CHENEY — Aaron Best himself claims to bleed Eagle red.

The 20-year veteran of the Eastern Washington football program will become EWU’s 21st head football coach as he was named Saturday via Twitter by EWU athletic director Bill Chaves. Best will be introduced at a media conference on Monday.

Best has spent 20 seasons since the fall of 1996 as a player and coach at Eastern, including the last nine seasons as Eastern’s offensive line coach under former head coach Beau Baldwin. Baldwin announced Monday he was leaving Eastern to take the offensive coordinator position at Cal.

Besides coaching the offensive line as a full-time assistant for 14 of his 16 seasons on the coaching staff, he has also served in various coordinator positions, most recently as the team’s running game coordinator and as the program’s longtime academic coordinator. He was a student assistant coach in 2000 and a graduate assistant in 2001, then became the school’s primary offensive line coach from 2002-2006, and again from 2008-16.

Among the offensive linemen he coached was Michael Roos, who went on to a 10-year career with the Tennessee Titans of the NFL. With Best on the coaching staff, Eastern has had 13 different offensive linemen earn All-America accolades, with 12 players combining to win first team All-Big Sky Conference honors on 14 occasions. He played alongside four other All-Americans at EWU who all earned first team All-Big Sky honors, in addition to himself earning both honors when he played for the Eagles from 1996-1999.

Best is only the fifth head coach since 1979 for the Eagles, and the third since then who played collegiately as an offensive lineman. Dick Zornes, who is also an Eastern graduate, coached at EWU from 1979-93 before former Idaho offensive lineman Mike Kramer took over from 1994-99. Washington State offensive lineman Paul Wulff took over from 2000-2007 until Baldwin, a Central Washington graduate, took the reins in 2015.

He helped coordinate an offense in 2016 which set seven Big Sky Conference records and two additional EWU marks for a total of nine school records. Eastern finished the year ranked second in FCS in total offense with an average of 529.6 yards per game and was the FCS leader in passing offense (401.0 yards per game). Eastern was also third in scoring offense (42.4).

Best started 22 straight games at center for Eastern in 1998 and 1999, earning honorable mention All-Big Sky honors as a junior and first team honors as a senior. He also earned honorable mention All-America honors his final season.

He received his bachelor’s degree in social science from EWU in 2001.

He was Eastern’s long-snapper for four seasons and was a backup lineman in 1997 when Eastern led the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision in total offense (505.6 yards per game). That team finished 12-2 and advanced to the FCS “Final Four.” The Eagles were 31-16 in the four seasons Best played for EWU, and Eastern had a 1,000-yard rusher each year. In all, the Eagles have had a 1,000-yard rusher in 11 of the 19 seasons Best has been at EWU.

Best graduated in 1996 from Curtis High in Tacoma, Wash. He was co-captain his senior season as Curtis won the State AAA championship.