Chico Canales, Mike Cox OUT

[kickballpro]

The point is, Dana Dimel maybe a Problem but he's not THE problem. UTEP is not a player in ANY sport. Our gem is Mens Basketball who struggles to make the Conference Tournament.

We have a newish President and AD within the last 3 years. There needs to be some investment into the facilities. Also, when you have a city like El Paso that has UTEP, there needs to be a true partnership. El Paso can help UTEP athletics and UTEP can partner with El Paso. But the University chooses to go alone on alot of things.

UTEP should tell the local community to play games in the Don and Sunbowl the way the Chihuahuas host High School Baseball. Lower tuition for El Paso County residents. Then in turn, try to get the city's help. Alot of Universities are getting Century bonds to pay for facilities.

There needs to be a fan resource. The top programs have insiders that connect to the programs and get the fan base talking. This is done through an 'Insider Site,' podcasting, twitter burners, working with Recruiting Sites.

In addition to facilities, UTEP has a community problem. You can't tell the City, Come to our games, but don't hang out on the campus with your friends. Get to know our team, but we aren't going to give anyone access. I know they are super efficient at sending emails and letters asking for donations. Maybe they should get whoever does that job to run Athletics.

 

[Taco1977]

The point is, Dana Dimel maybe a Problem but he's not THE problem. UTEP is not a player in ANY sport. Our gem is Mens Basketball who struggles to make the Conference Tournament.

We have a newish President and AD within the last 3 years. There needs to be some investment into the facilities. Also, when you have a city like El Paso that has UTEP, there needs to be a true partnership. El Paso can help UTEP athletics and UTEP can partner with El Paso. But the University chooses to go alone on alot of things.

UTEP should tell the local community to play games in the Don and Sunbowl the way the Chihuahuas host High School Baseball. Lower tuition for El Paso County residents. Then in turn, try to get the city's help. Alot of Universities are getting Century bonds to pay for facilities.

There needs to be a fan resource. The top programs have insiders that connect to the programs and get the fan base talking. This is done through an 'Insider Site,' podcasting, twitter burners, working with Recruiting Sites.

In addition to facilities, UTEP has a community problem. You can't tell the City, Come to our games, but don't hang out on the campus with your friends. Get to know our team, but we aren't going to give anyone access. I know they are super efficient at sending emails and letters asking for donations. Maybe they should get whoever does that job to run Athletics.

Man I wish I knew how to get this in front of the decision makers. Very well thought out post man!

 

[utep2step]

Winning cures that pesky empty stadium seat syndrom.

 

[NoNCAAWinsSince1992]

The point is, Dana Dimel maybe a Problem but he's not THE problem. UTEP is not a player in ANY sport. Our gem is Mens Basketball who struggles to make the Conference Tournament.

We have a newish President and AD within the last 3 years. There needs to be some investment into the facilities. Also, when you have a city like El Paso that has UTEP, there needs to be a true partnership. El Paso can help UTEP athletics and UTEP can partner with El Paso. But the University chooses to go alone on alot of things.

UTEP should tell the local community to play games in the Don and Sunbowl the way the Chihuahuas host High School Baseball. Lower tuition for El Paso County residents. Then in turn, try to get the city's help. Alot of Universities are getting Century bonds to pay for facilities.

There needs to be a fan resource. The top programs have insiders that connect to the programs and get the fan base talking. This is done through an 'Insider Site,' podcasting, twitter burners, working with Recruiting Sites.

In addition to facilities, UTEP has a community problem. You can't tell the City, Come to our games, but don't hang out on the campus with your friends. Get to know our team, but we aren't going to give anyone access. I know they are super efficient at sending emails and letters asking for donations. Maybe they should get whoever does that job to run Athletics.

Dimel is not the problem, but he's definitely not part of the solution. UTEP should have fired Price in 2009, they didn't. Kugler and Dimel would have never "graced" our sidelines had Stull shown Price the door then. Floyd should have never been hired, or should have been fired after that awful start in 2016 I think. Again, Terry would have never been hired, though the jury is still out on how good or bad he is. Things could be a lot different now.

