(Photo: Jack Simon/ WCSN)
Gene Nudo is often seen walking along the perimeter of the fields at the Bill Kajikawa Practice Fields when the Arizona State football team holds its Tuesday and Wednesday practices.
However, Gene Nudo is neither an ASU player nor a coach, rather, he’s a retired arena football executive.
Gene isn’t showing up to practices to coach the Sun Devils – he’s there to see his son, acting special teams coordinator Jack Nudo, in his return to the Valley of the Sun.
“I love football. I like seeing what they’re doing,” Gene Nudo said. “What Jack’s doing. What Kenny’s doing. And it’s been refreshing. I’ve been out of it a little bit, so I miss being around.”
Jack Nudo began the year as the assistant special teams coordinator, but following the news of special teams coordinator Charlie Ragle stepping away due to health-related issues, Jack has been temporarily promoted.
“Coach Ragle’s not replaceable. He’s one of the best coaches the state has ever seen. He’s one of the best mentors you can ever have,” head coach Kenny Dillingham said. “With that, Jack’s done a phenomenal job stepping in and being himself.”
While it is unclear how long 31-year-old Jack Nudo will be leading the Sun Devils’ special teams, he credits his ability to lead the unit to Ragle’s mentorship in the role.
“I have known Coach Ragle since I was a kid. I almost went to Chaparral because of coach Ragle,” Jack Nudo said. “He’s a great man that loves this place and more importantly his players.”
Ragle also mentored Dillingham, as Ragle offered him his first coaching position in 2007 with Chaparral.
Now, 18 years later, Ragle’s mentee, Dillingham, has offered another one of his mentees his biggest break in coaching yet.
Another of Jack Nudo’s mentors, his father, has also helped him reach these heights, as it sparked a love for the sport.
Gene Nudo was formerly the vice president and general manager of the Arizona Rattlers, back when they were in the Arena Football League. He earned AFL Executive of the Year on three separate occasions and was a member of the 2011 Arena Football Hall of Fame class, alongside NFL legend Kurt Warner.
In his tenure with the Rattlers, Gene Nudo frequently brought his son, Jack, into the locker room and to the field for practices. Jack got first-hand experience at seeing how day-to-day life in professional football worked, on both the playing side and the executive side.
Defensive analyst Vince Amey played under Gene Nudo for four years from 2004 to 2007, and recalls how Jack was when around the team.
“I remember doing camps – and it was hot outside – and giving Jack water so he could stay hydrated,” Amey said. “Now, him and I are working together, and he’s a good coach.”
While Amey giving Jack Nudo water certainly was helpful under the blistering Arizona heat, the experiences from his time around the Rattlers have been helpful for the long term.
“It was a good foundation for Jack to grow up on,” Gene Nudo said. “You learn when you keep your mouth shut and do your job and Jack learned that lesson real well and his coaching career has just continued to escalate.”
Jack Nudo’s time in the Rattlers locker room didn’t just give him a head-start on the intricacies of football – it helped him learn what it meant to be a coach.
“The thing that he was the best at was his relationship with players, and he still has those relationships to this day,” Jack Nudo said. “As a coach, while I love the game of football, I got into football because of the relationship building. If you don’t coach for those reasons, I don’t know why you coach.”
The relationships that Jack Nudo has built in his own coaching career, has seen his coaching career catapult over the last three years.
In 2022, he had just wrapped up his third season as a graduate assistant with the Ball State Cardinals. Since then, Jack Nudo has had four different coaching stops, before arriving back in his hometown with the Sun Devils.
The first stop after leaving Muncie, Indiana, was a stint in the USFL with the Pittsburgh Maulers. Nudo worked as the defensive backs coach, as the Maulers went 1-9.
“Definitely it is by no means the NFL, but it’s still professional football,” Jack Nudo said. “I was around a lot of really good football coaches, guys that had been in the NFL for a very long time, so it was good to learn from a bunch of good people.”
Nudo’s next job was a nine-month stint in Greenville, South Carolina with the East Carolina Pirates, as a special teams analyst. Then, Nudo got his first look at a power-five job with the UCLA Bruins in March 2023.
Nudo only spent ten months with UCLA, but he followed his father’s footsteps in building relationships with each step on his coaching journey.
“Last year I was the special teams coordinator at Austin Peay working under a guy named Jeff Faris, who was the guy who hired me at UCLA the prior year.” Jack Nudo said.
Faris spent two seasons at UCLA, but left Los Angeles to take the head coaching job at Austin Peay, bringing along Jack Nudo.
His time in Clarksville, Tennessee was short, as his coaching career continued to reach new heights. After the 2024 season, Jack Nudo became the assistant special teams coordinator for the Sun Devils.
“Been around a lot of good football coaches, who all bring different things to the tables, different philosophies, different schemes,” Jack Nudo said. “I kind of have a holistic understanding of a bunch of different philosophies, which has definitely helped me in my career.”
While beginning the year under the guidance and leadership of Charlie Ragle, Jack Nudo made a near-instant impact on his time in Tempe.
In the first quarter against Northern Arizona, ASU ran a fake punt on their own 47-yard-line. The ball was a direct snap to junior running back Kyson Brown, who ran for 34 yards to the NAU 19-yard-line.
On the very next play, the Sun Devils found the endzone, as the drive was kept alive by the fake punt. The play was designed by Nudo, as he made his presence felt in his first game with ASU.
“Going into it is very nerve-wracking and you get the play called,” Jack Nudo said. “Obviously, we had a lot of preparation going into that game, for it to be successful was awesome. The guys executed it perfectly, (Kyson Brown) did a great job, reading the block off the edge and bouncing it.”
Jack Nudo’s youthful ideas provided an injection to that drive, and it’s clear how his coaching career has progressed as far as it has in such a short time. However, the main thing for the Nudo family is having Jack back in the valley.
“My wife and I are so delighted to have him here,” Gene Nudo said. “He’s got some fresh ideas that he imparts to those guys.”
Jack Nudo followed in his father Gene’s footsteps in the football world not out of peer pressure from his dad – rather out of passion for the game and the work.
“He never pushed me to play football, to coach football,” Jack Nudo said. “He’s supportive in anything that I do. If I was in the band, he would have loved it. But obviously, being around that my whole life made me fall in love with it.”
His time spent in the Rattlers’ locker room didn’t just help him become one of the fastest rising coaches in the nation, but it instilled a love of football into Jack Nudo’s heart.
“Being around these guys every single day, I don’t feel like I’m working a job,” Jack Nudo said. “I get to do what I love and I took that from my dad. Growing up watching him do what he loves, and now I guess I’m partaking in the family business.”
