Football has always been part of Head Football Coach Keith Buckley’s life. Buckley grew up in the Bay Area of California where he attended University of California (UC) Davis and played four seasons for the Aggies as a defensive back two in which they went to the playoffs. He spent a total of 11 years at UC Davis between playing and coaching. As a coach, Buckley was coaching under Bob Biggs when the Aggies were making the transition to the Division I level where he then served as an assistant head coach, safeties coach, along with being in charge of coordinating recruiting efforts for the Aggies. After his playing career, Buckley knew he would fall into the coaching career and was something he wanted to do. After his playing days with UC Davis, Buckley spent the next few seasons as a cornerbacks coach in 1997 and in 1998 he served as the defensive back coach. He then moved on to the Northwest where he worked under current Seahawks Assistant Coach Tom Cable at University of Idaho for a few years while earning his masters in physical education.
Buckley then served as a defensive back coach at Humboldt State University in 2001 for one season and spent two years as a defensive assistant at Stanford and two years as the associate director of football operations all under Head Coach Buddy Teevens. “If you asked me when I was in college what I would end up doing it would have probably been teaching and coaching,” Buckley said. Buckley was an English and communications double major at UC Davis along with his masters in physical education. Buckley had quite the resume to pursue his teaching career but ended up sticking with coaching. “I thought I was going to be a journalism teacher, English teacher and coach football,” Buckley said. “But I fell into coaching toward the end of my college career playing at UC Davis.”
Buckley has now been Pacific’s head coach for seven years and according to Buckley, he can see himself here another seven years and longer. “At the end of the day, you get to a point in life where your family is important, your stability is important,” Buckley said. “I have a 10 year-old daughter and a 12 year-old daughter I want to see go through schools here, but there is a lot of factors that affect those things. It’s not just my desire to stay here, it is Dr. Hallick’s and the University’s desire to keep me here.” While Buckley knows that college
athletics is a very fickle profession, he gives a lot of credit to Pacific on how well they treat him and other coaches as well. “One of the things that is so great about Pacific is, administratively from the president to the athletic director,” Buckley said. “They truly support their coaches, they support the athletic department and it makes it a great place to be and work.”
Leave a Reply