Stull also "allegedly" turned down the MWC when Boise and San Diego were leaving. He apparently had no clue that SMU, Houston, and Tulsa were going to leave too. Once those teams left, UTEP got left behind once again and now we're in a conference with Old Dominion, FAU, and FIU. It doesn't get much worse, except that those teams are way better than us at football now too.

UTEP is where they're at because of UTEP, not because of the fans, or lack of El Paso's "support". UTEP chooses to be UTEP, they don't want to be anything else.

 

[Cube Jack]

Someone answer this. Why is it that the 3 FBS schools in the region (UNM, NMSU, & UTEP) have such horrible football history? When was the last time any of those schools won an outright conference title?

I think UNM won a WAC title outright in like 1963.

I know NMSU won the Missouri Valley Conference in 1978 according to the thing painted in their stadium

 

[JCorona]

IMO it all falls back on hiring the wrong coaches. Our facilities are outdated but I seriously doubt that kids would rather play in the Southland, JUCO, or D3 instead of at UTEP.

There are two ways to approach it. Hire an up and coming assistant and hope we strike gold. UAB, UNT, UTSA, RICE, Charlotte, USM, and WKU have gone this way and found success to an extent. Some more than others. The other way is to hire a former P5 coach. FIU, FAU, and LT have won a few trophies with experienced coaches.

Then there’s the UTEP way.

I firmly believe our best chance to be successful is to go the former P5 way. It’s going to cost us more than it would a school like LT because of all those cons against us listed in the above posts. IMO we’re not very good at evaluating talent and making correct hires thus making the up and comer route very risky. A solid established well known coach would make hiring assistants and recruiting easier.

Bill Clark didn’t need an IPF or fancy new stadium to win. He got those after making three straight conference USA championship games. Let a coach duplicate that success at El Paso and we too can build.

 

[Taco1977]

IMO it all falls back on hiring the wrong coaches. Our facilities are outdated but I seriously doubt that kids would rather play in the Southland, JUCO, or D3 instead of at UTEP.

There are two ways to approach it. Hire an up and coming assistant and hope we strike gold. UAB, UNT, UTSA, RICE, Charlotte, USM, and WKU have gone this way and found success to an extent. Some more than others. The other way is to hire a former P5 coach. FIU, FAU, and LT have won a few trophies with experienced coaches.

Then there’s the UTEP way.

I firmly believe our best chance to be successful is to go the former P5 way. It’s going to cost us more than it would a school like LT because of all those cons against us listed in the above posts. IMO we’re not very good at evaluating talent and making correct hires thus making the up and comer route very risky. A solid established well known coach would make hiring assistants and recruiting easier.

Bill Clark didn’t need an IPF or fancy new stadium to win. He got those after making three straight conference USA championship games. Let a coach duplicate that success at El Paso and we too can build.

Couple of problems. 1, the players that go to Southland, JUCO or D3 are not any good. So, of course they would rather come here, but that's not going to make UTEP better. We'll just be the exact same as we have always been. 2, UAB had better facilities back in 2014 than we do right now. Also, they have a far superior talent pool to recruit from that is just a few hours away in just about every direction. 3, kids don't care much about nice stadiums. It's a plus, but far behind the other things that benefit them directly, like for example the month check. They currently get $300 less than they can get at NMSU. That's not going to get it done here.

 

[Dmanminer]

You didn't mention anything about better players though. You talked about facilities and support. You mentioned tradition, what tradition do Coastal and Louisiana have? 10 years isn't tradition. They're not Michigan or Florida St.

More excuses.

Many people bitch about the facilities, to upgrade all you need is money. Utep depends on two donors to fund everything.
El Paso is great for wanting the best as long as they don’t have to pay for it. So all of you complaining win the lottery and donate a indoor field and endow the meals for the next decade.

 

[Dmanminer]

UTEPs problem has been is that we hire people no one else would. Sometimes not even out of necessity. We made one great hire in Mack Rhodes and we saw what happened.

Yeah stuff sucks, but how are you going to expect anyone to give anything for new facilities with such an awful program?

Who else but UTEP would hire a position coach with no recruiting experience? Who else but UTEP would hire a guy who went winless in his last stop and is considered that team’s worst coach ever?

