Def. coordinator White returns home to El Paso

At its heart, the Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl is about bringing people from either side of the country together for a celebration of football in El Paso.

For Arizona State defensive coordinator Tony White, the return to the Sun Bowl as a player and now as a coach, is a uniquely El Paso story.

As an eighth grader at MacArthur Intermediate

School in 1992, White was given a choice few young teenagers get to make, a profound decision on the shape of his entire life.

He could stay with his military father, whom he lived with in El Paso in seventh grade, but was then taking a posting in San Antonio.

He could move back with his mother, Eva, who definitely wanted him back in the Bronx borough of New York City, where he attended the first six grades of school.

Or he could stay in El Paso, his home for one year, and move in with his best friend, Troy Routledge and his family.

“All my best friends were playing football, basketball, track,” White said. “Troy Routledge became my best friend. I got comfortable, everything about it was home.

“I didn’t want to leave.” Thanks to Routledge, and especially to Troy’s mother, Barbara, he didn’t have to. Ever since, he’s called El Paso home.

Where, exactly, White would be this weekend if he had picked option one or two is unknowable. What is known is that Door 3 led him on a path that has wound back to El Paso for the 86th Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl as the Sun Devils’ newly promoted defensive coordinator, facing off against Florida State University.

“Any time I get a chance to go back to El Paso I’m really humbled,” said the 39year-old White, who arrived in El Paso a few days before the rest of his team with his wife and two children to celebrate Christmas with the Routledges. “That place made me who I am. The whole city made me.”

Coming home to El Paso

That process started in seventh grade when White, a natural athlete, came to join his dad in El Paso and enrolled at MacArthur Middle School.

Baseball and soccer were the sports in New York and White played those at a recreational level, but seventh grade put him on a new track he quickly took to.

“The plan was to go to El Paso, stay one year,” White recalled.

“That’s where it all started. That was the first time I played football, that’s when I really started playing sports. We played football, that would end, then it was off to basketball, then track.”

Making it in El Paso, of course, involved Barbara Routledge, a single mother finishing up school, raising three children and taking in a fourth to her home on Parkland Street, across from Burges High School. Everyone had to some sacrifices.

Tory and Tony shared a room, shared the responsibilities around the house and always got along.

“The boys kept everything together,” Barbara said. “Tony was a rock in the family.

“Was it a sacrifice? I guess you could say it was a sacrifice, but it was a good sacrifice. I tell everyone, I felt very lucky.”

Troy’s (and in most senses Tony’s) older brother by four years, James, now the head football coach at Burges, said White made a quick impression on everyone.

“He didn’t seem like a little brother, he used to eat twice as much as all the rest of us,” James said. “He’d wear my clothes. He was always really mature, really nice, a guy everybody got along with.

“But he was able to flip the switch on the football field. He was a fierce competitor, he played on both sides of the ball, he had a lot of composure.”

Said Troy: “He was always one of the nicest kids growing up, everybody liked him.”

Becoming a star

White was always a goal-setter and usually a goal-finisher. James Routledge remembers him setting a goal in a taco eating contest to down 18 tacos. “And he did it,” James said. That part of his personality played into the reason he stayed in El Paso. As part of selling his mother in New York that he should stay in El Paso,

“I remember when he called his mom, he told her he if he could stay here he was going to be able to play football, then he could go to college and be successful,” Barbara said. “He did all that.”

White emerged as a star linebacker at Burges, he had options for college and at one point was leaning to Oklahoma State, but his eventual choice, UCLA, came on the radar late.

Like most teams in the country, UCLA was recruiting Irvin star running back Ed Stansbury.

Late in the process a linebacker who had committed to UCLA changed his mind. UCLA Defensive Coordinator Rocky Long called Stansbury and asked he and his coach, Tony Shaw, for recommendations. They picked White.

“I had been competing against Ed for three years, I knew him and coach Shaw as a rival coach and a competitor and here they are helping me out.”

White and Stansbury went to UCLA together where they became stars. To Stansbury, White was always more than a faceless competitor.

“Tony is somebody you can rely on,” Stansbury said.

“He was always a good student of the game, and he’s a good friend. He’s one of the great athletes this city has produced. He has El Paso in his blood.”