Wow, really? supports his coaches? Sounds like a true athletic director! why don't you ask some real questions. I don't blame him for not answering a fans idiotic concerns, seriously?
It's the end of January
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He did ask good questions.
I asked him the week of the Northern Arizona football game how many tickets were sold. He said he didn't know. He's clueless.
You don't know what questions I asked. What are the "real" questions you would ask?
The only FCS team the Miners should ever schedule is Houston Baptist. Apparently El Paso LOVES Houston Baptist, which was easily the biggest draw to the Sun Bowl last season, just short of 35,000.
Senter has every right to disregard complaints and concerns expressed by UTEP fans when they involve his TERRIBLE coaching hires. Don't forget it's a two way street, however. We also have the right to withhold financial support from his awful athletic programs.
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This is wearing me out! Year after year after year the disappointments mount after thinking we've finally got all the necessary pieces for that wonderful return to prominence.
The old mind and body can't take it anymore. I'm making a belated New Year's resolution. Be happy and content with mediocracy. Don't set unrealistic expectations. Be happy with winning half of your games. Be nonchalant! Laugh at losing!
My life should now become much easier; IF I can pull it off.
The Luster with Senter fell off dramatically at the start of the football season. I wouldn't even bother emailing him, the mere fact he is doing 2 jobs. Is very concerning. I know the article came out explaining somewhat his "new role" but that means there isn't 100% focus on a very bad athletic program. The end is not near, and the bottom hasn't been reached. Let's hope Senter doesn't end up a downgrade from Stull. So far, it's looking it. UTEP needs to learn to think outside the box, and stop looking for middle-aged good ol boys. No go after a YOUNG hungry person with a vision.
Hiring someone with common sense is a start. Also, not a middle-aged White guy. Someone who understands Hispanics and the cities they populate.
Jim Paul and Brad Taylor fit that description and it worked well. I just say hire somebody that is innovative and who thinks outside the box.
No. There is a big difference between minor league sports and D-1 athletics. I dont think we need someone to think outside the box. We need someone who is a great fundraiser and has the knowledge to hire great coaches.
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Not really. Both organization need promotions. AAA teams have to do it for 70 games. College teams have it much easier. This is why it's so perplexing as to why the promotions department is trash.
A great fundraiser requires thinking outside the box.
If Senter is to busy to run the athletic dept. maybe he shouldn’t have accepted the second position. Needs to let go of one of them.
Promotions are over blown. Minor league is cheap gimmicky entertainment. College athletics is about catering to premium seat holders and diners. The cheapest ticket prices for basketball and football should not be less than 20 dollars. College athletics program will never be grown by catering to the promotion crowd. These people are cheap. They are the people when you are winning will pay the ticket prices.
You dont need to think outside the box to fundraise. You need have a vision and sell it. Go to donors tell them how their donations will make utep one of the top programs year in year out. Raise the bar out everyone on notice there is no excuse for not winning. That's what we need a visionary leader.
Promotions are not over blown. Have you seen the lines when the Chihuahuas have giveaways? The lines are very long before the gates are even open. People like that stuff.
So you think a ticket should be $20 to see UTEP play powerhouse Middle Tennessee, but at the same time I can see former and future MLB players for $5?
What people are cheap? I pay around $700 for my Chihuahuas season tickets. I buy them because it's a quality product.
That's not a vision. What about the people who have donated year in and year out? What are you going to tell them?
Imo anyone that has watched UTEP football win bowl game(s) and a basketball national championship has earned the right to ask whatever “idiotic” concerns pop into his head.
5000 people in line for a promotion is not going to move the needle financially for UTEP. If anything it turns the needle in the wrong direction.
Sorry, but I couldn't disagree more. Does our AD need to be able to schmooze with the wealthy donors? Absolutely. Should he do so and completely ignore the common fan? Absolutely not.
Personally, I would love to see the Don full of 9K to 12K rowdy fans every night. You're not going to get that catering only to the rich crowd. Our die hard fan base is getting long in the tooth. I want to see more young families with kids at the games to grow a new generation of Miner fans. You're not going to get that catering only to the rich crowd. I want the guy who just graduated from UTEP and is bogged down with student debt to continue to be able to go to the games he used to watch as a student. You're not going to get that catering only to the rich crowd. I want the guy who works hard all week at his blue collar job to consider a Miner game a viable option when deciding where to take his family for a fun night out. You're not going to get that catering only to the rich crowd.
Back to our core group of aging die hards. This being El Paso, my guess is that most of them didn't grow up with silver spoons in their mouths. Many initially became fans growing up going to the games as kids and/or students, when games were affordable for them and/or their parents. Now that they are growing older, who's going to replace them? If the future group of well to do El Pasoans haven't grown up going to Miner games, what's going to make them start now?
