This article is featured in the 2022 summer edition of Dave Campbell's Texas Football.

Gilmer head coach Jeff Traylor looked at his phone. It was 3 a.m. on a Friday morning in 2016 and he was in tears. Charlie Strong, the new head coach of the University of Texas, wanted Traylor to leave the high school ranks and join him in Austin as the special teams coordinator and tight ends coach.

Traylor was unsure. Gilmer was his home. He lived next door to his brother, Kurt, and his four kids. Gilmer was 175-26 during Traylor’s 15-year tenure, reaching five state championships and winning three titles along the way.

He called his shot in the 1986 Gilmer High School yearbook section where it asks graduates what they’ll be in 10 years. Traylor wrote: “The head coach of the Gilmer Buckeyes.” It took him 12. Traylor knew his alma mater had potential as a football program and he wanted to provide the area with something his generation wasn’t allowed: a unified front.

“We were not a program. We were a city divided,” Traylor said of his time at Gilmer as a student. “But that’s what the power of football can do. Once we got it rolling, no one cared anymore if we were white, black, or brown. We were all Orange and Black.”

And now, he was on the verge of leaving that all behind to start over as an assistant coach in the college ranks, right as the school district was naming the stadium in his honor.

“It was the hardest decision I’ve ever made in my life,” Traylor admitted. “I was crying and upset because I didn’t want to go but I knew I needed to go.”

So did his wife, Cari. Spend any amount of time around Traylor and you’ll hear about “Care Bear,” as he affectionately calls her. She became the voice of reason, and encouragement, during that night of tears. Cari pointed out that Traylor himself spent the last 15 years telling his Gilmer players that they could go do anything from anywhere. Gilmer was not the end, only the beginning. Now, Traylor could be the example. He could leave the nest in search of a new challenge.

The head coaching position at UTSA opened after the 2015 season. Traylor spent the previous year as an assistant for Strong, winning the Big 12 Recruiter of the Year. He applied for the job, but was passed over for Frank Wilson, once a high school football coach himself in Louisiana. Traylor was hurt, but he admits that he needed more time to bake in the college oven.

“As I look back, I was not ready for this thing,” Traylor said. “Getting four more years as an assistant was invaluable to me.”

Traylor spent 2016 at Texas, 2017 at SMU, and two seasons in Arkansas before the UTSA job opened again. This time, Traylor was a lock. He possessed 15 years of head coaching experience in the prep ranks and five years on three different staffs at the college level. He was ready.

Traylor took over the program prior to the 2020 season. UTSA was 7-17 in the two years preceding his arrival. The Roadrunners are 19-7 with a Conference USA championship and two bowl appearances in the two years under his direction. UTSA is 12-3 in conference play and 12-1 at home during that time.

Despite that success, Traylor never forgets his roots. He’s an East Texas high school football coach at heart. He was nervous entering the 2021 Tropical Smoothie Frisco Bowl because he planned on wearing a Texas High School Coaches Association hat pregame but feared his Roadrunners squad — missing 23 players — wasn’t up for the task.

“I was torn on whether or not to wear the THSCA hat that night because I thought we might embarrass my buddies,” Traylor said. “I want our fraternity of Texas high school football coaches to be proud of what we’ve done at UTSA.”

Traylor won’t put himself on a pedestal. That’s not who he is. Ask him about UTSA’s success and he’ll point to the talented roster he inherited or to his staff, which consists of seven former Texas high school football coaches. But there’s no doubt that his success helps the fortunes of the next generation of high school football coaches. If Traylor can put UTSA on the map, at least in part to his connections to Texas high school football and the players it bears, why wouldn’t other programs follow that script?

“Coach Traylor has taken San Antonio by storm,” THSCA president Glen West said. “He called us at THSCA the night before he accepted the job and said, ‘This is about Texas high school football and you guys are going to be part of everything that we do at UTSA’. And that’s exactly what he’s done.”