A clock in the office of Head Football Coach Larry Coker counts down the time remaining before UTSA’s first football game next fall.

The big story for the summer was the agreement with Northside ISD in July for use of Dub Farris Stadium as UTSA’s practice facility.

“We don’t have a stadium on campus or a practice facility, so we have had to go to Dub Farris, and we have had to work around the high schools,” Coker said. “We are in the process of raising money and building facilities.”

On the same day UTSA reached an agreement with Northside for the stadium, Bob Wills of the PM group presented UTSA football with a check for $50,000 to fund scholarships for UTSA football.

That check will provide for future players at UTSA.  The coaches have done everything to prepare players for fall.

“We sent our players workout schedules to give them a plan to go by to get conditioned.  Our coaching staff had a lot of busy work this summer such as putting out the playbooks.  It was a lot of grunt work.”

In the fall semester UTSA football will be busy recruiting players for national signing day in February and holding practices.

“The other thing we will be doing is going about figuring out how we want to practice,”  Coker said. “We have a lot of younger players and there are not any upperclassmen for us to say ‘follow his direction’ so we have to teach a culture.”

This goes past the gridiron and into the classroom. With no games this season, Coker has a lot of time  to help the young Roadrunners.

“We want the players to live that culture. Make sure they do the right thing–going to tutoring, academic coaching,”  Coker said. “That’s a huge thing for us to be able to have that luxury to focus on academics.”

In a year the Roadrunners will have to worry about somebody on Saturday but at least in 2011 it won’t be Texas or A&M.

“Our schedule is completed: it has no D1 teams, some 1AA teams, division 2. We play Cal Davis; we play Georgia State, a start up program out of Atlanta with Bill Cray leading that one,”  Coker said. 

“We are playing McMurry State, Eastern Oklahoma, my alma mater, and also playing two of the best teams out of the Southland–McNeese State and Stephen F. Austin. So we are playing really good teams from the outset, and it’s going to be tough.”

A tough schedule in 2011 and a busy fall in 2010 is what UTSA football has to look forward to.