Scotty Walden shares funny story of trying to avoid seizures, office window about to shatter while game planning through a live concert

Most head coaches spend their in-season nights buried in a quiet office with cut-ups running and a legal pad filling up. 

Scotty Walden got to do it recently while a concert by Karol G shook the building that houses his office.

Walden says he had to put a game plan together in his office at UTEP while the show went on at the Sun Bowl. Karol G played back-to-back nights there, September 5 and 6, the same weekend the Miners were finishing prep for their season opener. 

It is a funny image, and Walden has told it that way. It also lands on something real about where UTEP football lives right now.

"I got a taste of game planning while a concert is going on. That was pretty unique. I almost had a seizure in my office, I'm sitting there game planning and the lights are flickering in my face and my window is about to break, and I'm trying to figure out what they're doing on third down here."

"It was a very unique way to game plan this week. You've got to avoid all distractions."

The football offices sit right at the stadium, so when the lights and the sound go up, the coaches are inside working through it. Not exactly the quiet, controlled environment most staffs picture when they map out a week, let alone the week of the opener.

The Sun Bowl has become one of the better concert draws in the Southwest. Karol G's two-night run followed Coldplay selling out two nights there in 2025, plus stops from BTS and Post Malone, with a debate running locally about a bond issue and upgrades to the aging stadium. That is good money and good exposure for the athletic department and the city. It also serves as a reminder that the building the football program calls home does not always belong to the football program.

Walden knows the tradeoff, and he is not the type to sit around complaining about it. He took the UTEP job in December of 2023 after building a strong resume at the FCS level. He went 26-14 at Austin Peay with back-to-back conference championship game appearances and league titles in 2022 and 2023, was a head coach at East Texas Baptist before that, and served as Southern Miss offensive coordinator and interim head coach along the way. He is 36, which still makes him one of the younger head coaches in the FBS.

The results at UTEP have been tough. The Miners went 2-10 in 2025 and 1-7 in Conference USA, their final season in the league before the move to the Mountain West this year. Combined, Walden is 5-20 through two seasons in El Paso. The rebuild is certainly a full one.

That is the backdrop for the concert story. A young coach trying to change a program, working out of a stadium that doubles as a stop on a world tour, finding a way to get his opener game plan done while somebody else's sound check rattles the windows.

After a 51-10 loss to Oklahoma on the road, the Miners get Texas Southern at home this weekend before a trip north to The Big House to take on Kyle Whittingham and Michigan.

Stay tuned to The Scoop for more.