It was the year 2000. The sun was hot in East Texas. Jeff Traylor, then an up-and-coming high school football coach, was ready for his first season back at his alma mater. He didn’t know it yet, but almost two decades later, the stadium would bear his name. 

That part could wait. Traylor already had a lot on his plate. He needed to reinvent the offense, establish a culture, and get this program back to winning ways.

Even then, he had a vision for the future, not only for Gilmer High School football, but for how his career would unfold. But even with incredible foresight, there was one small problem: He and his staff couldn’t see the football field. 

“I mean, very few people know this — my very first year, the press box was condemned, so we didn't have a press box,” he told the Waco Tribune-Herald two decades later. “We built two deer stands at the top of our stadium that our coaches could sit in.” 

That ingenuity never left him. It seeped into the way he designed offenses and ran up scoreboards. It was ingrained in how he connected with his players, staff, and members of the Gilmer community, and it would later pave the way for him to become a Texas coaching legend.  

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Texas high school football is the purest version of Americana. 

It’s small towns and community rituals. It’s Friday night lights, the band playing, and whole towns in the stands. It’s stories of grandfathers who played, fathers who coached, and sons doing their damndest to follow in their family’s footsteps. 

“It’s an identity thing,” explained Dr. Hunter Taylor, Clinical Associate Professor of Teacher Education at Ole Miss, and author of Draw the Line: Jeff Traylor, The Gilmer Buckeyes, and a Season Deep in the Heart of East Texas. “When I drive into East Texas to see my in-laws, it’s the first way my father-in-law and I will connect. We talk about local schools, who he thinks will be good this year, and what the district alignment is.” 

Long before his illustrious coaching career, Traylor lived out every Texas kid’s dream of playing for his hometown school. After graduation, he walked on at Stephen F. Austin as a reserve tight end. 

He earned two degrees before quickly cutting his teeth as a coach in the high school ranks, first as an assistant coach at Big Sandy High School, and later as an assistant coach at Jacksonville High School from 1993 to 1999, where he wore many hats in all three phases of the game. 

During his time in Jacksonville, he was directly responsible for developing the crème de la crème of East Texas quarterback families, platforming Josh, Luke, and Randy McCown, who all went on to have successful collegiate and professional football careers. He now coaches Josh McCown’s son, Owen, at UTSA. 

After seven years in Jacksonville, he returned to his alma mater, Gilmer High School, with his sights firmly set on transforming the program that helped shape him. What came next would be impossible to replicate. 

Over the next 15 years, he posted a 175-26 record (.871 win percentage) that ranks 10th all-time in Texas high school football history. He led the Buckeyes to five state championship appearances, three state titles, 12 district crowns, and was named four-time Texas High School Coach of the Year for Class 4A. 

Perhaps his most impressive feat came in 2014, when his offense averaged 59.4 points per game and 950 total points, the second-most in Texas high school football history at the time.

Dr. Taylor says Traylor has a “Ferrari of a brain” and operates like a “small-town CEO,” allowing him to connect with people unlike anyone he’s ever met. 

“If you go to Gilmer, everybody thinks they’re Jeff’s best friend,” Dr. Taylor said. “I’ve never seen somebody be able to connect with the business community, school board, teachers, coaches, administrators, and the community. It’s extraordinary.” 

Dr. Taylor first got to know Traylor while he was a basketball coach in the same district as Gilmer High School, and later while embedded with the Buckeyes’ football program for his book. 

Dr. Taylor said what stands out about Traylor as a coach is his uncanny ability to get the most out of people. 

“He’s got a great eye for talent,” Dr. Taylor said. “He’s always surrounded himself with special people that he knows have gifts.” 

Back in 2014, Charlie Strong arrived in Austin with a laundry list of to-dos.

Near the top of that list was to hire a coach who could get an outsider like him into the inner circle of Texas high school football. 

