American football player and coach (born 1964)
Theodore George Karras Jr. (born December 10, 1964) is an American college football coach and former player. He is the head football coach for Marian University, a position he first held from the program's inception in 2007 to 2012 and resumed in 2023. Karras was the head football coach at Rose–Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Indiana from 2003 to 2005 and Walsh University in North Canton, Ohio from 2013 to 2016. He led the 2012 Marian Knights football team to the NAIA Football National Championship title.
Playing career.
Karras played college football as a defensive tackle at Northwestern from 1983 to 1986 and played one game as a replacement player with the Washington Redskins of the National Football League (NFL) during 1987 players' strike that inspired the movie "The Replacements". His father, Ted Karras Sr., played for the Chicago Bears in the 1960s. His uncles also played in the NFL: Alex Karras for the Detroit Lions and Lou Karras for the Washington Redskins. His son, Ted Karras III, is currently in the NFL as the starting center for the Cincinnati Bengals.
Coaching career.
Karras was a graduate assistant at the University of Minnesota in 1991 and at Northern Illinois University in 1992. He then worked as a defensive assistant at Lake Forest College from 1993 to 1994 and as a defensive line coach at the University of St. Francis in 1995. In 1996, Karras became the head football coach for Andrean High School in Merrillville, Indiana, and took his team to the state championship, where they lost to Bishop Chatard High School of Indianapolis. In 1999, Karras moved on to Saint Xavier University in Chicago as offensive coordinator. After four years at Saint Xavier, Karras moved to Terre Haute, Indiana to become head football coach at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. In 2006, Karras took the job of coaching the inaugural football team at Marian University.
In the football program's sixth year of play in 2012, Karras led the Knights to the 2012 NAIA Football National Championship, where they won 30–27 in overtime. After the 2012 football season, Karras left Marian to become the second head football coach in Walsh University's school history, replacing Jim Dennison. Walsh, located in North Canton, Ohio, formally introduced Karras as the Cavaliers' new head coach on December 21, 2012. At the end of the 2016 season, in which the Cavaliers compiled a 1–10 record, the worst in program history, Walsh University announced that Karras would no longer be coaching the team.
On December 22, 2022, Karras returned to Marian as head football coach for the 2023 season.
References.
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