Joe on utepia

Miner coaching pay

I'm not begrudging Steve Alford getting a six-year contract worth a reported $975,000 a year to coach basketball at New Mexico.

UTEP coaches are hard-pressed to get $300,000.

This tells a lot. It means El Paso has to move forward, get itself a tax base and be home to more than just one guy who sponsors the Sun Bowl and another two or three who build Durham Centers and basketball complexes (coming soon).

We haven't been business friendly until lately. Wow, we're getting a factory outlet mall. Did you know we are the last big-size city in America to get one?

Some may argue that New Mexico can pay that much money to a basketball coach because The Pit seats some 18,000 and good Lobo teams draw sellouts. The Don seats just under 12,000 and the Miners draw when they win, too. But check those ticket prices.

El Paso has to get moving. When a smaller city near here can agree to pay a coach $975,000 for six years ($5.9M). It kinda shows El Paso where it is on the businessman's trail.

People who say, "Oh woe. We're poor," are the ones who keep El Paso from getting places.

Spring football

There should be no spring football practice. The NCAA should disallow it.

The three or so weeks of August two-a-days and such is plenty of time for players to show their stuff to coaches, and for coaches to decide who's best for quarterback or whatever.

Here's why they have it: Coaches have nothing else to do this time of year and, OK, they like it. They're football coaches.

But players despise spring football. Ask anybody who used to play college football. Ask somebody who blew out a knee in spring football. And there's not a coach's wife in America who likes her football-coach husband having to be engrossed in spring football like he's engrossed in preseason drills, the season and the recruiting season ... oh, and then he's off to a clinic. Holy smokes, "Are you ever going to be home?"

College football has become too consuming. So have most sports. Let the poor kids alone.

What ever happened to the word "season?"

Basketball team leader?

Before Miner basketball fades into Off-Season Land, this question:

Does the team need a player-leader to be successful in 2007-08, what with three new, young, talented recruits — all question marks, of course — due in town?

There didn't appear to be such a player this past season, and the Miners had a losing record and a terrible fade in the late season. No glue. The ship creaked, fell apart and ended up awash.

Stephon Jackson was the team's top statistics man, but he was not a floor leader. In fact, going back through the season, it was Jackson who made some big mental blunders during clutch times, starting with the time-out call immediately followed by the foul off the ball at New Mexico State.

Leaders don't mess up in close games. You're a leader if the other players want to be "clutch" like you.

I don't think a new player, especially a freshman, can come in and be a team leader his first year. Texas had the best player in the nation in freshman Kevin Durant, but I don't think anyone called him the "team" leader.

It's nice to have a team leader who's a go-to guy both on and off the court. That helps coaches a lot.

But if you have to choose one or the other, I think it's important to have a leader on the floor — a floor general, a.k.a. a good Don Haskins-type guard.

Let's watch and see how Jackson, the virtual one-man Miner show, will react if one, two or all three of Coach Tony Barbee's young recruits come to town with a whole lot of bursting-out talent.

Good teams are TEAMS. They have to be ONE, not one star going to the hoop hell-bent or whatever.

If Jackson can be a go-to AND a general, then the program will be on the upswing.

He has yet to show signs he can do that.

Don't expand NCAA Tournament

Do not expand the NCAA Basketball Tournament field, as some suggest. More teams would dilute what's much of the fun.

Did you know pining and heartache is fun? Well it is. You don't have to have $50 riding on a final-second free-throw attempt to have that "my team" feeling in your gut.

The anticipation of your favorite team(s) making the field takes up a large part of sports talking in February and on into the conference tournament weeks.

Selection Sunday is an edge-of-the-seat day.

Discussing who got rooked, and who shouldn't have been invited, is having "sports fun."

You can play any sport if you're a fan. You are an expert because you said you are. You're right in there with the coaches, the players and the officials. All you need do is choose one side of a sports debate and you're a player.

And, also important, make the regular-season wins and losses count as much as possible.

Having 64 of the 325 Division 1 schools play for the championship is the way it should remain.

Host NCAA 1st Round

Over the years people have wondered why UTEP doesn't bid to host an NCAA Tournament weekend?

Whereas it is not difficult to interest the NCAA, it is difficult to form the committee to first impress the NCAA and then get people to do the leg work. And there is a lot of kiss-up work involved. You've gotta recruit the NCAA.

