Jimmy Cottrell led the nation in tackles as a college football player. Now, he's leading youth programs and more for Bernalillo County.

It’s not surprising that Jimmy Cottrell has made a career in sports.

He just never expected it to be the way he’s doing it now.

Cottrell, who gained a measure of notoriety when he was the country’s leading tackler for a New Mexico State team that went winless in 2005, has followed a nomadic and circuitous life trail.

It has taken him to Baltimore to briefly rub shoulders with a dominating Ravens defense, to NFL Europe, to being a volunteer assistant coach at Western Kentucky, then back to his native Colorado for more education and high school athletics, and finally all the way back to New Mexico, where he is now the manager of Bernalillo County’s Sports, Fitness and Aquatics Division.

“It’s a unique story,” he said with a laugh.

Indeed, it’s a tale filled with as many twists and turns, ups and downs as an out-of-control rollercoaster.

Top tackler

Cottrell arrived at NMSU only after other options, such as Oklahoma State, dried up after coaching changes. He was forced to redshirt his freshman season after a foot injury, but then fulfilled his goal of being a four-year starter at linebacker and remains third on the school’s all-time tackles list.

As a 6-foot-1, 238-pound middle linebacker his senior season in 2005, Cottrell was one of the few bright spots in an otherwise dismal 0-12 Aggie campaign. His 179 combined tackles (solo and assisted) led the nation and set an NMSU single-season record. In his final collegiate game, a 24-21 loss to Utah State, Cottrell recorded 25 combined tackles, one off the school’s single-game record.

Though he earned honorable-mention All-America status, the NFL Draft came and went without Cottrell’s name being called.

Quite popular as an undrafted free agent, he signed with Baltimore.

Cottrell spent his rookie season on the fringes of the active roster and the practice squad, although he never got to play in a regular-season game.

“Unbelievable experience,” he said. “Just to be around those guys and absorb as much football knowledge as possible was amazing. On that team was a number of Hall of Famers — Jonathan Ogden, Ed Reed, Ray Lewis, so just to see how they went about their business and were professionals, was incredible.”

Cottrell injured his shoulder during that preseason but didn’t tell anyone, so it went untreated. After that season, Baltimore sent him to NFL Europe to play with the Frankfurt Galaxy, where he thoroughly blew out his shoulder.

He spent the next year with Baltimore on the injured reserve list, but the Ravens waived him following the season.

Moving on

While other teams came calling, his body still hurt and he decided it was time to move on. He ended up at Western Kentucky University, where he earned a master’s in recreation and sports administration with a concentration in athletic administration and coaching.

Cottrell also volunteered as a graduate assistant with the Hilltoppers football coaching staff. The goal at the time, he said, was to get into college coaching.

A change at head coach left him without a coaching position, but he landed a job with the university as an instructor for sports administration for undergraduate courses and in the athletic department.

After three years of that, Cottrell went back to Colorado, starting a PhD program at Northern Colorado, but dropped it to get back into the work force.

“I realized I couldn’t really make any more money with the PhD and sports administration, so I worked in the UNC athletic department for about four years,” he said. “But I had initially got my master’s with the idea or ambition of being a high school athletic director. So in 2017, I switched over to high school athletics, and I was a high school AD at some of the smaller schools.”

After COVID all but wiped out high school sports in Colorado, Cottrell set his sights elsewhere.

Family matters

“My girlfriend in college was an athletic trainer. She’s from Albuquerque with West Mesa,” he said. “We had broken up right about the time I finished my playing career, but we remained really, really close friends, and we had the agreement that if we made it to 40 and we’re still single and childless, we would get together and have a kid. So in 2023, I moved out to Albuquerque. And her and I got back together and are trying to start a family.”

And that’s when he found work with Bernalillo County, initially hired as a community center manager.

“And then, fortunately, the sport and aquatics section manager position opened up and led me to transfer over to running sports programs,” Cottrell said.

Now he oversees youth programs — which he hopes to expand — adult recreational leagues and aquatics with three seasonal pools and one year-round. Cottrell supervises nearly 20 full-time employees and as many as 60 seasonal employees, many of them younger life guards.

It’s the latter that can get him out of his comfort zone.

“Challenging and just a little scary at times,” Cottrell said, while crediting aquatics program manager Ashlee Bentz with making the operation run smoothly.

Always training

Between the two, they have implemented a program in conjunction with the Bernalillo County Fire Rescue.

“It’s a lot of young adults, high school kids, college kids, who, just by nature may not understand the seriousness of their role,” he said. “But we’ve really worked to not only educate them and provide them training but also work with and partner with fire and rescue, to have some of those first responders teach them what it’s like to be in some of these life-saving situations.”

The training is working, Cottrell said, which was demonstrated by an episode earlier this year.

“We had a potential drowning this summer down at South Valley Aquatics Center, where the staff did phenomenal,” he said. “The young swimmer, we counted out, he was underwater for just over a minute, about 62 seconds before we got him out. They went through the proper CPR administration, attached the AED (automated external defibrilator), got him back and he made a full recovery.”

It’s something that just might allow him to sleep a bit better at night.

“So that was not only scary,” Cottrell said, “But also very reassuring that we are going through the right training and taking the right steps to educate our staff, and that they took it and then were able to implement it in such a serious life saving event, so we’re on the right track.”