Joe on utepia

New UTEP

UTEP continues to be different from UTEP teams in memory. OK, history. No? OK, between now and cavemen.

For Miner fans, this is a positive. UTEP is finding ways to, shall one say, not screw up so much - and win. Now that's "different." This is October. UTEP was 0-3 to start the season and now the Miners are 3-3. They've never gone from 0-3 to 3-3, at least not since YOU WERE BORN!

Saturday, in a home game vs. Tulane, the "different winning Miners" were controlled by the Green Wave in the first half. But the defense  allowed zero second-half points for the first time ...

I'm saying not going back in regular history they didn't do that, not second-half points. I'm saying that's finding the last time it happened was in an archeological dig.

And UTEP won 24-21 in a second-half defensive battle. Defensive battle in the second half?

It started from the depths of an 0-3 season start, what a loser! Then UTEP won a home game against Conference USA defending champ Central Florida. Fluke? Then UTEP went to Southern Mississippi and won. Do two flukes make a right? UTEP was an underdog in both games.

Then Tulane came to town, after having played Alabama tough in the season opener, but losing last week to woeful Army.

Tulane dominated the first half scoreboard. Same old UTEP. UTEP couldn't stop the running game, and Tulane wasn't even trying to whip a weak UTEP pass defense. UTEP was being UTEP once again.

Enter the different UTEP. The Miners had a second-half defense, not just in the cluth of a wild and high-scoring game, but they had a defense the whole second half.

The chronology: First the Miners halted an 0-3 start from being one of those 1-11 seasons - you've seen them SINCE YOU WERE BORN. Now they, for the first time this season, showed defensive moxie.

This is not a prediction the Miners will continue to roll; the opponents get tougher in the conference. This is just saying, the Miners are different ... IN YOUR LIFETIME.

Miners turn ... decades-long corner

UTEP has not done this before ... I want to say EVER! I'm going back 40 years.

Saturday's two-overtime win, 40-37 on the road at Southern Mississippi, was a turnaround, a note for halting a trend in history. It sure seems UTEP isn't the old UTEP anymore. Go  back to 0-3 starts since I-10 came through Downtown El Paso and then find two UTEP wins in a row over decent-talented opponents. And there's a voila! Holy smokes, I proclaim, it means UTEP, now 2-3, will likely defeat Tulane next weekend and the season that started 0-3 may not be a bust by early October. It might be 3-3 by early October.

Let's have an encore - 3-3! Raise your hand if you said 3-3 after the 0-3. I can't.

"Mike Price for mayor" might not be back yet, but "Mike Price outta here" is outta here. I'm saying, NO MINER TEAM has come from such depths before! No coach has coached this type of comeback.

OK, so a week ago Central Florida had to use a rookie, green, raw, freshman quarterback, and UTEP confused him. And Saturday Southern Miss wasn't a great passing team and had several key, dumb physical penalties in the clutch. Those guys were undisciplined. I'm saying, for once in a long time, UTEP wasn't the bunch of dummies when the plays mattered. UTEP was the mature-acting team.

Not seen here is an 0-3 team turn it around, as has UTEP, with last week's win over Central Florida and then on the road vs. Southern Mississippi Saturday. Maybe somebody can look it up, but 0-3 Miner teams don't go 2-3. And Tulane lost at home Saturday to Army. UTEP will beat Tulane in the Sun Bowl next weekend because Army is ... Army is not a good football team and UTEP looks be be an improving football team.

We're not talking bowl game for UTEP here. We're not even talking winning season (no winning season, I say) We're talking NOT A BUST!

It could have been a bust. UTEP could have succumbed, several times, in Hattiesburg, Miss., on Saturday. Other UTEP teams, over decades, succumbed. But guess what. The defense didn't play great Saturday. The offense didn't play great. But the team - the program - played tough enough to win a road game. Erase the "not great" with "didn't screw up."

One can't say that until now.

UTEP rises - soars - to question-mark status

This has never happened before. Points-wise, sure. Reemergence from a free-fall season NEVER!

UTEP, 0-3 and on a 9-game losing streak - and just awful - is back to a question-mark football team. And that's saying something. There has been no such major improvement - crypt to question mark - since - I'm saying, ever. Miner teams don't do this and haven't done this before.

