Southern Oregon Athletic Director Matt Sayre announced today that Craig Howard has accepted the offer to become the next head football coach at SOU.

Howard, born and raised in Grants Pass, comes to SOU after a highly successful high school football coaching career in Florida.

"I'm humbled and honored to be chosen as the next football coach at SOU," Howard said. "This is a dream come true and I'm coming home. I grew up 38 miles from the campus. I've had a fun career and this is the final stop."

Howard was selected out of a group of over 100 applicants for the position that became open in November.

"We are excited to have Craig join our Athletic Department team and guide our football program," Sayre said. "He has an unbelievable amount of passion and excitement for this position and an enormous amount of football knowledge. I believe people will immediately start to see a new direction and attitude with our football program and I'm interested to see where we can go."

Howard has gone 76-23 over the last eight years as head coach at Nease High School (2003-07) and Columbia High School (2008-10) in Florida. At Nease High School, Howard led the squad to the state title game three times and to a state championship in 2005. His star pupil during his run at Nease was Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow. Over the last three years at Columbia High School, Howard's teams have broke 30 school records.

Howard also has a background in college coaching and served as the head coach at Oregon Tech from 1990-92 and went undefeated against Southern Oregon during that time.

He also served as defensive coordinator for the Owls from 1978-81 and then again from 1987-89 and was defensive coordinator at Portland State from 1982-83.

Howard grew up in Grants Pass and played football for the Cavemen and then went and played linebacker at Linfield College.

Howard said he hopes to be in Ashland within a week and will then begin to put together a coaching staff.

"We are going to do things the right way," Howard said. "We are going to put together a great staff and get things going as soon as possible. We need to hit the ground running."

On Tuesday, Southern Oregon was invited to join the Frontier Conference as an associate member in football - starting with the 2012 season.

"This is a very exciting time to be a part of Southern Oregon football," Howard said. "I'm thrilled for the chance to work with the administration and work with players we have and also to get caught up on recruiting."