Former Kansas State player and long time assistant coach Dana Dimel was hired as a senior offensive assistant at Illinois, Illini head coach and fellow former Wildcat assistant Bret Bielema announced Monday.
Dimel was UTEP’s head coach from 2018-23 and previously was coach at Wyoming and Houston.
The Miners were 5-26 over Dimel’s first three seasons in El Paso and went 7-6 and played in the New Mexico Bowl in 2021. He was fired last November after back-to-back losing seasons.
Dimel played at K-State from 1984-86 after spending two years at Hutchinson Community College.
After a season in the NFL as a Minnesota Viking, he returned to Manhattan in 1987 as a GA. In 1989, he was hired by Bill Snyder as the Hall of Famer’s first offensive line coach.
He coached in Manhattan through 1996 when he was hired as the head coach at Wyoming.
Dimel coached the Cowboys to three straight winning seasons from 1997-99 before moving to Houston, where had three losing seasons in a row at Houston from 2000-02.
He spent one season back in Manhattan as a graduate assistant in 2005 before taking a job under former K-State assistant Mike Stoops at Arizona in 2006.
Dimel returned to Manhattan for a final time in 2009 and stuck around through 2017, helping K-State win a Big 12 Championship in 2012.
