When Pete Fredenburg retired from Mary Hardin-Baylor in 2022, he had cemented his case as one of the most underrated Texas college football coaches ever.
The resume is astounding. Fredenburg started the Division III program from scratch in 1998. He compiled a 231-39 record and two national titles over 24 seasons. In that span, UMHB won more playoff games (47) than all other ASC teams combined.
But, somehow, four years after he hung up the headset, Fredenburg’s legacy only looms larger over Texas. The branches of his coaching tree are spreading across the state. In February, UMHB alum Lee Munn became the head coach at Southlake Carroll. Munn joins Austin Westlake’s Tony Salazar as a figurehead of Fredenburg’s second dynasty – this time in TXHSFB.
The more you look, the more Crusaders you find on high school coaching staffs. There’s Salazar and Munn, as well as Nixon Smiley head coach Paul Kirby. Lovejoy defensive coordinator David Branscom is a UMHB man, as is new Southlake Carroll DC Brian Sides. Not to mention Grapevine offensive coordinator Derek Sides, Brock defensive coordinator Jordan Mullinnix, and Sulphur Springs offensive coordinator Peter Medlock. We’ll cut it off there, because this entire article could be a list of coaches with ties to UMHB.
Why does this tiny, private Baptist university, with fewer than 4,000 total students, have such an outsized impact on the TXHSFB coaching world? Dave Campbell’s Texas Football spoke with Fredenburg, Salazar, and Munn to find out what made a successful UMHB football player, and how those traits have made them successful coaches, too.
“When you play Division III football with no scholarships, you’ve got to have a strong desire to continue to play,” Fredenburg said. “You’ve got to love the game. It’s just part of your DNA, and they were that way.”
The seeds of Fredenburg’s coaching tree were sown in the early 2000s with the type of high school players he recruited. Over nearly two decades as a DI defensive coordinator at Baylor, LSU, and Louisiana Tech, there were certain measurables a player had to have to get a serious look. Once he arrived at UMHB, Fredenburg threw every metric out of the window except one.
“We didn’t say you had to be this height or this weight or speed,” Fredenburg said. “But we wanted the coach to rave about them. Everybody that we recruited was probably the head coach’s favorite.”
That’s how Fredenburg signed Tony Salazar, a four-year varsity starter from Dripping Springs whom every other college program deemed too small to play safety. Salazar roomed with Fredenburg’s son, Cody, all four years of college. By his senior year, Salazar was an AFCA All-American and the conference’s Defensive Player of the Year.