For the most part, schools don't host NCAA Tournament games, cities do. Big cities have tourism and convention bureaus that can handle everything from sports events to national conventions.

UTEP, for example, doesn't have a large enough Athletic Department staff to begin to do all the work necessary for an NCAA, plus run its own programs. Few schools do. The NCAAs take months of preparation.

El Paso needs an organized city effort. First decide if it wants to put together an incentives package that will allow the NCAA to place eight schools, with their fan contingents, in El Paso. The Haskins Center is big enough. And there is enough hotel capacity. We have a good airport. We eat well in El Paso, too.

The NCAA will look at hotel rates. Free cars. You know, perks.

Then organize people representing the city, chambers of commerce, Sports Commission ...

How about the staff and the hundreds of people who do such a good job on the Brut Sun Bowl and all the other Sun Bowl-related events? They definitely know the ropes.

To stage any round of the NCAA Tournament it takes dozens and dozens of well-organized people. You can't just ask the local college to put in a bid.

Some bloggers are deciding if UTEP would be better off back in the WAC rather than staying in Conference USA.

Some history (many of you real-smart bloggers already know this):

The WAC used to be made up of the present Mountain West teams: BYU, Utah, New Mexico ... The WAC is now the league where teams desperate to remain Division I-A in football try to remain alive.

The WAC schools' chronology: The better Pacific Coast Athletic Association teams went to the Big West. Then, when the good WAC teams bolted to form the Mountain West, the good Big West teams filled the void in the WAC. Schools staying behind in both cases do not play Division I-A football anymore.

Then, when the WAC looked a tad weak (money from TV contracts), the Texas WAC teams (UTEP, SMU and Rice), along with Tulsa, went to C-USA, which had just lost its national-caliber basketball teams to the Big East. UTEP was supposed to clean up in its basketball division.

Nowadays, the WAC (West) and Mid-American (Midwest/Mid-East) are last-standers among Division I-A conferences.

So, look for Boise State, because of its football team, to be admitted to the Mountain West as soon as possible. And Nevada and Fresno State will be fighting to get in, too.

Good football schools don't want to be in the WAC. Teams in the WAC part of the country want to be with the old WAC (now Mountain West): Brigham Young, Utah, Wyoming, Air Force, Colorado State, New Mexico, UNLV, Air Force, San Diego State and newest member TCU.

If the Mountain West goes to 12 schools, so it can have two six-team divisions then ...

You guessed it. UTEP will be fighting hard with Boise State, Fresno State and Nevada to be one of the two.

Why two six-team divisions? So football division winners can play a national TV game (make money) for the right to go to a bigger bowl. Like the Big 12 and the Southeastern Conferences, as an example.

Remember the schools that bolted the WAC to form the Mountain West left UTEP behind. UTEP was awful in football then. The Miner program offered the WAC nil as far as making TV money.

A year ago at this time, UTEP would have looked good to the Mountain West because its football and basketball teams were filling the stands and both were making post-season appearances.

UTEP would love to be back in the Mountain West, not the WAC.

Miner talent

Did you notice UTEP's basketball players went right at, and often over, Memphis Thursday?

UTEP's players matched up quite well with the raw-talent-laden No. 6-ranked team in the NCAA.

We've not seen that before, and I'm talking maybe ever. We've seen the same intensity in a lot of previous teams, but never the overall sheer flying-high athletic ability of this team. No, not even the Hardaway/Foster/Davis team. That was more of a great guard and two real big guys.

Certainly there have been many, many better overall basketball teams in Minderdom. They were teams that used good talent that played smart on offense and defense. Recall all those upset wins by Coach Don Haskins. He usually won with controlled tempo and good defensive placements.

A top-25 team is a combination of this year's athletic fly-high/dunk/block, but under the controlled style (smarter play) of Haskins teams.

A national championship contender would be one step up from that. Guys would also be taller than their opponents, position by positon.

UTEP, which supposedly has even better athletes coming in next year, has shown it has the one needed ingredient you can't coach — sheer talent. If Coach Tony Barbee can now instill some Don Haskins-style team play, the Miner program won't look as bad off as it has looked prior to Thursday, when the No. 6 team had to rally late for an 11-point win.