Troy football adds new director of video

Troy football and head coach Gerad Parker have welcomed a new director of video ahead of the 2026 season. Jake Deaton joins the football staff after spending time at West Virgina.

Deaton heads to Troy with one big mission in mind.

“I just want to do my part and make Troy football better,” Deaton said.

Over the summer, Troy football quietly made a change in the crucial, yet sometimes overlooked, role of the staff. The Trojans hired Deaton to fill the spot of the former Director of Video Aaron Sisk.

“I want to be the best director of video that I can be,” Deaton said. “I want to really lead the great group of students that do a really good job and have done a really good job for us.”

Deaton comes to Troy from West Virginia, where he worked the last three years. The Lafayette, Indiana, native completed his undergraduate degree with the Mountaineers and worked on the staff of a former Trojan coach.

“Neil Brown was the head coach at West Virginia for my time as a student,” Deaton said. “[West Virginia] reminds me a little bit of Troy in that it's a smaller town, and football really matters.

“That’s the same thing that happens here at Troy, and that’s something that led me to Troy is that football matters. That’s something I really care about.”

One of Deaton’s favorite memories from his stints at West Virginia comes from his first season as the assistant director of video for the Mountaineers in 2023 when they won the Duke’s Mayo Bowl.

“Getting to travel to Charlotte, North Carolina, and getting to be in the bowl game was a lot of fun,” Deaton said.

In that 2023 season, West Virginia went 9-4, ending the season in the aforementioned “Mayo” Bowl against UNC, where the Mountaineers would win 30-10.

Those who keep up with college football might remember that game because ofwhat happened afterwards. The winning coach, former Troy coach Neil Brown, got 4.5 gallons of mayo dumped on his head, according to ESPN.

Deaton cherished his time back at his alma mater,, even if was a little weird in some aspects.

“I had friends that were also student videographers,” Deaton said. “Since I was only gone a year, I actually ended up being their boss.

“That was a unique experience. Some of the people that were around the program, around me, they were like, ‘Holy crap, you’ve grown a lot, you’ve learned how to lead.’”

In the year away from the mountain state, Deaton made two stops in Ohio. His first stop was spending the fall semester with Akron as a graduate assistant.

After that, he joined the United States Football League’s, New Jersey Generals. The New Jersey Generals played in Canton, Ohio.

While they never played a game in New Jersey or the New York Metro area,. they shared a stadium with a Pittsburgh team, also based in Ohio.

The unique experience allowed Deaton to grow and learn in a multitude of ways.

“Because we were playing at the Tom Vinson Pro football Hall of Fame stadium, there wasn’t a traditional setup,” Deaton said. “We didn’t have traditional meeting rooms, so I was coordinating myself between my operations and the IT department at the stadium.”

Deaton did all of this while only 22 years old. Deaton was a fresh college graduate with an assistant twice his age. Deaton expanded on this unique part of his experience.

“It was a 16-week thing,” Deaton said. “Over those 16 weeks, we became really good friends, we still talk to this day.

“The knowledge of the subject and all this other stuff really led him to appreciate who I was.”

The young Mountaineer now brings his wealth of knowledge and experience down to the wiregrass for his first season with the Trojans. When Troy takes the field for its first game on Saturday, Sept. 5, he’ll be just over two months into the job.