Also, these less wealthy fans are, in my opinion, some our better fans. During the Price era I much preferred to sit with my family in the GA section behind the endzone. Every time I would sit between the 40s I'd have a great view, but the fans around us would sit on the hands during most of the game. Down in GA fans would scream, cheer, count out the score during push ups, high five each other, and have a great time. Except when the action was down at that part of the field the view of the game sucked, but we had much more fun. As my kids started going to UTEP I would sit with them in the student section close to field (where the rowdier students would sit) and enjoy a similar experience.
There are plenty of premium seats in both the Sun Bowl and the Don Haskins center that the wealthy fans can enjoy. Leave some seats behind the endzone/goal posts and in the nosebleeds for the average fan at an affordable price. And have some promotions. Movies and other activities are fun, too. Give them a little more incentive to choose to come to a UTEP game.
As always good stuff Maniac. My counterpoint would be even when we averaged 48,000 fans in 2005 we were seventh in the conference in football revenue. I've never seen or looked for the numbers for basketball but I would imagine they are the same. Even though we almost averaged 50,000 per game our revenue was not what it should have been because of our cheap tickets. UTEP is one of the only places ga tickets will sell out before good seats.
As an athletic department they have to generate revenue. You generate revenue selling premium seats and catering to your big donors and premium ticket holders. It sounds dick and it is but we cant worry about and cater to the ga copper section crowd. We've tried and even when we're winning it doesnt generate the revenue needed to run a successful d1 program.
UTEP doesn’t have the facilities to cater to the wealthy. The soon to be completed renovations to the sun bowl are an ok start but there’s a ton of work to do. First priority should be to chair back the gold section.
The Don is showing her age badly.
If they want to focus on the wealthy then build facilities that will attract that class.
Don’t wrap up the same old shit we’ve seen for decades and sell it at premium prices.
The Don is showing her age badly.
If they want to focus on the wealthy then build facilities that will attract that class.
Don’t wrap up the same old shit we’ve seen for decades and sell it at premium prices.
Source?
Better to have 48,000 fans and be “7th” in revenue than whatever UTEP averaged this year.
UTEP is in a bad place right now. EVERYTHING needs money and attention right now. Poor coaching, poor facilities, poor fan base. Everything requires A TON of money, and the more we wait the worse it gets.
I do agree that it would be great if UTEP upgraded their facilities, but the millions of dollars required just makes it an impossibility right now. They can’t fire/hire quality coaches, what makes anyone think they’re going to upgrade The Don and The Sun Bowl. Even if they had fancy box seats in either stadium, who’s going to pay big money to watch the crap they’re putting out?
Devil's advocate here, if I may? What we see is not what outsiders see. Football has been in the shitter and the basketball season is not going as we hoped so the hairline crack on the wall give an impression that the foundation is crumbling.
ETSU had to break the bank for their HC to not leave for UTEP and Terry came because UTEP was a better option than staying at Fresno....who has a brand new basketball arena.
ETSU had to break the bank for their HC to not leave for UTEP and Terry came because UTEP was a better option than staying at Fresno....who has a brand new basketball arena.
Save Mart Center at Fresno State is a multi-purpose arena, on the campus of the California State University, Fresno, located in Fresno, California. An open house was held for the community on November 5, 2003, with the official ribbon cutting following on November 27, 2003. It is home to the Fresno State Bulldogs men's and women's basketball teams, women's volleyball team and wrestling team.
"UTEP is in a bad place right now. EVERYTHING needs money and attention right now. Poor coaching, poor facilities, poor fan base. Everything requires A TON of money, and the more we wait the worse it gets. "
You have a 21x National Champion in men's track and field that perform in a dump that should have been torn down years ago and renovated.
Save Mart Center at Fresno State is a multi-purpose arena, on the campus of the California State University, Fresno, located in Fresno, California. An open house was held for the community on November 5, 2003, with the official ribbon cutting following on November 27, 2003. It is home to the Fresno State Bulldogs men's and women's basketball teams, women's volleyball team and wrestling team.
"UTEP is in a bad place right now. EVERYTHING needs money and attention right now. Poor coaching, poor facilities, poor fan base. Everything requires A TON of money, and the more we wait the worse it gets. "
You have a 21x National Champion in men's track and field that perform in a dump that should have been torn down years ago and renovated.
