SAN ANTONIO – Loud rap music pulses through the spring air as the UTSA Roadrunners arrive for practice. Players sway to the beat, shaking the morning out of their muscles. Later, as UTSA moves into individual drills, the rhythm slows and country breaks through. Instruction is happening, and second-year head coach Frank Wilson wants to make sure his coaches are heard. Toward the end of the session, 11-on-11 begins, and the beats per minute start climbing. Coaches and players shout on the sideline through the rhythms that spur the Roadrunners on.

It's a playlist Wilson designed specifically to carry the team through practice.

“I believe that music moves the human spirit,” Wilson told 247Sports this spring. “You go to church, they play hymns. You take your significant other to dinner for a romantic night, there’s a song that sets the mood. When we hit the field, we’re channeling in. We want energy, we want them flying around. But in games, stuff happens. You’re high and then something happens and you’re leaving off, the opponent band is playing and everything becomes subdued. How do you react in that environment?

“The music is meant to go up and down like that so we can deal with the different emotions throughout the game.”

That’s a glimpse into the mind of Wilson, a 43-year-old former high school assistant who’s paved his own path to the head coach’s seat.

Known mostly as an ace recruiter in his time at LSU and other stops in the Southeast, Wilson showcased his coaching acumen a year ago, leading the Roadrunners to their first bowl appearance in program history.

Wilson is a coach who schedules every minute of practice to the blade of grass position groups must stand on. Drills for quarterbacks and wide receivers are done perpendicular to each other, so they can join together quickly when the team starts to run routes. During the drills, Wilson wanders around the field, giving an adjustment for a running back here, a tip for a defensive back there.

His meticulous nature carries over into the locker room, too. When towels are left on the locker room floor, Wilson will post pictures of the misdeed around the facility.

Details matter to Wilson.

“You could tell he’s been planning all this for a while,” said UTSA Director of Operations Amanda Gilpin.

Yet, when Wilson took the job at UTSA, a stigma trailed him to San Antonio. One of the nation’s best recruiters – NFL.com named him the top recruiter in the country in 2014 – Wilson is known for the players he’s reeled in. From Leonard Fournette to Jarvis Landry to Derrius Guice, Wilson helped LSU land five Top 10 classes per the 247Sports Composite in six years in Baton Rouge. Yet Wilson never served as an offensive or defensive coordinator with the Tigers (he was Les Miles’ associate head coach for four seasons).

That caused some doubt when he arrived in San Antonio. Here’s what esteemed college football magazine Athlon wrote about Wilson after they ranked him 26th out of 27 hires following the 2015 offseason.

It’s no secret Wilson is an excellent recruiter and should attract plenty of talent to San Antonio. However, hiring a position coach for his recruiting ability with no experience as a coordinator or head coach on the FBS level did not go well for Memphis when it hired Larry Porter (2010-11).

But it seems there’s little doubting Wilson now.

"Let’s deal with what just happened," Wilson said. "A team that won three games the year before with the same talent won six, so there’s some coaching going on there.”

Two years removed from a 3-9 season, the Roadrunners drew seven first-place votes in the Conference USA preseason poll. Wilson’s name is already being linked to potential SEC openings, and parents of UTSA players have compared him to another local coach of some repute, five-time NBA champion Gregg Popovich.

***

Ask anyone about Wilson, and one of the most frequent descriptors you’ll hear is “genuine” or “authentic.” Everyone from his current players to hometown mentors describe him that way. Wide receiver Josh Stewart said Wilson is the same guy on camera as he is inside the locker room.

That quality builds trust. It’s also a key aspect of leadership, a trait Wilson’s honed since his days as a youth in New Orleans.

Wilson became a student body president for the first time in elementary school. He did the same in junior high. Later, in college while playing football at Nicholls State, he served as a member of student government.

Tyrone Casby, Principal of L.B. Landry-O.P. Walker High School in New Orleans, has known Wilson since he was a tyke. Casby said Wilson, even with kids around the neighborhood, would take charge during games and “want the best in everyone.”

When Wilson came back to New Orleans in search of a full-time coaching job after a one-year stint as a student assistant at Nichols State, Casby couldn’t hire Wilson at Landry (then a separate school from Walker). There were no positions open, and not even Casby, the AD at the time, could create one.

“I told him, ‘Hey Frank, we don’t have anything available right now. But I’m going to find something for you,’” Casby said. “But before I could, he’d been hired at Karr.

“The rest is history.”

Wilson, in three years as an assistant at Edna Karr High School, helped lead the program to only its second-ever state title game appearance. That led to O.P. Walker High School naming a then 26-year-old Wilson its head coach. In four years there, Wilson helped Walker reach its first-ever state championship game. Then in 2004, at the age of 29, Wilson became the Director of Athletics of the New Orleans Public School System. In that role, he put programs in place that partnered the New Orleans Saints and local colleges with NOPS programs, while building stronger recruiting pipelines for local schools through his connections.

It was this unique background that ultimately caught Miles’ eye in 2010 when he hired Wilson at LSU.

“I’d heard about him because he’d done some things nobody else had done,” Miles said. “He was already coaching (college) when I was (hired at LSU). A quality coach and a guy who was very competitive recruiting to schools that were, frankly, not as good as LSU.

“We were fortunate to get him.”

***

A recruiting meeting is underway at UTSA. Wilson sits at the head of the table, taking meticulous notes on everything said.

