John Grass was a star football player at Ashville High School. Grass was named to the 1985 Alabama Sports Writers Associations Class 3A Honorable Mention All-State team as a back his senior season.

After graduating high school, he attended Jacksonville State University where he served as a volunteer assistant before receiving his degree from JSU.

When Rush Propst landed the head coaching job at Ashville, he hired Grass as his assistant for three seasons including one year at Eufaula. Grass returned to Ashville, his home town, in 1995 to start his head coaching career.

Grass 1998 Bulldogs finished the regular season undefeated before losing in the first round of the playoffs. He spent five seasons at Ashville before joining Propst at Hoover for the 2000 and 2001 seasons.

In 2002, he took a 2-8 team at Albertville and led it to a 9-4 record, the schools best in four decades, and a spot in the state quarter-finals. In the three seasons before Grass arrived, the Aggies had records of 1-9, 2-8 and 2-8.

After one year at Albertville, Grass moved to Moody, where the Blue Devils had won just six games in six years. His teams went 21-14 the next three years, including three straight trips to the Class 4A state playoffs. The Blue Devils had not made the playoffs in 10 years before Grass led Moody to the postseason in 2003.

Coach Grass accepted the head coaching job at Spain Park High School in 2006. Grass, 38 at the time, replaced Vince DiLorenzo, who had resigned three weeks earlier.

His two years at Spain Park proved productive when the Jaguars reached the Class 6A State Championship game in 2007. They fell just short of a title, falling to a very talented Prattville team.

In 2008 Oxford came calling and lured Grass away from Spain Park. His five teams at Oxford finished a combined 41-17 overall and 27-8 in region play in the five seasons he was the coach of the Yellow Jackets.

Coach John Grass resigned in early 2013 as the Yellow Jackets head coach to be the offensive coordinator at Jacksonville State. He joined Bill Clark of Prattville fame who had become the head coach.

His overall coaching record is 122-61 as a head football coach in Alabama.

Coach Grass was named as the Coach of the Year by the Alabama Sports Writers Association in 2002 and 2007.