Larry Porter knows what it feels like to be crowned the national champion. When LSU defeated Ohio State to claim the BCS National Championship in 2008, Porter was the team’s running backs coach.

That’s been his role at all but one of his collegiate coaching stops. At Tennessee-Martin, Arkansas State, Oklahoma State, LSU, Arizona State, Texas and North Carolina, Porter has coached running backs, the position he played in college at Memphis. The only two years he didn’t coach that position were 2010 and 2011 at his alma mater, when he served as the head coach.

So why, at 44 years old, did he decide to take a job at Auburn coaching tight ends and H-backs?

“I want an opportunity to win another national championship. That was in my craw. I couldn’t get beyond that. I wanted another opportunity,” Porter said in his first public comments since coming to the Plains in February. “And I feel like here, all the pieces are in place to do that.”

Auburn, after relieving former tight ends and special teams Scott Fountain of his on-field duties following National Signing Day, went after Porter for his recruiting pedigree.

The former Tar Heels assistant, who coached under former Auburn head coach Gene Chizik in Chapel Hill, was named the Rivals.com National Recruiter of the Year in both 2007 and 2009, and has experience signing players out of Tennessee, Louisiana and Texas — three states Auburn doesn’t have as strong a foothold in.

Related

New TE/HB coach Larry Porter brings strong recruiting track record to Auburn’s staff

Save for the two seasons he spent as the head coach at Memphis in 2010-2011, every year of L…

Gus Malzahn thought so highly of Porter that, along with having him coach tight ends and H-backs, the head coach named his newest assistant as the Tigers’ recruiting coordinator.

“Larry Porter, he's a football coach. He can coach any position,” Malzahn said. “He's going to do a great job with that group.”

And part of the reason Porter decided to jump into unfamiliar waters at Auburn is because he wanted to evolve as a coach. He played running back in college and coached the position for nearly his entire career. He wanted to “get outside of my little box” and showcase his coaching skills in a new way.

“Here’s the deal, as a coach, you should always pursue or seek to learn every position, to learn the details of every position and the fundamentals of every position,” Porter said. “I coached running backs for a while, but I’ve also had to coach what was going on up front so they understood what was going on to make them better players and grow them. So although I haven’t coached it, I’ve always known what was going on up there. It’s new, but it’s been good for me”

There will likely be some adjustment come the start of the season in September. Porter’s charges have always been among the focal points of their respective offenses, such as Vernand Morency and Tatum Bell at Oklahoma State, and Jacob Hester and Joseph Addai at LSU. That won’t be the case at Auburn.

H-back Chandler Cox and tight end Jalen Harris have each been with the Tigers for two seasons. They have 16 career touches and 97 career yards between them.

Porter knew that going in, though. He also knew that first-year offensive coordinator Chip Lindsey had come to Auburn less than a month earlier with a track record of involving tight ends more than the Tigers had in the past. So one of the first things Porter did was go back and look at how many catches the top college, SEC and drafted tight ends averaged. The number he came up with was 36 to 40.

He thinks Harris, Sal Cannella and eventually John Samuel Shenker can help Auburn approach that total.

“That’s about three a game. That’s not a hard thing to do. It’s really not,” Porter said. “I think we’ve got, obviously, some guys that can make plays. I’m not saying everybody in the group has the receiving skills to truly be dynamic or impactful in a game, but I think we have some guys who can truly help us be very productive in games.”

Porter hopes that will be a step toward helping him recreate that national championship feeling he first experienced nine years ago in Baton Rouge.

“Obviously, that’s a lot easier said than done,” he said. “But when you’ve done this, it’s a lot easier to say.”