The Miners not only won Saturday, but they grabbed, shook and flung  defending C-USA champion Central Florida 58-13 in the Sun Bowl. They were picking those guys out of their teeth. The UTEP defense, not seen on its feet in three games, or a year, emerged by jumping out of the throat of the Central Florida offense. Voila!

What was seen ... three things:

A game plan put in by coaches that got a follow-through all the way to halftime.

There was a victory in the strategical halftime lockerooms. UTEP's minds beat their minds.

And there was a further kicking of butt in the second half.

This 1-2-3 hasn't happened a lot over the past (Time out while we count)

... 7 or 8 or nine coaches?

Now, this is not the time for the Miners to tear off their jerseyes and start beating their chests like Tarzan, or a Top-10 school. History still says the Miners are not a good football team. They are 1-3 and played well just once. Saturday's win is still a ... what the? How in the?

But it is a time to act like a confident team; put the win in the hip pocket and take the same vigor to Southern Mississippi next game.

The question-mark Miners! What a turnaround to the better ... from what it had been.

Coaching chronology

Here's a UTEP coaching chronology. Now that's it's gotten to Mike Price, what will happen? I'm off for a week's vacation.

Coach Bill Yung coached the running game, but wasn't winning games. He was gone after 1985.

Bob Stull replaced Yung, and inherited some good running backs (John Harvey). Stull recruited a junior college quarterback Pat Hegarty, who special. He was only in JC because he left Air Force. It wasn't that he wasn't smart enough to get into a 1-A school out of high school. And he had not offf-the-field proglems. Stull also got some receivers. After three years and a bowl game, he left for Missouri .

David Lee replaced Stull in 1989 and the cupboard was bare of upper classmen. Stull had gone the JC and transfer route. Plus, Lee inserted the option offense, with the dreaded wrap-around draw. Big mistake. It meand bringing in option-type (smaller, faster) players. He was a big bust and left a mess for the next coach.

Charlie Bailey, Lee's defensive coordinator, took over for Lee midway into the 1993 season, and Bailey was a Yung-like coach. He liked the big running back (Toraino Singleton). He was going so-so, when he decided to go for a winner and brought in a bunch of JCs. It was also a time UTEP was on probation and had some scholarships cut. Bailey, during one year, claimed he had fewer than 70 scholarship players (limit is 85). But he did build and it's generally believed he planned to step down and give the job to one of his assistants, knowing he'd leave the new guy a good team. He did. Bailey resigned in 1999, and Gary Nord got the job. The UTEP offense had been good that year, and Nord was the offensive coordinator. Bailey finished 5-7, and that was good for the sad times being had at UTEP.

Nord got a team loaded with veterans in 2000. He went to the Humanitarian Bowl his first year and finished 8-4. But then his cupboard was bare. Bailey's JCs were gone, there was no upper class to speak of. So Nord announced a "five-year plan" whereby he'd recruit freshmen and redshirt them their first year. Things didn't go well at all. So when he then said he was on a "six-year plan" he was pegged as not being able to get it done. It didn't look like he would. Mentally, too, the Miners had tanked. So he was fired after not having won more than two games in any of his next three seasons. But he did leave a bunch of upperclassmen (Q'back Jordan Palmer, all-purpose man Johnny Lee Higgins).

In comes Mike Price for 2004. With Nord's upperclassmen (Jordan Palmer, et al), Price went to two straight bowls and had two straight 8-win seasons. Now Price is down in the basement again. I'm saying he has no good upper class because he gambled, and lost, on some JCs and transfers (Fred Rouse, as one).

Bottom line: No UTEP coach in modern-day history has built a bad team into a good team; so far Bailey came closest by turning an awful Lee program into a decent running-game program.

Price has a history of a few down years in a row, but he's now on a nine-game losing streak and faces a tough opponent in defending C-USA champ Central Florida Saturday, then goes to a good So. Mississippi.

Sez here, it's probably time to leave the coach alone so he can be around when he, in fact, has a senior-laden team that he recruited. Unless attitudes tank, as they did with Nord, then Price might be the only coach to go from the cellar to the top, with his own players, at UTEP.

