It’s not a great feeling to think your backup’s always right behind you. But I think it made me a great player.”

Hauser learned about toughness at Wittenberg. He made lifelong friends there and has served as a groomsman at weddings of his college teammates. He talks to his current players about the value of those lifelong relationships.

Hauser’s press conference came 17 days after he led Ohio to a 17-10 victory against UNLV in the Frisco Bowl and two weeks after Ohio promoted him from interim head coach to head coach. He started serving as interim coach on Dec. 1 after head coach Brian Smith was placed on leave. Ohio then fired Smith on Dec. 9 after allegations of “serious professional misconduct.”

Smith led the program for one season following the departure of Tim Albin for Charlotte. Albin coached Ohio for four seasons and led the program to its first Mid-American Conference championship since 1968 in 2024.

Hauser is in his fourth season at Ohio. Along with defensive coordinator, he also had the title of associate head coach in 2025.

“If you take a look at John’s career,” Larscheid said, “it starts up the road here in Columbus. As he transitioned to Wittenberg as a student-athlete, an All-American, that’s where he got his start. His love for coaching began at Wittenberg. Over the course of 20 years, it put him in position to be the head coach at Ohio University. Everything was earned, not given, with John. There were no shortcuts. I’m super proud of him for that.

“When John arrived at OU four years ago, what transpired has been a special run: 40 wins, a 23-1 home record, four bowl victories and many accolades. His impact was significant, and it will only grow with this role.”

Hauser is the first Wittenberg athlete who played for Fincham, who coached the Tigers for 25 seasons, to earn a full-time head coaching job at the Division I level. Fincham is an Ohio alum, and Hauser said that makes this opportunity even more special for him.

Hauser visited Athens a couple times for Halloween when he was in high school and also came on a recruiting visit. Now he’s leading the program along with help from, among others, two former Wittenberg coaches: offensive coordinator Scott Isphording, who had the same position at Wittenberg during Hauser’s college years; and linebackers coach Chris Woods, who coached on Fincham’s staff from 1996-2000.

Isphording has coached at Ohio since 2014 and had another stint in Athens earlier in his career. He also has coached at two other Mid-American Conference schools: Toledo and Eastern Michigan. Isphording said Hauser, who had lengthy stints at Northern Illinois and Miami before coming to Ohio, gets along with the players well.

“He’s a Catholic school kid from Hartley,” Isphording said, “but I think he relates just as well to the inner-city kid with a public-school education his whole life. He’s very intelligent, and he also knows the league. I’ve been very lucky to be in the league 23 years now, and he’s been in the league a long time, too. He knows what it’s like to be in the locker room at Ball State and what it’s like to make the trip to Buffalo and all that’s involved in that.

“I think all those things help when you start getting to the finer details of things. I’m excited to see how he’s going to put his thumbprint on the program. I’ve gotten a feel for that over the last few weeks. It’s going to be John’s team, but I think it’s also going to be an OU team, which I think is important. From Frank Solich on, there’s a lot of things that have gone really well, and let’s keep those things going.”