Indiana Football Close to Filling Key Vacancy, Hire New Strength & Conditioning Coach

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Indiana football’s search for a new strength and conditioning coach is nearing an end.

Three days after Derek Owings announced his departure for the University of Tennessee, the Hoosiers are finalizing details and are expected to hire Colorado State strength and conditioning coach Tyson Brown, an Indiana Athletics spokesperson confirmed to Indiana Hoosiers On SI on Friday afternoon. CBS Sports first reported the news.

Meet Tyson Brown

Brown spent only one month at Colorado State, which he joined along with newly hired coach Jim Mora. Brown worked under Mora from 2024-25 at UConn, where he served as the Director of Football Strength & Conditioning.

Before getting to UConn, Brown served as the head strength and conditioning coach from 2020-23 at Mississippi State and from 2018-20 at Washington State.

Indiana coach Curt Cignetti gave Brown his first shot at running his own strength program in 2018 at Elon.

Brown worked as an assistant strength coach from at Washington State from 2014-17, at South Florida in 2013 and at Washington from 2011-12. Brown was a strength and conditioning intern for the Houston Texans in 2010 and a graduate assistant at Baylor in 2008-09.

Prior to entering the strength and conditioning industry, Brown played at NAIA school Sioux Falls from 2005-08 as a defensive back. Brown won a pair of NAIA National Championships under now-Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer in 2006 and 2008.

Brown has big shoes to fill: Owings was a 'big part' of Indiana's success

Tennessee made Owings the nation's highest-paid strength and conditioning coach in a memorandum of understanding agreed upon Jan. 13, according to On3. Owings is expected to make $1.2 million annually, an upgrade from his deal at Indiana, which paid him over $900,000 after a contract extension last summer.

Cignetti first hired Owings at James Madison University in 2020, and Owings followed Cignetti to Bloomington after the 2023 season.

Owings, who earned FootballScoop.com's strength and conditioning coach of the year award in 2025, earned the reputation of being a key piece to the Hoosiers' organization.

Strength and conditioning, Cignetti said in 2024, has become very scientific — and Owings is on the cutting edge. He delivered "great results," said Cignetti, who added he didn't mess with Owings.

"I know the players really like what we're doing down there," Cignetti said in February of 2024. "He changes their bodies. He'll cut a lot of body fat, still add lean muscle mass, quicker, stronger, faster, more explosive. I've seen the results. You look at the GPS numbers sort of here last year, relative to maybe where we were the year before. He'll make 'em faster."

Cignetti called Owings a "winning edge," long before the Hoosiers proved it on the field.

"I think he's a big part of what we do," Cignetti said. "That's why I do everything I can to keep him on the roster, pay him as well as I can, because he makes a difference. Fast and physical. It starts down in that weight room with the development, the body development, of each and every guy."

Owings, who boarded a plane to Knoxville on Tuesday morning only a few hours after Indiana defeated Miami on Monday night, brought strength and conditioning assistants Josh Huff and Carl Miller with him to Tennessee.

Thus, Cignetti has several spots to fill on his staff — but Brown is the lynchpin and an important hire for the Hoosiers to sustain their program-changing success.