Miners in trouble

Not much looks good for the UTEP football team after losing 34-33 to New Mexio State Saturday in the Sun Bowl. It's now nine losses in a row and an 0-3 start this season. Is there anybody on the schedule UTEP is supposed to beat?

Hurt quarterback. Trevor Vittatoe was out most of the game with a bad ankle. No leading receiver. Moturi was hurt early in the game, too. Where was the top running back? Never even played.

And when the Miners still had a chance to win ... they fumbled (OK, it was the second team backfield that was on the field all night)

Then, with another opportunity, they couldn't catch two key passes. In big-time college football, you catch it! Everybody on the roster should catch the football!

And then sacked!

You don't lose to New Mexico State, which was on a six-game losing streak, in a home game, not when you're already 0-2 and need a win so badly to keep fan support.

Coach Mike Price will have to pull some magic to save this season.

Big game, different reasons why

This is rivalry week. But it's also make-or-break for UTEP's 2008 football revenue and New Mexico State Coach Hal Mumme's job.

The loser of the game REALLY loses something big!

If NMSU wins, it means UTEP will have lost nine straight games and prospects for big crowds the rest of the home season will be slim. UTEP, by the way, has a home game against a real good Central Florida team Sept. 27. A loss to the Aggies probably means three years in a row of falling-off revenue in Utepia. And no, Mike Price's job is not in jeopardy.

If UTEP wins, it says here the Aggies can't keep Mumme as coach. He already enters the game with a career Aggieland record of 8-30. But here's the big thing: NMSU is in danger of losing NCAA Division I-A status via the minimum-attendance rules. If the Aggies lose to archrival UTEP - and they'll be big underdogs to New Mexico the next week - few people will go to their games the rest of the season. In order to sell tickets for 2009, they'll have to dip into the old, old, old college football bag of tricks and fire the coach and hire some new, exciting, ticket-selling face.

Big game Saturday for Bob Stull's UTEP budget and Mumme's future as Aggie coach.

Can't handicap UTEP

Trying to put a finger on "how good is UTEP" might be may have to wait weeks into the football season — at least on the defensive side.

Not much was learned about the losses at Buffalo and to Texas, other than UTEP improved in Week 2 vs. Texas, but still gave up more than 40 points.

This week UTEP is idle. Can't learn much being idle.

The next game is a homer Sept. 20 vs. 0-0 New Mexico State, and not much will be learned about those Aggies because they play at Nebraska Saturday. The Aggies won't show anything Saturday for two reasons: They don't want to give away stuff, hoping to have surprises for UTEP. And, Nebraska won't let them do anything, anyway.

We do know the Aggies still run the scatter-gun pass, as always. You can't rush the q'back because he releases a dink the second he takes the snap. That doesn't make for a head-to-head football game. It does lead to a "head-games-to-head-games" night of football.

So that will be a different offense to defend, all together, compared to the more traditional regular pass/regular run offenses of Buffalo and Texas.

Maybe UTEP's 2008 identity will finally come into focus Sept. 27 against, uh-oh, a top team in its conference, Central Florida. Those guys shut out South Carolina State, ho hum, 17-0. No bid deal there. Then they lost in overtime to the Big East's South Florida, 31-24. Central Florida plays at Boston College Saturday so maybe there'll be some power-ratings material to study after that game. If Central Florida plays well against that established big-name school then Central Florida truly is a strong team.

But after the first three games of the season:

•UTEP will have been surprised by a big loss at Buffalo.

•Will have taken its expected mauling vs. now-No. 8 Texas

•And then will have to play fancy-passing archrival New Mexico State.

That's three totally different types of opponents to start the season. UTEP can't set into a pattern until at least the fourth game of the season.

UTEP didn't break

UTEP never really broke, it's levee wasn't breached, despite losing 42-13 to No. 10 Texas Saturday. That bodes ... well, it bodes that some adjustments on pass defense and the Miners (0-2) might not have a dismal season. I'm not betting on the adjustments being possible. They just might not have good pass defenders on the roster.

