Jason Linders enters his fourth year with the University of South Florida Department of Athletics after arriving in 2009 as the Assistant Athletics Director for Football Student-Athlete Development. 

Linders currently directs the entire academic program, as well as coordinates student-athlete development and graduation initiatives for football. He works with the USF football players and coaching staff on a day-to-day basis throughout the year. In the Academic Enrichment Center, he has oversight of study hall, the tutoring program, computer lab, and various other administrative duties.

Additionally, Linders is the sport administrator for the men's and women's golf programs and coordinates their academic support as well.

Since his arrival in 2009, the football program has seen consistent increases in their APR score, graduation rate, and team grade-point average. When he arrived, USF's football APR score for 2007-08 was last among BCS institutions. Since then, football has posted scores of 930 for 2008-09 (matched only by Illinois for the largest improvement of any BCS school), 952 for 2009-10 and 963 for 2010-11, currently second in the Big East Conference and tied for 26th among BCS schools. USF's 22-point increase from 2008-09 is the largest improvement of any BCS program and their 43-point improvement over the last two years is 14 points more than the second highest two-year total among BCS schools (Oregon State, Mississippi: 29). USF's three-year 54-point improvement is also the best by a BCS school. In addition, the program's annual score increased for the fifth consecutive year, going from 879 in 2005-06 to 978 in 2010-11.

Following the 2011 season, USF placed 18 members of the football squad on the Big East All-Academic Team, which surpassed the previous program record of 16 from the 2010 season. In spring 2012, the football team set a program-record semester GPA exceeding the previous record from last spring, which was the best mark since spring 2001.

Linders spent 2006-2009 at University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), where he was the assistant director of student-athlete academic services. In his three seasons with the Running Rebels, Linders coordinated academic support for football, which placed 20 members on the Academic All-Mountain West Conference team, breaking the school record and ranking third among league teams. Additionally, while at UNLV from 2006-2009, the football team GPA increased from 2.502 to 2.775 and their APR scores increased from 908 (2005-06) to 912 (2006-07) to 929 (2007-08). Linders also helped oversee the football and men's soccer student-athletes in registration, academic eligibility, tutoring and on-campus issues.

In addition to football, he worked with men's soccer, coordinated NCAA certification process for football/men's soccer, collected and entered APR data for football, coordinated the CHAMPS/Life Skills program, and was the liaison for the Admissions and Registrar's offices.

Prior to joining UNLV, Linders was an assistant football coach for eight years in the collegiate ranks, including stops at the University of Nevada, Southern Utah University and Montana State University.

Linders graduated from Humboldt State University with a bachelor of arts in sociology in 1998 and master of science in kinesiology in 2001.

A native of Santa Ana, Calif., Linders and his wife Annette have two daughters, Kayla and Kalani.