By Bill Oram

| The Salt Lake Tribune

Step aside, Brian Johnson.

Youngest coordinator in major college football?

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Yawn.

Just when you think you’re ahead of the game for your age, you learn of a guy like Michael Tompkins.

Tompkins is 24, too. He turns 25 in March, which makes him younger than Utah’s new offensive honcho, who hits the mark at the end of this month.

And get this: Tompkins is the new baseball coach — the new head coach — at Alabama A&M, a Division I institution in Huntsville, Ala.

A native of Walla Walla, Wash., Tompkins played collegiately at Walla Walla Community College and then Centenary. He graduated and promptly became an assistant at A&M, where his Centenary coach, Ed McCann, had been hired.

McCann resigned in January for health reasons and believed Tompkins, who had been playing first base and pitching for him a year and a half earlier, was the best candidate to succeed him.

And why not? He’s hardly the 24-year-old you remember from college. He graduated on time. He doesn’t play video games or live with roommates.

Unless you count his wife, Becky.

The couple have been married for 2 1/2 years, and they have two dogs, Abby and Joey, and a cat named Callie. In college, Tompkins would play ball, then go home and hang out with his wife and dogs.

Forty may be the new 30 and 30 may be the new 20, but 24 appears to be the new in-bed-by-9:30.

Which is why Tompkins — and, I’ll go out on a limb and say Johnson — was elevated to his status at his age.

"My guys make fun of me because I haven’t watched ESPN lately either," Tompkins said. "That’s just another one of my, for lack of a better word, ‘old man’ habits."

The son of a Walla Walla County commisioner, Tompkins was quite a player in his time. He led DeSales High School, a small Catholic academy in his hometown, to four Washington Class B championships.

"He hit two balls in County Stadium in Yakima that they probably still talk about," his high school coach, Kim Cox, said.

Probably because they were 15 minutes ago, give or take.