We saw with Price what’s reasonable here.....4-8 wins. UNM saw it with Long too.

Of course, UTEP is like the 150th most desired job in college football as it’s better to be a coordinator in some places, but there’s thousands of college coaches that would love to be here.

Just hire someone competent and that’s the tricky part because you never know.

But anyone who knows anything knew that Dimmel and Kugler were really stupid hires....

Again take a guy coaching at a juco and who’s successful and making what....200k? and offer him this job at 700k and he’ll jump at it.....If he fails, no biggie, back to juco with a longer resume and more money. If he succeeds...multi-million dollar contract at another school.

I agree 100% . Utep and El Paso always wants to go the good old boy routes.

 

[Dmanminer]

You're trying to separate the two points. Both points work in conjunction with each other. Boise Idaho doesn't have the players, but their facilities are on a completely different level. South Carolina has both the players and the facilities. UTEP has none of that. Facts are neither a cop out or not a cop out, they are just simply the facts. UTEP either needs to decide to spend money on the program and improve the facilities or drop to a lower level that is commiserate with the facilities that they have. Something has to give.

I want to be clear, I am not defending this coach one bit. I'm pointing out that no one is going to be successful until the program decides to spend money. They can fire him tomorrow and hire whoever, it'll just be rinse and repeat.

Where is the money coming from? If I was a multi- millionaire I could change things. But I’m not, how many on here are? If you are capable of donating huge sums, are you? One thing Utep is terrible at is getting their alumni to give back.

 

[Taco1977]

Where is the money coming from? If I was a multi- millionaire I could change things. But I’m not, how many on here are? If you are capable of donating huge sums, are you? One thing Utep is terrible at is getting their alumni to give back.

I have no idea where the money is going to come from. Maybe the people in power should look at how ULM was able to get money to improve their facilities or how NMSU is able to pay the players $300 more each month. I can't see either of those schools having too much more funding than UTEP. If they know they cant come up with the money to be competitive in FBS, they should be honest with themselves and fans and drop to FCS. Doesn't make sense to keep blaming coaches for things they have no control over. You can have Nick Saban here and the results will be the same. Coaches don't win games players do and UTEP doesn't have the players right now to win. There are some guys that might develop into very good players and maybe pros, but not enough to be in the race to win the division or even go .500 in conference play.

 

[MinerInWisconsin]

Couple of problems. 1, the players that go to Southland, JUCO or D3 are not any good. So, of course they would rather come here, but that's not going to make UTEP better. We'll just be the exact same as we have always been. 2, UAB had better facilities back in 2014 than we do right now. Also, they have a far superior talent pool to recruit from that is just a few hours away in just about every direction. 3, kids don't care much about nice stadiums. It's a plus, but far behind the other things that benefit them directly, like for example the month check. They currently get $300 less than they can get at NMSU. That's not going to get it done here.

NMSU did not offer the stipend until the 2019-20 school year according to this article. It was allowed starting in 2015 and UTEP did offer it right away, although I can't find the amount listed anywhere.

NM State committed to cost of attendance for football, women's sports (lcsun-news.com)

 

[JCorona]

Couple of problems. 1, the players that go to Southland, JUCO or D3 are not any good. So, of course they would rather come here, but that's not going to make UTEP better. We'll just be the exact same as we have always been. 2, UAB had better facilities back in 2014 than we do right now. Also, they have a far superior talent pool to recruit from that is just a few hours away in just about every direction. 3, kids don't care much about nice stadiums. It's a plus, but far behind the other things that benefit them directly, like for example the month check. They currently get $300 less than they can get at NMSU. That's not going to get it done here.

The last two years we’ve played three teams from the bottom standings of the southland and I can tell you that if we had the same recruiting restrictions as them we would have lost all three of those games. Or had we played the top three teams in that league we also lose. They might not be very good but they’re probably better than what we have. My point is we should be at the very least be able to build a team that would be a powerhouse at the FCS level. We’re struggling to beat bottom of the barrel fcs teams.

