East Texas Baptist head football coach Scotty Walden has resigned his position, moving on to Southern Mississippi as an inside wide receivers coach. He coached at ETBU for four years and was the head coach for one year.
Walden was, by all accounts, the youngest head coach in college football last season, at age 26.
He will be replaced by Scott Highsmith, who last season coached wide receivers and was the passing game coordinator. He becomes the fifth head coach since the program was restarted in 2000.
Walden went 7-3 in his only season as the head coach in 2016 at ETBU and was the offensive coordinator for three years. ETBU had one of the most dynamic offenses in all of NCAA in those four years finishing in the top 10 in NCAA Division III in several categories. This past season his offense was the top scoring offense in all of NCAA at 49.9 points per game. Walden came to ETBU in February 2013 and was the offensive coordinator under Joshua Eargle for the 2013, 2014, and 2015 seasons.
Walden’s offensive schemes broke numerous ETBU single game and season records in four years. ETBU’s offensive players also rewrote single season and career records and received national and American Southwest Conference awards.
ETBU’s football program has now had back-to-back winning seasons and were tri-champions of the American Southwest Conference in 2015. This past season they spent nine weeks ranked in the D3football.com poll.
Highsmith, a former head coach at Belhaven, has coached under Hal Mumme and learned the “Air Raid” offense while being a part of the “RPO” Tiger Tempo offense that Walden ran the last four years at ETBU. He spent time under Mumme learning about the high potent offense at Kentucky (1999-2000) and Southeastern Louisiana (2005-06).
At the NCAA Division II level, Highsmith coached at Southeastern Oklahoma State and McMurry University (then a D2 program). At the NAIA level, he was an assistant and head coach at Belhaven. In two seasons at Southeastern Oklahoma State, he served as the quarterbacks coach, recruiter and director of fundraising. In 2013, SEOSU went 7-5 and played in the Live United Bowl. Prior to SEOSU, he spent two seasons at McMurry as the running backs coach helping the War Hawks to an 8-3 season and winning the C.H.A.M.P.S Heart of Texas Bowl over Southern Arkansas. His first-ever collegiate coaching job came as a student assistant at Howard Payne in 1977.
Highsmith became a head coach in 2003 at Belhaven University and won eight games in two seasons. Belhaven competed in the tough Mid-South Conference and in those two years he produced four NAIA All-Americans. His offense in 2002 (assistant coach) and 2003 (head coach) led the NAIA in passing.