Kimberly Eck walked into the hospital to visit her doctor on the morning of Dec. 23, 2010. She was due in January, and she wanted reassurance that the baby was on track to arrive in the new year. A Christmas birthday, she figured, was the worst birthday a kid could get.
The doctor told her not to worry. She wasn't dilated and there were zero signs of an imminent birth. That night, Jason Eck came home late from work at Ball State.
The Cardinals had fired Stan Parrish a month earlier, and new coach Pete Lembo had spent some time evaluating the staff and he made his decision on the offensive line coach. "I went into labor that night and had him on Christmas Eve," Kimberly said. "Literally, it was like my fastest delivery, two hours.
So it had to have been stress." That baby, Palmer Eck, is now a sophomore quarterback at La Cueva High School in Albuquerque. His father, a burly, larger-than-life former offensive lineman with a personality to match, is now the coach at New Mexico and one of the hottest names on college football's coaching carousel. New Mexico had one winning season in the 17 years before Jason Eck arrived two years ago.
The Lobos are now 7-1, unbeaten in the Mountain West and ranked in the AP Top 25 for the first time in school history. Eck, 49, is 16-5 in two seasons leading the Lobos and 42-18 overall as a head coach. Eck's turnaround projects at Idaho and New Mexico have looked easy, but they haven't been.
He spent 23 years as an assistant coach, worked for 12 different head coaches, was out of work about four times and spent one offseason working at a university golf course. Now everyone in college football wants a piece of him, and Eck knows it. "I think the players and coaches are kind of mirrored right now," Eck told CBS Sports.
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