As far as your next two points that’s why we need a proven coach to neutralize our disadvantages. During Price first two years I very specifically remember a couple of the recruits saying they would have never considered UTEP is it wasn’t because of Price.

At nmsu they didn’t even offer cost of attendance until last year. We’ve been offering it since day one. In 2017-2018, the latest figures I could find we offered the same or more than utsa, SMU and Texas St. How come Dimel didn’t capatalize on that steal away their recruits?

 

[Taco1977]

NMSU did not offer the stipend until the 2019-20 school year according to this article. It was allowed starting in 2015 and UTEP did offer it right away, although I can't find the amount listed anywhere.

NM State committed to cost of attendance for football, women's sports (lcsun-news.com)

That's not the monthly payment I'm talking about. That is paid out every 3 months and is the same between the two schools.

 

[Taco1977]

The last two years we’ve played three teams from the bottom standings of the southland and I can tell you that if we had the same recruiting restrictions as them we would have lost all three of those games. Or had we played the top three teams in that league we also lose. They might not be very good but they’re probably better than what we have. My point is we should be at the very least be able to build a team that would be a powerhouse at the FCS level. We’re struggling to beat bottom of the barrel fcs teams.

As far as your next two points that’s why we need a proven coach to neutralize our disadvantages. During Price first two years I very specifically remember a couple of the recruits saying they would have never considered UTEP is it wasn’t because of Price.

At nmsu they didn’t even offer cost of attendance until last year. We’ve been offering it since day one. In 2017-2018, the latest figures I could find we offered the same or more than utsa, SMU and Texas St. How come Dimel didn’t capatalize on that steal away their recruits?

I promise you we have better players than the best FCS teams. They may have a few players that could come in and start here, but on the whole we have better players. I'm not saying that this coach is the right guy. I'm just saying it's going to be hard for anyone to win here without being able to attract better players.

A proven coach might be able to do the trick if he's willing to build slowly and take his butt whooping's in the mean time. We need someone that will mine for the gems that need physical development and not just go after JUCO players or transfers. You'll be hard pressed to build a culture with those guys. They're mercenaries and will infect the program with that mentality, unless you surround them with players that have completely bought into the program. Going this route requires the fans and AD to give the coach a minimum of 5 years to build. The coach could hit pay dirt and maybe get there sooner, but most likely it'll be 5 years.

Cost of attendance stipend is not the monthly stipend I'm talking about. Cost of attendance is paid out every 3 months and is currently the same amount between the two schools. The monthly stipend has been around for decades. It's essentially a refund on the over payment for the dorm room. If you live off campus you get the entire amount to pay for you apartment.

 

[UTEPMiners8106]

Where is the money coming from? If I was a multi- millionaire I could change things. But I’m not, how many on here are? If you are capable of donating huge sums, are you? One thing Utep is terrible at is getting their alumni to give back.

I agree that the alumni base at UTEP is awful, but at the same time The UT System is rigged so that no school can be competitive let alone reach a level in the same galaxy as Texas. UTEP or any School in the UT system cannot use money allocated for education towards athletics, therefore they need to fundraise to cover the costs if they want to do bigger and better things.
On one hand I don’t mind that because a shitty AD can bleed a university dry with buyouts and bad hires. Fine, but at the same time UTEP has never been able to adequately fundraise so they could make better hires or do better things. That is a major problem.

 

[Dmanminer]

I believe New Mexico schools get some state funding as well. The state of Texas doesn’t allow that. UTEP need a strong AD that knows how to go after money. I don’t think we have ever had one.
This is where Wilson needs to step up and use all her connections to help the athletic dept. Nags never did and it doesn’t look like Wilson is either. As head of this university she needs to be heard from. The public needs to know she not going to ignore the athletic dept.So far she’s failed.

 

[Minerforlife]

The COA argument is misunderstood. NMSU didn't even pay COA until three years ago and only pays to basketball and some football players. UTEP has payed COA since it was instituted. UTEP pays COA to every scholarship athlete mens and woman's. COA is determined by a formula taking into account cost of housing, tuition, books and transportation. Some schools pay more be use it cost more to go or live near their institution. Of the 12 fbs schools in Texas UTEP pays the fourth highest COA.