UTRGV's Newfound Football Program is Winning in Year 1

UTRGV is 7-3 and has already made history with the most wins for a new Football Championship Subdivision team playing a Division I schedule. Picked to finish last in the Southland Conference preseason poll, the Vaqueros are 3-3 in league play and boast one of the highest-scoring offenses in the FCS.

“It's a brand new program, and it does not look like it's our first rodeo,” UTRGV athletic director Chasse Conque said.

Conque’s arrival in 2019 predated the referendum, but it followed a 2016 football feasibility study chaired by former Texas coach Mack Brown. Conque credits administrative continuity, community buy-in and philanthropic support for bringing the program to life.

It wasn’t long ago that the Vaqueros didn’t know where they would be playing home games. But in February 2024, UTRGV purchased H-E-B Park, the former home of the Rio Grande Valley FC Toros of the USL. That was soon renamed Robert and Janet Vackar Stadium in conjunction with a $20 million donation from the couple, natives of the Valley and major supporters of the university.

It was there that the Vaqueros played their first game on Aug. 30 against Division II Sul Ross State. UTRGV christened its newfound football program with a 66-0 victory in front of more than 12,000 fans.

“We felt like the Valley was ready for college football,” Conque said.

Hours south of football hotbeds in Houston, Austin and Dallas, UTRGV in Edinburg is closer to the Mexico border than it is to San Antonio. UTRGV was formed in 2013 — and first welcomed students in 2015 — when the University of Texas-Pan American merged with the University of Texas at Brownsville. UTPA, formerly known as Edinburg College, fielded a team known as the Broncs in the 1920s and again in the 1940s. 

All these years later, the Vaqueros brought football back to the Valley with an exhibition team in 2024 ahead of their first season. It’s still a young team, literally — Bush estimates UTRGV has the most redshirt freshmen of any team in the country. But Bush also hit the transfer portal to round out the roster.

“A lot of the guys we got, especially some of the transfers and the one-year guys, they've just been overlooked,” Bush said. “They've been pushed into the portal by other places, and they still felt like they had something to prove. And that's the way they're playing.”

Count Eddie Lee Marburger in that group. The Vaqueros’ senior quarterback spent his last four seasons at UTSA. He’s now among the FCS leaders in passing yards and touchdowns.

The lion’s share of the roster hails from the Lone Star State, Marburger among them. Bush said much of his team plays with a chip on its shoulder, which was apparent against Incarnate Word a few weeks ago. Plenty of Vaqueros players who grew up in San Antonio weren’t recruited by the Cardinals and were happy to put the beatdown on the preseason pick to win the Southland.

Bush said there are some through lines between his experience at UTSA and now at UTRGV. The ease of the transfer process helped this time around, as did having better facilities in place. Still, recruiting can be a challenge in that position because of the unknowns of a new program. That's how Bush ended up with, in his words, “a bunch of guys that love football.”

“The best part was you are starting from scratch,” Bush said. “You're not taking over a job where you've got to change a mentality, you've got to change personnel. We got to choose exactly who we wanted on staff, to choose exactly what we wanted on the team and really be able to build that culture, go recruit to that culture and recruit the staff that's going to buy into this and know what they're getting into.”

Conque said Bush is the right leader for the program and praised his talent evaluation and the culture he’s established in a short time. UTRGV is fifth in the FCS in turnover margin and ranks well in the penalty department.

“Early in this venture, you may not be the most talented, you may not be the biggest, strongest, fastest,” Conque said, “but the discipline they're playing with right now has been most impressive.”

Bush and Conque go back more than a decade; the former recruited the latter’s youngest brother, Zach, to UTSA. Though Zach never played for Bush, who left for a job at Houston, Conque got to watch the coach at work up close and personal during a visit. He kept up with Bush’s career, which took him to the NFL as an offensive assistant and then back to Texas in the high school ranks before he was hired to coach the Vanqueros.

“When we had this opportunity here, we knew we were going to start a football program,”  Conque said, “it truly was almost too good to be true.”

This is a time of great change in college athletics. UTRGV’s first year with a football team coincided with the House Settlement, which permits schools to pay athletes directly. The Vaqueros opted in.

Realignment is also ever-present, which the Vaqueros know all too well. They were originally set to compete in the Western Athletic Conference and then the United Athletic Conference before debuting in the Southland this season.

Despite some of the newfound challenges and costs that come with sponsoring a Division I football team, the formation of the team has lifted up the rest of the athletic department. Attendance has skyrocketed at baseball, basketball and volleyball games. Athletic revenue has increased tenfold over the last several years.

In the face of continued changes to college athletics, Conque said UTRGV is focused on sustainability and tapping into the budding fanbase in the Valley that has embraced the Vaqueros. Two games remain in their inaugural season, an unmitigated success by any measure.

“To see the Valley rally the way it has over the last couple of years,” Conque said, “definitely has our program a bit ahead of schedule from where we thought that we would be at this point.”