Former UM coach Larry Coker savors challenge of building new football program in Texas

UTSA football coach Larry Coker gives a thumbs up after throwing the first pitch at a UTSA baseball game. [File]

IRVING, Texas — During Larry Coker's 40 years of coaching, he thought he experienced it all. The emerald "national champions" ring on his right hand, won as coach of the 2001 Miami Hurricanes, reminded him of it.

But when Coker left his hotel room on Sept. 3, 2011, a few hours before his Texas-San Antonio Roadrunners would play their first home game, he experienced something new — a panic for which he had no comparison.

As he closed the door and began to walk down toward the elevator hall, the question struck him:

"Are there referees for this game?"

He had never had to ask himself that question before — not even as a high school coach in small-town Oklahoma — and it freaked him out. But when you start a college football program from scratch, those are the kind of inane responsibilities that bother a coach.

Coker's concerns didn't last long. There were referees — someone had taken care of it. There were also 56,743 fans in the Alamodome that day cheering on the Roadrunners to a 30-3 win.

Eighteen months before that first game, Coker, at age 61, was named the first coach of the UTSA football program. His office was a trailer and his facilities would have been considered sub-par for a high school team in the state of Texas.

Today, UTSA is, without question, San Antonio's football team. On average, more than 30,000 fans fill the Alamodome for home games, and the athletics department spent $500,000 in the past year for new on-campus facilities for the team. The school got a boost in funding from its move to Conference USA in 2013.

Coker, who coached at Miami from 2000 to 2006, reflected on his program's rise at his first Conference USA preseason football media day.

"I don't know if you can compare it to anyone else," Coker said. "It's been a tough task, but really a great task."

Coker laughs when he chronicles the journey that led him to this point in his career.

A long-time offensive assistant at Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Ohio State and Miami, Coker succeeded Butch Davis as the Hurricanes' coach in 2000, inheriting one of the nation's best teams.

So when the Hurricanes won the national championship in Coker's first year, the argument was that Davis deserved the credit.

A year later, the Hurricanes were back in the National Championship Game. The common argument about that game is the Hurricanes were robbed of back-to-back titles by the referees.

Coker and the Hurricanes weren't able to stay at the top of college football, though. They lost eight games in the next three years before a 7-6 campaign in 2006, which cost Coker his job.

Coker was content to retire from coaching. He moonlighted as an ESPN analyst for two years after he was fired. It suited him well, but like any long-time coach, he craved the emotional highs and lows of coaching.

At the same time, UTSA athletics director Lynn Hickey — herself a fellow small-town Oklahoman — was using the coach-turned-analyst as a consultant to help her identify the right man to build her newly-funded football program.

Coker didn't see himself as a candidate, but the more he ruminated on the subject, the more interested he became in the job.

It was stuck in his head like a bad pop song, and Coker had to seek outside councel himself. He called Howard Schnellenberger, the expert on building a successful college football program and the architect of the FAU, Miami and Louisville football programs.

"Coach, it's the greatest thing you'll ever do," Coker recalled hearing from Schnellenberger. "It's a challenge, but it's lot of fun, and it's something you really ought to think about."