What If… No UTSA Football

EDITORS NOTE: Five years ago, when it looked like there might not be a college football season, I started a summer series at BirdsUp.com called UTSA What If. The series looked at different points of UTSA athletic history and pondered how things might have been if things had been different. 

This year “UTSA What If” is moving to Alamo Audible. My thanks to Jared and Adrian for hosting the series this year.

I started that first series in 2020 with a look at how things might have been if UTSA started football before 2011.

This year, the first What If is to ponder how UTSA might look today if football never came to the hills of oak and cedar.

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The story of UTSA football’s beginnings is well known. In 1999 two of the key members who brought football to UTSA came to San Antonio in the form of President Ricardo Romo and Athletic Director Lynn Hickey.

Four years later in 2003 UTSA students voted in favor of pursuing a football team. Another four years elapsed before the final step as far as the students were concerned with a second referendum in favor of football being passed.

In December 2008 the UT Board of Regents approved UTSA to start football. Three months later in March of 2009 Larry Coker was hired as the first head football coach in program history. Almost 30 months later on September 3, 2011 Coker led the Roadrunners onto the football field for their inaugural game. 

How might things have been if any one of those things that led up to UTSA’s first football team taking the field didn’t happen? 

What if it’s a different president and athletic director hired in 1999 who decide Football isn’t the most important thing for UTSA? What if the students in 2003 don’t vote in favor of football? Or what if those students in 2007 don’t vote in favor of football?

It’s safe to say that if any of the things that led to football go the other direction and UTSA does not get a football program it would have completely changed the trajectory of the university.

A UTSA without football does not climb to the heights it has in this era. Without football, UTSA doesn’t have the front porch to the world that it does now.  A non-football playing UTSA is probably still a member of the Southland Conference or perhaps bounced around other FCS conferences. A football-less UTSA never joins the WAC or Conference USA and certainly not the American Conference.

A football-less UTSA probably doesn’t have Dr. Taylor Eighmy as its current president and Lisa Campos might not be its current athletic director which has a domino effect on every other sport at UTSA.

UTSA without football means Larry Coker might not have coached college football again and instead becomes a beloved figure on TV like Lee Corso. Frank Wilson becomes head coach at another school in 2016 or maybe not at all. In December of 2019 Jeff Traylor is introduced as the head coach of the Lamar Cardinals before leaving to take another job after creating the 409 Triangle of Toughness in Texas’s Golden Triangle.

As far as the city of San Antonio goes it probably turns out ok. Incarnate Word started football in 2009. They climbed the ladder behind UTSA going from Division II to Division I and joining the Southland Conference in 2014. A UTSA without football might lead the city leaders to putting all their support into the red and black of UIW and in 2014 its decided that the Cardinals will play a few games a year in the vacant Alamodome.

Or maybe a UTSA without football means the city of San Antonio is sitting on nearly a century since it was home to a big-time football program. It had about a 20-year run of big-time football between 1916-1939 with the St. Mary’s Rattlers, including their inaugural season when they were coached by a young up-and-coming coach named Dwight D. Eisenhower. 

It would be a different world if UTSA never started football. It’s a good thing we don’t have to live in that world. UTSA football will begin its 15th season in two months with a visit to what some parts of the state consider the hallowed ground of Kyle Field to take on Texas A&M.

If UTSA never started football, maybe A&M is opening this season against Lamar or another school.