Texas A&M-Texarkana is expected to name UTEP run game coordinator and tight ends coach Joshua Eargle as its inaugural head coach, sources tell FootballScoop.
As detailed by FootballScoop earlier this fall, Texas A&M-Texarkana will launch football in 2027 and the school plans to be competitive immediately. The program will play in a brand new 8,000-seat stadium with all new facilities, and the school will fund all 36 scholarships, the maximum allowable number in Division II. Furthermore, enrollment has grown more than 40 percent since the hiring of Dr. Ross Alexander as president, a former Division II all-conference offensive lineman.
Eargle spent 2013-15 as the head coach at East Texas Baptist, a Division III school 70 miles south of Texarkana. The Tigers won a share of the American Southwest Conference championship in his third and final season of 2015. Since then, Eargle has been the offensive coordinator at Austin Peay, a senior analyst and tight ends coach at Kansas, a senior off-field staffer at Memphis, the tight ends, offensive line, and deputy head coach at FIU, and then spent this season as an assistant on Scotty Walden's UTEP staff. Walden was Eargle's offensive coordinator at ETBU.
Eargle brings with him plenty of experience at both the Division II level and connections within the East Texas/Arkansas/Louisiana corridor. He was previously the offensive line coach at Ouachita Baptist, a Division II school in Arkansas, the offensive line coach at Nicholls State (FCS - LA), the offensive coordinator at Division II Arkansas-Monticello, and the defensive coordinator at Division II Southeastern Oklahoma State. In between, Eargle was the defensive coordinator at Hallsville High School in East Texas.
"Obviously Texas may be the best state in the country from a recruiting standpoint," a program source told FootballScoop. "In this area of Texas, there's not a lot of other schools -- there's kind of a pocket here so recruiting-wise we're going to have access to a lot of under-recruited players. There are some awesome high school programs here in town. There are some premier high school players in this region but not a lot of colleges. We're only two hours from the Dallas Metroplex, only a few hours from the Mississippi JuCos."
The state of Texas has seen a number of start-up programs find instant success. UTRGV went 9-3 in its freshman season this fall at the FCS level, and Incarnate Word has won four conference championships and reach the 2022 FCS semifinals after starting as a Division II program in 2009.