EDINBURG — UTRGV hired Travis Bush as the man to build the Vaqueros’ football program from the ground up, and while UTRGV won’t officially begin competing until the 2025 season, Bush made his goals for the program clear — to eventually compete for conference championships.
UTRGV is set to introduce Bush as the program’s first head football coach at a news conference open to the public at 11:30 a.m. Thursday at HEB Park in Edinburg, where the Vaqueros will play their home games.
“I’m so fired up about every piece and to hurry up and get down there and roll up the sleeves and get to work,” Bush said. “It’s been great. I’ve made contact with a lot of people by phone right now trying to connect with as many key people in the program, in the university and the Rio Grande Valley and try to start introducing myself and get to know them as well. I’m really excited to get down there, see everybody in person and start campaigning for the Vaqueros.”
It’ll be his second time being a part of building a brand new football program. Bush was an offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at UTSA from 2010-12 when the Roadrunners launched their team with a practice season in 2010 before officially starting in 2011, just as UTRGV will do in 2024 and 2025, respectively. This time, Bush will be the head coach of a program that lays the foundation for Division I football in the Rio Grande Valley.
“It’s awesome to have the chance to start something from scratch, having the experience of doing it before as an assistant, and now all the stops and resources that I’ve had the opportunity to be around — to now culminate all that into building a program is going to be pretty unique and exciting,” said Bush, who has 14 years of Division I coaching experience, eight years of high school coaching experience and one year in the National Football League.
Bush’s stops at TCU as a graduate assistant from 2001-04, as an associate head coach, co-offensive coordinator, quarterbacks coach and receivers coach at Texas State from 2004-2010, as an offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at UTSA from 2010-12 and, offensive coordinator, quarterbacks coach and running backs coach at Houston from 2012-14 have all influenced his career as a football coach. He combines his experience from the Division I level, his time as a coach in the NFL and turning around two Texas high school programs in Texas all together to build UTRGV’s first football team.
“There’s pieces of each stop, of each coach I’ve had the ability to work with that have kind of shaped the programs we’ve been running and you’ll see some pieces of them in the program we’re going to build at UTRGV,” he said. “It’s a combination of everything we’ve learned over the years and putting that into our personality, combining that with the culture of the Valley and UTRGV, the vision of president Guy Bailey and (vice president and director of athletics) Chasse Conque and building that thing from scratch. It’s going to be fun.”
He’ll also use the valuable experience learned from his father, Bruce Bush, a member of the Rio Grande Valley Sports Hall of Fame and Texas High School Coaches Association Hall of Honor. The older Bush served as head coach at PSJA High in 1981-82, Donna High in 1995-96 and PSJA North from 2008-2011, in addition to Alice, Gregory-Portland and San Marcos. His coaching tree can still be found across the Rio Grande Valley as teams still run the Slot-T offense. The younger Bush credited his father as one of his biggest influences as a coach.
“There’s things we do at the Division I level that were done at Pharr-San Juan-Alamo High in the 80s and that’s the beauty of this game. Building that culture and that toughness — the game’s still the same — it boils down to fundamentals, toughness and chemistry,” Bush said.
Every place Bush has been has seen upticks in offensive production due to his contributions as coordinator or position coach. He aims to bring a style of football that puts up points on the scoreboard and the Rio Grande Valley in the seats.
“(We’re going to play) definitely an exciting brand of football. That’s what’s going to put people in the stands. Schematically, offensively and defensively, we’re going to be on the cutting-edge of everything you see in Division I college football,” Bush said. “Offensively, the stuff we’ve done even dating back to the Houston days. Rest in peace to Mike Leach, who passed away last night, has been a huge impact on the offenses we’ve been running and the air raid style offense. Being able to recruit to that and have some exciting, explosive offenses. Defensively as well, staying at the cutting-edge of everything we need to do defensively and being aggressive by nature. “
While the Vaqueros won’t play their first official game until 2025, Bush will spend the next year building a staff and visiting and learning from Division I programs such as Baylor, TCU and UTSA. He’ll also be studying the competition in the Western Athletic Conference in order to build a UTRGV team that can contend for conference championships.
“We want to be competing for championships in conference at some point, but we need to go see what are we playing against talent-wise? What are we going to have to recruit to compete for championships? What are they doing offensively and defensively?” Bush said.”What are we going to have to defeat, defend and attack, so a lot of that goes into that initial time frame. Bottom line, we’re going to bring the most cutting-edge and exciting styles of offense and defense to the Rio Grande Valley.”
UTRGV will sign its first group of student-athletes in 2024 and another class in 2025 to compete later that fall. Bush also said the program will have an opportunity to find talent in the transfer portal, something UTSA couldn’t do when launching its team in 2010-11.
“Right now, it’s about taking the 30 best football players we can and starting a foundation there and we’ll sign another class in 2025,” he said. “The ability of the transfer portal makes this a different job than UTSA. When we kicked off there, we had freshmen and true freshmen because we weren’t able to get transfers in. Looking at that piece as well, we have the ability to have some upperclassmen when we kickoff, possibly in some certain positions. We’ve got to build starting from scratch, we need to build a culture and a foundation first as well, and I think that’s going to be built with Texas high school football kids.”
