Jim Jackson

Position: Tight Ends Experience: Second Year Alma Mater: Cornell, 2003

Last updated on July 14, 2011

Jim Jackson enters his second season as an assistant coach for the Saluki football team. He is responsible for coaching the tight ends.

Kyle Harruff tied for the team lead with three touchdown receptions under Jackson's guidance and Harruff had 17 catches for 294 yards - an average of 17.3 yards per reception. Fellow tight ends C.J. Robertson, Philip Schumacher and tight end/fullback John Good also hauled in touchdown catches in 2010.

Jackson came to Southern Illinois from the University of Minnesota, where he was an assistant offensive line coach from 2007-09. In 2007, Jackson helped coach the Gopher offensive front that ranked 10th in the nation in sacks allowed (13 total). He worked directly with the Gopher centers along with his various other coaching duties.

Prior to joining the Minnesota staff, Jackson spent one season as a defensive graduate assistant working with the defensive line at Louisiana-Lafayette. Before that, Jackson spent the 2005 season as a graduate assistant working as video coordinator and with the offensive line at Toledo and in 2004 he served as assistant defensive backs coach and assistant video coordinator at Lehigh. He started his coaching career in 2003 as the outside linebackers coach at Methodist (N.C.) College.

Jackson played both football and baseball at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. He was a three-year starter on the baseball team and a team captain and played two seasons on the football team.

A Mesquite, Texas native, Jackson received his bachelor's degree in communications from Cornell in 2003. He earned his master's degree from Minnesota in sports management in 2009.

He and his wife, Michelle, married in July 2011.