Tony White knows the feeling will be odd Saturday when he looks across Memorial Stadium in Lincoln and sees UTEP on the other sideline.
As the defensive coordinator for Nebraska, the 45-year-old is tasked with finding ways to shut down and beat the Miners, the team that represents the city that made him and set him on a path that led him to the top assistant job for one of college football’s storied programs.
“El Paso is always special to me,” said White, a 1996 Burges High School grad. “I still have family there, the family I stayed with in middle school and high school. Somebody asked me today why El Paso was special. That started my football life.
“I had been in New York, in New York there wasn’t (high school) sports. You get to be a kid out in the city, out and about, out doing the wrong things, and all the sudden I go to Texas, MacArthur Middle School, and I played sports for the first time.
“I met my best friends. I made better grades. My whole football life, from player to coach, started in El Paso.”
That life brought him back to El Paso for the 2019 Sun Bowl when he was defensive coordinator at Arizona State and that shed light on his remarkable journey through Burges.
White moved to El Paso from the Bronx, where he had been living with his mother, in seventh grade to spend a year living with his father. When his father, a soldier at Fort Bliss, was transferred to San Antonio, Tony White and his mother realized the best option for his future was to move in with his best friend Troy Routledge and his family, including mother Barbara and her son/Troy’s brother James.
When White says he still has family here, that’s who he means.
At Burges, he became a star linebacker and earned a scholarship to UCLA, where he eventually played in the 2000 Sun Bowl before embarking on a three-year career in the Canadian Football League.
Through that journey his only contact with UTEP was a surprise recruiting visit to his (well, the Routledges) home after he had already committed. As a coach, Nebraska is White’s seventh school but for all those travels, Saturday will mark the first time he’s faced UTEP.
“I always root for El Paso, period,” White said. “The Jones brothers, the UConn basketball player (Tristan Newton), I root for El Paso and anybody who comes out of there and represents the 915. We always root for each other.
“When I got the job at Arizona State I hired (Montwood and UTEP alum) Robert Rodriguez to be the d-line coach. It definitely means something for UTEP to be good. I knew when they hired (coach) Scotty (Walden) he was the head coach they needed. Now we’re going up against him.
“I’m rooting for UTEP all year, minus this one game.”
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This collision course was set up before last year when White left Syracuse, where he had been defensive coordinator, for Nebraska to coach for newly hired Matt Rhule. While Nebraska hasn’t had a winning season since 2016, the name still has cachet.
“When I was at Burges in the mid-to-late 90s, Nebraska was college football,” White said. “When I was at Syracuse and coach Rhule got the job, he reached out and asked if I’d like to interview for the DC job. You’d be stupid not to explore the possibilities of being with coach Rhule and what he’s done.
“And at a place like Nebraska and the Big 10, that’s ridiculous. I interviewed and I was lucky enough that he asked me if I wanted to create a defense over here that would be one of the best in the country. I said yes, it’s been the best thing I could ever have done for me and my family.”
His family is wife Angela, 13-year-old son Anthony III and 10-year-old daughter Ava.
Under White, the Cornhuskers improved from 99th in total defense in 2022 to 11th last year, but White said that doesn’t start with him.
“It’s the creation of the Nebraska defense,” White said. “People think of coach Rhule’s background as mainly on offense, but when he was at Temple they created one of the best defenses in the country. Then when he went to Baylor, they were bad at the beginning, but when he left they were one of the top 30 defenses in the country and really good at sacks and takeaways.
“Then you look at the NFL (Rhule was with the Carolina Panthers before Nebraska) and they were one of the top defenses in the NFL. Everywhere coach Ruhle has been, he created a culture that fosters great defensive play.
“It was me coming over and adding in to what he does as a program, as a culture he created.”
The next task for that culture is shutting down UTEP, something that White thinks will be difficult.
Walden “is exactly what UTEP needs,” White said. “He’s energetic, he’s fiery, he’s an offensive guy. He’s scored points everywhere he’s been. They make it hard on you because you have to defend everything. Formation-wise, tempo-wise, they want to spread the field so they make you defend the whole field.
“He keeps you on your toes with trick plays, he keeps you on your toes with his decisions on going for it on fourth down. They make you defend everything and that’s difficult to do. You have to prepare or you’ll get embarrassed.”
Walden similarly heaped praise on White and said he’ll be a head coach soon. White doesn’t shy from that assessment.
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“As a coach you always role play, ‘When I’m a head coach,’ but I’ve had some really good mentors: Rocky Long, Herm Edwards,” White said. “The one thing that stuck with me from Herm Edwards, is ‘Hey man, be good at what you’re doing now and opportunities will come.’
“I’m more prepared now because I’m with such good leadership. I’m with people who have done it, done it the right way, done it on the stages where I wish to do it one day if I’m lucky enough. If I do a good job right now serving my guys on defense, serving coach Rhule, serving the defensive assistants, I believe those opportunities will come.
“But that’s not for me to say.”
That’s for the future. White’s present is at Nebraska, getting ready to take on UTEP in the Miners’ first game under Walden.
Bret Bloomquist can be reached at bbloomquist@elpasotimes.com; @Bretbloomquist on X.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Nebraska Cornhuskers coach Tony White cherishes El Paso, Texas roots
