A former Wildcat is returning home to Evanston.
According to Yahoo! Sports’ Pete Thamel, Northwestern is hiring current Iowa State associate head coach/running game coordinator Louis Ayeni as their next running backs coach.
Source: Louis Ayeni will be the new running backs coach at Northwestern. He'd been at Iowa State and coached Kareem Hunt at Toledo.
— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) January 7, 2018
Ayeni played the position during his time at NU from 1999-2003 but made the transition to safety his final year on campus -- which eventually led to a short NFL career. He was a team captain in 2003 and later served as a graduate assistant at his alma mater in 2008 and 2009.
Most recently, Ayeni has been coaching running backs at Iowa State since 2014 and coached at Toledo prior to that. Given that he helped recruit and coach Kareem Hunt to the Rockets and David Montgomery to the Cyclones, this figures to be a quality hire for Northwestern head coach Pat Fitzgerald in addition to being a bit of a homecoming for a former player.