Had Texas ripped off an easy 42, then sent in the reserves to run time off , it would have been a true rout. But UTEP had defensive resistence throughout; we've seen games where the Miners were in physical and mental disarray by the third quarter. It's just that when Longhorn QB Colt McCoy wanted a long gain, he just threw the ball down field and usually was successful. A pass rush wasn't there, either.

UTEP's pass defense, especially in deep coverage, was awful, as it was in losing to Buffalo. It remains to be seen if that can be fixed. Both Buffalo's Willy and Texas' McCoy are top passers, but it still looks like the Miners will be weak in the secondary, perhaps all season. Last year's 117th-rated defense - two up from last in NCAA Division I-A - hasn't shown much improvement. The new 3-3-5 defense ... so far it's not working.

But here's the light: The Miners, unlike Miners of yore and even by October of the past two seasons, looked like they were mentally tough from beginning to end, and that's the bright spot Coach Mike Price can build on. Inability to play well in certain areas is better than losing heart when the other team takes a lead.

Texas never breached the levee. It never all fell apart for the Miners.

Keys to attainable Miner victory

First the funeral, then what UTEP and El Paso must do to get past Saturday's Texas game with body, self-respect and dignity.

The funeral is for the Sun Bowl Basketball Tournament, which is suspended (it's dead) for this season. It's about time. The announcement came Friday. Bet UTEP is glad.

UTEP makes out because the Miners can make more money by scheduling two home games than by having the Sun Bowl Sunnies bring in three schools to join UTEP in a two-day tournament during the Holidays.

It's just too tough to get big-name schools to come to your place these days. Everybody wants home games.

Joe Gomez did a great job, for many years, bringing in top teams to Sunny's event. When he retired, Barry Kobren held the fort for several years, each year getting harder and harder to get a field of teams fans would pay to watch.

It's also hard to get people to come watch two games a night two nights in a row.

Now for the UTEP-Texas football game: Texas can likely name its score. But UTEP can make out OK if:

• The team, not deep in talent, doesn't lose a key player(s) to having been broke in half by a Longhorn.

• Somehow, keep the score respectable. A 35-0 or a 42-10 is "respectable" considering UTEP having lost big at Buffalo and Texas being ranked No. 10. If Texas' third string is scoring at will, that would be bad.

• This is the big concern; I don't understand why I'm the only one talking about this:

Don't start taunting the out-of-town fans, talking smack before the game at the tailgates and in the stadium. Since the game starts so late, about 8:30 p.m., stay away from the rowdies who've been swilling beer all afternoon.

NOTE: El Paso is laying out the red carpet for state lawmakers and other top-level honchos who will be here. OK, so they're suits and swells. But they're thke ones who decide if El Paso gets state money or not. Have some class. Don't give the visitors any reason to keep calling El Paso a dusty border town.

Then victory will be at hand. Quietly leave the stadium, take a week off and start bragging about how the Miners are going to wax New Mexico State Sept. 20.

Price quotes

UTEP Football Coach Mike Price said two things at his Monday luncheon that merit a mention — plus a bonus opinion on the Texas game:

• Price: "It's the uniform, guys. What's inside is just the same."

Price was talking about his days as Washington State coach when he was often an underdog in Pac-10 games. He said his guys would see those (storied) USC and UCLA jerseys come onto the field, and he didn't want that to awe his players.

It's like the old saw about the other guys putting their pants on one leg at a time, just like everybody else.

The retort to the pants is: Ya, but what size pants does the other team wear."

The retort to the jerseys is: How many XXXX's on the size tag?

• Price: "Faith is belief without evidence. We haven't shown evidence yet."

True. You can have faith in the Miners having a good season, despite Thursday's 42-17 loss at Buffalo. But faith is all a fan really has at this point.

UTEP doesn't stand much chance to show evidence Saturday against nationally ranked Texas. UTEP is then idle Sept. 13, so it doesn't have much chance to show it's any good until the Sept. 20 home game vs. rival New Mexico State.

Bonus opinion: ESPN2 has now moved the Saturday Texas-UTEP kickoff even later, 8:23 p.m. El Paso Time. That's 10:23 EDT. So, since this is such a major event for El Paso, and the Sun Bowl is sold out, and there will be tailgating perhaps started 12 hours before the kickoff, will UTEP revelers still be awake (not passed out) by halftime?