Jason Eck Nearly Quit Coaching to Sell Turf. Now He Is One of College Football's Hottest Names

Jason Eck has turned New Mexico into one of the surprise stories of the college football season. The Lobos are 7-1, unbeaten in Mountain West play and ranked in the AP Top 25 for the first time in school history. Before Eck arrived two years ago, the program had produced one winning season in 17 years. Eck, 49, is 16-5 in two seasons in Albuquerque and 42-18 overall as a head coach, making him one of the hottest names on the coaching carousel.

The rise nearly never happened. Eck spent 23 years as an assistant, worked under 12 different head coaches and was out of work roughly four times. One of the lowest points came in December 2010, when new Ball State coach Pete Lembo fired him. His wife, Kimberly, went into labor that same night and delivered their son Palmer on Christmas Eve. "Literally, it was like my fastest delivery, two hours," she said. "So it had to have been stress."

Eck next took an offensive line job at FCS Hampton for about $44,000, down from his $75,000 salary at Ball State. When he left after a year, the family had 30 days to vacate university housing, and Kimberly packed their belongings with three small children. "Three little kids and a Kia Sorento getting boxes from grocery stores," she said. At Western Illinois in 2012, the school fired head coach Mark Hendrickson and, rather than pay buyouts, reassigned the assistants around campus. Eck was sent to the golf course to service mowers and carts, then to a cubicle in the campus transit center.

Convinced the profession had chewed him up, Eck passed on jobs at a Mississippi junior college and at Valparaiso in 2013 and interviewed with FieldTurf for a sales territory covering Kansas and Missouri. "I mean, if I would have gotten offered that job, I would have taken it," he said. The company wanted a career salesman, so Eck emailed Minnesota State-Mankato coach Aaron Keen, a man he had never met, about an opening that did not yet exist. "And I was like, well, you might," Eck said. Keen hired him.

The Mavericks went 11-1, Keen promoted Eck to offensive coordinator, and about a month later FieldTurf called back with a job offer. "You know what, I gotta stick with this," Eck said. The next season his offense reached the Division II national championship game, a trip on which Kimberly became pregnant; the couple named that son Maverick. A 2015 move to Montana State ended with another staff firing, but asked whether she ever urged her husband to quit coaching, Kimberly said, "Never, never did."

At South Dakota State, head coach John Stiegelmeier told Eck what no boss had before: "I think you will be a very good head coach someday." Eck became offensive coordinator in 2019 and won the AFCA's FCS assistant coach of the year award. In December 2021, at 44, he became a head coach at Idaho, a program coming off five straight losing seasons. He took the Vandals to the FCS playoffs three straight years, went 26-13 and nearly upset Oregon in 2024, falling 24-14 while his son Jaxton, a first-team All-Big Sky linebacker, made 14 tackles.

Money stayed tight for years. Family summer vacations were funded by the annual tax refund: five days in Minneapolis, a Twins game and an amusement park. An unexpected tax bill in his first year at Idaho required a payment plan. "The whole first year at Idaho was getting out of debt," Eck said.

Eck took the New Mexico job on Dec. 14, 2024, one day after Idaho's season ended. He cited three reasons: the basketball crowds he had seen on television at The Pit, a rebuilt 10-team Mountain West opening up with Boise State and four other schools leaving for the Pac-12 in 2026, and athletic director Fernando Lovo, whom he calls the best AD he has been around. "I think a lot of the schools that have been traditionally basketball schools are people probably just choosing good basketball over bad football," Eck said.

Now, with agents courting his players through the transfer portal and NIL money, Eck told CBS Sports he handles the noise the same way he handles his own market. "It's always been this way for coaches, but now with the transfer portal and NIL, what players are going through is the same thing," he said, adding that his message to his players is no different than the one he gives himself. Palmer, the baby born in the chaos of the Ball State firing, is now a sophomore quarterback at La Cueva High School in Albuquerque.