Jul. 21—Here are a few notes and quotes from last week’s Mountain West Media Days in Las Vegas:
Jason Eck is one of the new guys on the block in the Mountain West.
But does that mean he’s a new face to the league’s 11 other coaches? Not quite.
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In fact, New Mexico’s first-year coach has connections with some of his peers, dating to when Eck was a little-known assistant outside the FBS ranks.
His relationship with Nevada head coach Jeff Choate didn’t exactly start off on the best foot. When Choate was hired as Montana State’s head coach in 2015, he decided to not retain Eck as the Bobcats’ offensive line coach after Eck’s first year with the program.
“He called me before he even arrived in town for his press conference and told me, ‘hey Jason, if I was gonna be a head coach, I’ve known who I wanted to be my offensive line coach for 20 years,'” Eck said Thursday at Mountain West Media Days in Las Vegas. “And he, in fact, hired that guy (Brian Armstrong) and he’s still with that guy.”
Eck said he likes to tease Choate and tell him that was the “best thing he ever did for my career” after the former landed at South Dakota State. Living in Bozeman, Montana wouldn’t have been nearly as affordable as Brookings, South Dakota, Eck added, and it was with the Jackrabbits that his career took off.
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But at the time, Eck simply needed some moving boxes.
“He probably wasn’t super happy with it initially, and then a couple weeks later, he’s like, ‘hey, my wife needs some boxes,'” Choate said Thursday. “And I said, ‘well, come over to the house — we just moved, we got plenty of boxes.’ And actually, my wife and his wife have struck up a friendship.
“And, you know, I have a ton of respect for the job that Jason did at Idaho, and I think he’s a good dude, man.”
While Eck was at South Dakota State, the Jackrabbits went 2-1 against Montana State, providing Choate a taste of what an Eck-coached offense looks like.
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“I always thought they were really creative — they did a great job utilizing their tight ends and they had some tremendous players at tight end,” Choate said. “And that was one of the things that I remember about that, they do a good job formationally …. His guys, they play a certain way. I mean, he’s an old Wisconsin OL guy.
“He’s gonna get after it a bit and that’s what he brings to the table.”
Eck and first-year Fresno State head coach Matt Entz spent time together at Winona State, a Division II program in Minnesota. The latter served as the Warriors’ assistant head coach, defensive coordinator and linebackers coach for eight seasons; Eck overlapped with Entz from 2007-08, working as the team’s offensive line and tight ends coach.
What does Entz remember about Eck from that time? “Really good offensive line coach — very, very thorough,” he said. “Had an immediate impact on our ability to run the football. Forced us to be better defensively, because every day in practice was a challenge.”
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And what does Eck remember about Entz? “He’s a great fundamental teacher, really does a great job building kind of a tough, hard-nosed defense,” he said. “And then as he became a head coach (at) North Dakota State, (he) always had a great tradition of running the ball and building good offensive lines.”
Eck also used the opportunity to reminisce on his experience teaching two classes at Winona State: bowling and weight training, his “two specialties when I was a college professor,” he said.
“‘Coach Eck’s Spring Break Ab Circuit’ was very popular (for) getting everybody ready for spring break,” he deadpanned.
Wyoming head coach Jay Sawvel hasn’t worked with Eck, but he knows as well as any what it’s like to go up against one of his teams. The Cowboys fell 17-13 to an Eck-coached Idaho team last season, the Vandals’ second win over a Mountain West team in as many seasons.
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“They were good on both sides of the line of scrimmage, which was evident even when they played Oregon (last season),” Sawvel said. ” … They manage a game well, (Eck’s) smart with how he coaches that part of it. But I thought the way that they built their program was based on fundamentals and physicality, and that’s a good foundation.”
‘Let’s take another one’
An early nomination for UNM’s best transfer story entering this season: Mercury Swaim, a redshirt junior linebacker by way of Colorado School of Mines and Saint Francis (Penn.) University.
Why? For better or worse, Swaim is a true “old school” transfer in Eck’s eyes, an anomaly in a time where transfer decisions are often motivated by playing time or money.
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How it went down: Marshall head coach Tony Gibson — a friend of Eck’s — knew UNM was looking for another linebacker in the portal this spring, and reached out to vouch for Swaim. “I was a little cautious at first,” Eck said. “Because I’m like, ‘well, why are you calling (and) trying to recommend somebody to me — if he’s that good, wouldn’t you guys want him at Marshall?'”
Gibson explained that he played at Glenville (West Virginia) State with Swaim’s father, Wes. With Swaim’s undergraduate degree in engineering already completed, Wes called Gibson and asked if he knew anybody at UNM, home to a master’s program in nuclear engineering regularly ranked among the country’s best — and one Swaim would be interested in attending.
After Swaim spent the spring at Colorado School of Mines and entered the portal, Eck looked at his tape at Saint Francis and liked what he saw. But the Lobos had already landed a commitment from Jacksonville State transfer linebacker Ky’Won McCray — did UNM really need another linebacker?
In the end, Eck decided yes.
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“I thought Mercury was just too good to pass up,” Eck said. “And I think there’s something for that — guys who are high-value students, there’s some things that go around with that. The discipline, the toughness to graduate in three years and be a second team all-conference player at any place in college football, that just shows some of the characteristics I wanted.
“So I said, ‘you know what? Let’s take another one.'”
FCS to FBS
What do Eck and former Heisman winner Eddie George have in common, outside of both playing in the Big Ten in the 1990s?
Both were two of six FBS head coaches hired directly from the FCS ranks last offseason (George went from Tennessee State to Bowling Green) — the same amount as the last six hiring cycles combined. This, of course, followed a recent trend that saw notable FCS head coaches — for instance, Choate at Montana State and Entz at North Dakota State — take Power 4 assistant jobs to boost their stock for potential Group of Five jobs.
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Which begs the question: Is it becoming easier to get an FBS head coaching job from the FCS ranks? At least from their experience, Choate and Entz didn’t seem to think so.
“I interviewed for a bunch of them and I got told, ‘you better go get a different logo on your lapel,'” said Choate, who left Montana State to spend three seasons as Texas’ co-defensive coordinator. “So maybe, (it’s) the success — the trend of, ‘hey, this guy has head coaching experience.’ I’m sure (Entz) would say the same thing — in fact, we talked about it yesterday — but he saw what I had to do and he’s like, ‘OK, that’s what I’m gonna have to do.'”
“Just with the salaries, the money that’s involved, I think people wanna know when they’re hiring someone, that they had the experience and it’s not too big for them,” said Entz, who left NDSU to spend one season as Southern Cal’s linebackers coach.
