Meet college football’s next ‘hot young coach.’ All he must do is win in El Paso, Texas

Scotty Walden grew up in Cleburne, and even before he accepted what has been a death bed for college football coaches he had visited El Paso, and UTEP, but one time.

His job interview for UTEP’s head football coach late last year was inside an Admiral’s Club at DFW Airport. The only other time he stepped foot on UTEP’s campus, or visited its Sun Bowl Stadium, was as an assistant at Southern Miss, in 2020.

“I like jobs that no one else wants,” Walden said.

Done and done.

A native Texan who understands the hierarchy of Texas football gambled on himself by accepting what is the hardest job in the state, and may be all of NCAA FBS football. Walden’s stop at UTEP will either work, and launch his career to a more prestigious job, or .... you do the math.

Any young coach who yearns for the higher levels of football does not go to El Paso to coach the Miners. An older coach who wants to continue to coach and cash a check goes to El Paso to coach the Miners. This is the ultimate “Believe” move.

“When I played (at Sul Ross State), I had several teammates who were from El Paso and that’s all they talked about; I always thought, ‘I need to get there,’” he said in a phone interview. “The first time I went there, I remember seeing those mountains, and then going into the Sun Bowl and I thought, ‘You can’t win here?’”

Historically that answer is, “Hellno.”

UTEP has not won a bowl game since 1966. It has appeared in seven bowl games since then, the same number of winning seasons it’s had since it joined the Western Athletic Conference, in 1968.

Located in El Paso, just across the Paso Del Norte bridge from the Mexican city of Juarez, UTEP football ranks among the toughest sells in major college football. As a member of Conference USA, the Miners are part of “the Group of 5,” which will have access to the newly expanded playoff model.

“I think it’s the best kept secret in the state of Texas,” he said. “We just have to wake it up.”

UTEP is part of the University of Texas system, a West Texas institution, and the Sun Bowl is an important part of the cities history. UTEP is also unlike any other school in the state, namely because El Paso is part Texas, part Mexico, part New Mexico, and all parts desert.

According to ElPasoTexas.gov, the city’s population is a tick more than 80 percent Hispanic or Latino.

The sunsets are stunning, the views from the El Paso Mountains breathtaking, and the Mexican food is different than from the rest of Texas. Walden has assets to sell.

The challenge is time and space. You have to get there. The challenge for Walden is to convince a young man that El Paso is really not that far. El Paso is closer to Phoenix (430 miles) than is it to Walden’s home town of Cleburne, 612 miles.

Time and space have always been, and will always be, a challenge for coaches at schools in West Texas. When the late Bobby Knight was coaching the Texas Tech men’s basketball team in the early 2000s, he told former UTEP basketball coach Don Haskins that he didn’t realize how far Lubbock is from everything. Lubbock is 346 miles from El Paso.

It may not have made sense for Walden to accept the job as much as it did for UTEP to offer it. At 34, he is narrowly the second youngest coach on the FBS level, second only to Arizona State’s Kenny Dillingham.

In 2016, Walden was named the head coach at Division II East Texas Baptist University when he was 26. At the time, he was the youngest head football coach on any NCAA level.

“I look back on that year, and I was flying by the seat of my pants. I had no idea what I was doing,” he said. “I look back on those days, and if I had only known what I know now, would have handled this or that different?”

A native of Cleburne, and if he wasn’t born to coach he was at least molded to coach. His parents divorced when he was young, and he gravitated to the coaches in his life, specifically former Cleburne and Arlington Heights coach Phil Young.

Walden played quarterback, and Young would invite to him coaches’ meetings, or anything extra that “fit.” Even before he played at Sul Ross State, Walden’s plan was to coach.

After he graduated, he started the process to earn his teacher’s certificate to become a Texas high school football coach. He didn’t say it, but he wanted to be a Phil Young type who molded young people.

Walden fell into the East Baptist job, and since then he’s just kept winning. Winning opens doors.

When he was hired by Austin Peay, in 2020, he was the youngest coach in Division I. By the time his four-year run in Clarksville ended, he led the school to its first ever back-to-back conference titles. That put him in the “Hot Young Name” category, and he started fielding offers from other schools.

He didn’t even have to go to El Paso to know the job he wanted was UTEP.

After all, it is the job no one else wants.