Soon after wrapping up the 2015 recruiting class without a tight ends coach, Strong eyed two prominent Texas high school football coaches: Cedar Hill head coach Joey McGuire (current head coach at Texas Tech) and Traylor. 

McGuire did not join Strong’s staff, instead choosing to stay at the high school ranks for a while longer, in part to coach his son, Garrett, who was set to be a junior quarterback that year. 

After a remarkable run at his alma mater, Traylor traded in the orange and black of Gilmer for the burnt orange of the state’s flagship football program. In 2015, Traylor served as the tight ends coach and special teams coordinator under Strong. A year later, he became the wide receivers coach. He won back-to-back Big 12 Recruiter of the Year honors before spending a year at SMU and two years at Arkansas. 

At the conclusion of his second season in Fayetteville, the college coaching carousel went full tilt. UTSA fired Frank Wilson after a poor four-year run. And roughly 48 months after going head-to-head with Wilson for the Roadrunners’ head job, Traylor got one more bite at the apple. 

He wowed the UTSA brass with his infectious energy and legendary recruiting prowess, and eight days after Wilson was fired, Traylor became the third head coach in Roadrunners’ history. 

This Saturday, UTSA will travel to Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium to take on the Texas Longhorns for the third time under Traylor.

Both previous meetings finished with lopsided final scores, as expected when a major-conference power hosts a smaller school from down the road. 

The initial matchup back in 2022 likely felt like a full-circle moment for Traylor. There he stood, the head coach of his own program, taking on one of the sport’s juggernauts who took his career to the next level.

This time, Traylor won’t be thinking much about his time wearing burnt orange; instead, he’s focused on learning from every stop on his remarkable journey. 

“I don’t think it’ll be as much about nostalgia as it will be viewed as a test for his guys,” Dr. Taylor explained. “I remember (after that first matchup), he talked about how Texas made adjustments, and he made note of what they did a great job of. He’ll have (his team) pumped and as ready as possible, but he’s going to be a sponge.” 

Sandwiched in between that first matchup in 2022 and the game this Saturday were a lot of firsts for Traylor and the UTSA football program. 

He’s led the Roadrunners to 50+ wins, captured a pair of conference championships, and recorded the most wins among FBS teams from the state of Texas since 2020. He’s turned the Alamodome into a House of Horrors for opposing teams and has quickly established himself as one of the top coaches in the Group of 6 ranks. 

In some ways, his run at UTSA has mirrored that of his stint at Gilmer.

He’s won at a place that had never won before. He’s built a culture that has staying power. And he’s doing it his way, the only way he knows how. 

“He can do more than just coach. He raises money at an elite level and is a great storytelling partner with the university,” Dr. Taylor said. “Jeff is really, really, really gifted and he’s built for this (rev-share era).”

Twenty-six years ago, Traylor saw something only he could. 

He saw something in Gilmer High School that no one else did. He saw something in UTSA before UTSA saw it in itself. He saw how his life, his coaching career, and his story would unfold, even if, in that moment in time, his staff couldn’t see the football field. 

“He paints dreams for everybody,” Dr. Taylor said emphatically. “I think that’s why people love working for him. They know it’s going to happen, but they don’t know when.”

College Football Week 3 is here, and the schedule is loaded with games that could get strange in a hurry.

We make our picks for LSU-Ole Miss in Oxford, Houston-Texas Tech on a short week, SMU-Louisville in a massive ACC matchup, Florida State-Alabama, Mississippi State-South Carolina, Florida-Auburn and more. Along the way, we dig into which teams we actually trust, which early-season performances might be misleading, and where weather, travel and matchup problems could create some very uncomfortable Saturdays.

We also hit Arizona State-Kansas in London, Kentucky-Texas A&M, West Virginia-Virginia and a long list of under-the-radar games worth keeping an eye on. Plus, we give our locks, potential letdown spots and the best window to actually leave the couch before the schedule gets serious.

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