On the wall to his left is a whiteboard with hundreds of 2x6-inch magnets attached to the Roadrunners recruiting big board. Each recruit’s name, height, weight and 40-yard dash time is included. They’re sorted by class, with their place in the Roadrunner’s pecking order indicated by their proximity to the top of the board.

Wilson will later break down film of defensive backs – a position he never coached in college – with almost robotic detail. He notes everything from press technique to a lack of interceptions on a highlight tape likely indicating bad hands.

But it’s earlier in the meeting when Wilson displays the trait Miles said makes him special.

Wilson is discussing a 2017 signee who attended practice. The player had a prom date his mom didn’t approve of, and Wilson spent a few minutes after practice delivering some tough love with a directive to make up with his momma.

“You need to apologize,” Wilson said when relaying the conversation to his staff.

That’s a duty that has nothing to do with football. But it’s a skill critical to being a head coach.

“He was always doing the things that needed to be done,” Miles said. “That’s Frank. That’s the mark of a head coach. Doing the things that need to be done without really caring who got the credit.”

Wilson served as Miles’ associate head coach while at LSU, and Miles trusted him with many CEO-like duties. When Miles went on the road for the Tiger Tour – speaking to alumni in different cities across the region – Miles would do six talks and he’d assign Wilson four. Wilson also served as the program’s liaison to the police department and often handled disciplinary issues.

“The more you gave him, the more he did,” Miles said. “You wanted to ask Frank what his thoughts were because, generally speaking, he came up with a great view of the situation.”

Those responsibilities prepared Wilson to be a head coach off the field. The training as to what it takes to build a program came much earlier.

Ed Orgeron made Wilson one of his first hires when he took over Ole Miss in 2005. In 2008, Larry Fedora made Wilson his first hire – Urban Meyer actually wanted to hire him that year, but Wilson couldn’t get out of his contract. In 2009, Lane Kiffin made Wilson an early hire on his Volunteers coaching staff.

Wilson got to see three very different first-year head coaches go about the business of building their program. Those experiences helped Wilson create a plan for how he’d eventually build his.

“He had a vision when he got hired,” linebacker Josiah Tauaefa said. “I’m sure he had a vision since he started coaching. … When he got it, he took it and ran with it. You can see the results.”

In Wilson's first year, the Roadrunners doubled their win total from three to six and came close to faring even better. Six of the team’s seven losses were by 14 points or less, and three of those games were decided by a score or less. UTSA held a fourth quarter lead against Arizona State, and it was only one of two teams to hold Texas A&M to less than 24 points – Alabama being the other.

***

Even as Wilson attempts to shed the "recruiter" label, his prowess on the recruiting trail remains integral to his success. Last year, UTSA finished with the top-ranked recruiting class in program history. It held off teams like Baylor and Georgia Tech for prospects in its 27-man class.

Wilson is a rabid, systematic recruiter, and those traits amplify his ability to build relationships. That's why Wilson recruits well, no matter where he is. It’s also why he finds himself saddled with the double-edged sword of the “recruiter” tag. Good recruiters are valued highly – and paid well for it. But it’s also a brand that’s hard to escape. Once you’re known as a recruiter, especially in a case like Wilson’s, where he's never served as a college coordinator, it can be difficult to escape the perception as one attempts to move up the coaching ladder.

“For whatever reason, no matter how productive my position groups have been (at LSU, he put six running backs into the NFL), it always turned back to recruiting,” Wilson said. “So here we take over a team, and I’m thoroughly embedded with my team – offense, defense and special teams – from a schematic standpoint and in everything we do.

“For whatever reason, people have never recognized it.”

This is not a new stigma in college football.

Dabo Swinney just won a national championship, but for years people wondered if he could actually coach (just check out some of the tweets in this story). A position coach and ace recruiter before Clemson pegged him to lead its program, questions about Swinney’s decision-making trailed him until only a few years ago.

“It’s unfortunate,” Wilson said of the stigma. “There are some guys, I’m talking about elite head football coaches, who are elite recruiters as well. I’m talking about the Urban Meyers, the Nick Sabans and the Dabo Swinneys who recruit their behinds off.”

But most of those coaches also get credit for the X's and O's acumen – even Meyer, who, like Wilson, was never a coordinator.

“I think nationally the perception is: ‘He’s a really good recruiter, but can he coach?’" said UTSA Director of Player Personnel Jacob LaFrance. "Well, I think he proved those people wrong (last year).”

***

It’s Conference USA media days, and Wilson is holding court. At a sparsely populated gathering, there’s a line of cameras waiting to talk to Wilson and people all around his table.

In the hallway outside the ballroom, Conference USA Commissioner Judy MacLeod is cautiously praising Wilson.

“I don’t want to talk too good about him because someone is going to snap him up from us,” MacLeod said. “But he is fantastic.”

That’s likely the reality of Wilson at UTSA. Those around San Antonio know they won’t have him for too long. Wilson is a head coach on the rise, and that recruiter stigma appears to be receding – albeit slowly.

In Wilson’s UTSA office, there’s a frame on the wall containing a cover with Wilson’s visage. Above his face and bolded are the words: “Empire Builder.” That article came in an issue of Tiger Rag back in 2014.

Asked if he felt any pressure to have that type of praise heaped on him, Wilson’s response is short and serious.

“Nope. Not at all.”

Like the music, the cover is part of Wilson’s grand design.

He’s the architect now, not just a roster builder. It’s where he’s always planned to be.