Jul. 21—Here are a few notes and quotes from last week's Mountain West Media Days in Las Vegas:
Jason Eck is one of the new guys on the block in the Mountain West.
But does that mean he's a new face to the league's 11 other coaches? Not quite.
In fact, New Mexico's first-year coach has connections with some of his peers, dating to when Eck was a little-known assistant outside the FBS ranks.
His relationship with Nevada head coach Jeff Choate didn't exactly start off on the best foot. When Choate was hired as Montana State's head coach in 2015, he decided to not retain Eck as the Bobcats' offensive line coach after Eck's first year with the program.
"He called me before he even arrived in town for his press conference and told me, 'hey Jason, if I was gonna be a head coach, I've known who I wanted to be my offensive line coach for 20 years,'" Eck said Thursday at Mountain West Media Days in Las Vegas. "And he, in fact, hired that guy (Brian Armstrong) and he's still with that guy."
Eck said he likes to tease Choate and tell him that was the "best thing he ever did for my career" after the former landed at South Dakota State. Living in Bozeman, Montana wouldn't have been nearly as affordable as Brookings, South Dakota, Eck added, and it was with the Jackrabbits that his career took off.
But at the time, Eck simply needed some moving boxes.
"He probably wasn't super happy with it initially, and then a couple weeks later, he's like, 'hey, my wife needs some boxes,'" Choate said Thursday. "And I said, 'well, come over to the house — we just moved, we got plenty of boxes.' And actually, my wife and his wife have struck up a friendship.
"And, you know, I have a ton of respect for the job that Jason did at Idaho, and I think he's a good dude, man."
While Eck was at South Dakota State, the Jackrabbits went 2-1 against Montana…
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Publish date : 2025-07-22 03:02:00
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