EL PASO – Scotty Walden couldn’t make it from his car to the front door at Kiki’s Mexican Restaurant before a man noticed the new UTEP head coach’s shirt displaying the Miners’ logo. After exchanging a pair of “Picks Up”, the man stopped and turned around. He asked if Walden was part of the new football staff. 

“Sure am,” Walden replied. 

“Who are you?” the man asked excitedly. 

“I’m Scotty Walden, new head coach of the UTEP Miners.”

“Oh, you’re the man!”  

This scene has played out at a few places around El Paso since Walden took over the program in December. At Chipotle. And L&J Cafe. The population of the Sun City is closing in on 700,000 people. Add in nearby Juarez, Mexico and the Miners can draw on nearly 2 million potential fans. The area wants a winner. They want to support their own. Comunidad y cultura. 

This is new to Walden, who is the second-youngest head coach in the FBS ranks at 34 years old, trailing Arizona State’s Kenny Dillingham by roughly seventh months. He played Division III football at Hardin-Simmons and Sul Ross. He began his coaching career while still an undergraduate at Sul Ross, becoming the offensive coordinator for his alma mater at 22 years old. Some of his players were older than him. 

Walden’s first head coaching job was at East Texas Baptist in 2016 when he was 26. He was the interim head coach at Southern Miss in 2020 and the head man at Austin Peay from 2021-23, where he won consecutive conference championships with the Governors. But he’s never experienced this. Not in Alpine or Marshall. Not in Hattiesburg, Mississippi or in Clarksville, Tennessee. He was mostly an anonymous young ball coach in small towns at those stops. 

Now, he’s the head coach in a major city without a professional football team. The Miners are the professional football team. The Arizona Cardinals are the closest NFL franchise to El Paso, and Phoenix is still 430 miles away from the Miners.  The Cowboys are 620 miles away.  

“This is all new to me, man,” Walden said over steak tacos. “I’ve never been somewhere with this much untapped potential. This area wants to support us. And we want to support them.” 

The best way to gain support is to win. The Miners don’t do much of that. They’ve only experienced two winning seasons since 2005. Both of those were 7-6 seasons without a bowl win. UTEP hasn’t won a bowl game since 1967 after losing its last seven tries. The program has never won a bowl that wasn’t played in the Sun Bowl. 

The best way to win is to score points. Walden knows how to do that. He’s called plays for 12 of his 34 years on the earth – over a third of his life. His offenses at Austin Peay scored over 30 points in each of his last three season in charge. The most UTEP has averaged over the last 10 years is 26.6 points per game. The Miners averaged 19.9 points a game last year – 119th nationally and last in Conference USA.  

The best way to score points is to recruit good football players. Walden hit the ground running in his two months on the job leading into National Signing Day of 2024. His Miners closed strong to sign the best recruiting class in CUSA. The 2025 class sits in the top 5 of the conference standings after a flurry of commitments in late July. 

Facilities help recruit athletes and UTEP spent $2.9 million dollars on a locker room facelift that will total $5 million in improvements by the time it is done. Walden revealed the new lockers to his 115-man team on July 31 – report day for camp. But not before he tricked his guys into believing construction delays postponed completion for a few weeks. The disappointment was palpable. Walden finally cracked. 

“I’m just kidding,” Walden announced. “Go see your new locker room.” 

The players dashed downstairs from the meeting room and into a new world. A world in which UTEP takes care of its players. The last time the locker room under the Sun Bowl was renovated was when it was built in 2004. There were free snacks right outside the door. And protein powder. It’ll soon have six new televisions. The same company that made the University of Texas football lockers furnished the new digs for the Miners. Athletic director Jim Senter estimated that each locker cost around $12,000 dollars. 

Walden is only 5-foot-9, but his personality is giant. Even his driver’s license says he’s 6-foot. A result of charming the desk clerk at the DMV. The energetic Walden told his team during report day to be nice to the SID and maybe he’d help add an inch or two to their height – a lesson Walden himself learned the hard way when the Sul Ross SID wouldn’t budge on his listed height 13 years ago. 

Walden is simultaneously interesting and interested. He grew up loving professional wrestling in a single-parent home. He realized early that he wasn’t as naturally gifted athletically or academically as some of his peers, so he committed himself to outworking his teammates and the opponents. He is a history major who first fell in love with the subject when he learned about World War 1. 

But he doesn’t enjoy talking about himself. He’d rather talk about leadership. Or football. He’s obsessed with football. And with how other successful coaches operate. He listens as intensely and intently as he speaks. 

Hector Latigo, the owner and long-time manager at Kiki’s, approaches as Walden finishes his tacos. He tells the young ball coach about former UTEP head coach Mike Price coming into the restaurant over the years to order his usual – Picadillo with green sauce. Latigo also tells Walden that he’s been a season ticket holder since the 1980s. And that his daughter, now in her 30s, grew up taking dolls and running around the Sun Bowl. 

“There were years when there were 20 empty rows in front of me and behind me,” Latigo said with a smile. “I could let my daughter run around and play while I watched football. Who was going to take her? I was the only one there.” 

Walden vowed to change that. A sold-out Sun Bowl is one of the best sights in football. All it takes is winning. Price realized that when he led the Miners to back-to-back eight-win seasons in 2004-05. Dana Dimel’s Miners sold out the stadium for the 2022 season opener against North Texas thanks to momentum from the seven-win season of 2021. His program couldn’t sustain success to hold that audience. UTEP was still third in CUSA attendance during a three-win 2023 with 18,160. Only Liberty and Jacksonville State played in front of bigger audiences and both of those teams were winning. 

“We’re going to fill up that stadium, Hector,” Walden said with certainty. “Hopefully, there won’t be as many empty rows for kids to run around in.” 

As Walden left Kiki’s more patrons shook his hand and gave a verbal “Picks Up” in support. Walden spoke to them all. An older gentleman with a U.S. Army hat thanks Walden for bringing the energy back to UTEP football. Walden thanked him for his service. All smiles, the young coach walked out the door and back towards the facility for more meetings. 

“How cool was that?” he asked. “This place is the best.”