Back to the basketball team. I have played and watched more basketball than I care to admit. Coached by Tony Harper many moons ago. I know when a team is well coached and this isn’t it. Best man on the court asks for the ball and we don’t get it to him. When we do it is a terrible entry pass that he has to move off block to accept it. When do we run more than one play a game? What’s an out of bounds play to this team? Let’s just hurl a 3 when we are shooting less than 20% game after game. Game adjustments don’t happen. Sure I understand it is year two of Terry.
Ask yourself this, if Billy Gillespie was the coach with this much talent, what would our record be?? There is your answer. I am not saying Billy should be our coach, but I think we can agree, he knew how to coach. There is more to coaching than being a good recruiter. Coach Haskins coached and adapted to what he had on the court. 3 guards, ok. Two big men, ok. Didn’t matter because he could coach.
Ask yourself this, if Billy Gillespie was the coach with this much talent, what would our record be?? There is your answer. I am not saying Billy should be our coach, but I think we can agree, he knew how to coach. There is more to coaching than being a good recruiter. Coach Haskins coached and adapted to what he had on the court. 3 guards, ok. Two big men, ok. Didn’t matter because he could coach.
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PickAx. I agree with most of what you said except we all overestimated the talent on this team. It's far better than what Floyd had but most of the transfers came from lower D1 schools and weren't chartbusters. This team needs to spend a lot of time in the off season working on individual skills, mostly shooting.
Here is some of my thoughts about the discussion. I agree that Senter should not discuss a coaches performance with fans and donors. Performance evaluations are done but that information/results should and are confidential. I too have serious doubts about Dimal's ability to right the ship. There was no way UTEP had/has enough money to fire him and the staff yet. I also think a five year contract for a coach is too long, four years is enough. What some are suggesting is that Senter say publicly that he has put Dimal on notice that he needs to win X number of games this year or he will be fired. I do hope he has had that conversation with Dimal but that would be a confidential performance evaluation. As for the basketball team, it is better than last year. Is it as good as I think/thought it would be? Hell No. I think Terry didn't hire good assistants this off season. Lets wait until the end of the season to fully evaluate Terry's performance. This team has talent and could turn it around. I don't think they will, because I see the drama/chemistry problems and it won't change until some players leave. For those complaining about the basketball team and the lack of set plays I would ask, did you have those same concerns when the team was 8-1 and had beaten UNM, NMSU, UCI and TTU? Something happened when the team went to Hawaii and they haven't been the same.
Before we went to Hawaii, our team was also only beating East Central by 6 at half-time and we were only beating Pine Bluff by 1 at half-time. We had struggles well before the Hawaii trip, the Hawaii trip just amplified our issues because we played 3 straight quality D1 teams for the first time this season. Additionally, we also barely squeaked by a bad Grand Canyon team and also got blasted by Houston before we went to Hawaii. I think the main thing that happened in Hawaii is just that all of our flaws finally got exposed against better teams. Any petty team mate issues are just secondary to this teams bigger structural issues(poor shooting, lack of PG, too many guys who are not effective in a half court offense, etc.)
Billy G. might not be able to get a team with this much talent, point one and ask Kentucky about what Billy G. did with their talent, point two.
Talent?? What talent besides Williams and boum do you see on this team?? We have athletes but not basketball talent... big difference
My point again was that I don't think we are well coached. I told my friends, we will see what Billy does at Kentucky with the blue blood players. His coaching style of practicing on game days didn't work with them. Playing in the SEC is way different than Conference USA.
We were saying the same thing about Barbee, especially those first two years. I had to walk out of a game against Lubbock Christian because we were so bad. We were wrong about Barbee.
Difference between Barbee and Terry is that Barbee built with high school recruitss developed them and built depth.He got one transfer, Character, as his finishing piece. What scares me about Terry is that hes using mostly transfers there is no depth for the future. I feel if we dont win big this year or next year we are in big trouble because there is no depth. He built this roster to snag a big job. If hes still here in two years it may be really ugly. I hope like hell he wins I cant take anymore losing.
I couldn’t agree more. Your right on point.
20.00 for one person is fine, but when your taking your family— forget it.
Without getting to the youth you are never creating a lasting fan base.
Most of us here grew up going the Miners, but if our kids are not involved with Miners few will be interested later.
At one of the ladies games they had a skill camp for kids under 12, however most people never heard about it and did not plan for the extra time. I would love to have my daughter participate, but had made other commitments.
Again great marketing UTEP.
Pretty sure it was, if I could find it on local radio stations (those ads always say to check out their website or utep athletics). Give me enough time, sure I could find a tweet or two.
https://kisselpaso.com/utep-basketball-summer-camp-details/
https://krod.com/utep-basketball-summer-camp-details/
https://utepminers.com/news/2019/5/3/utep-womens-basketball-camps-to-be-held-in-june.aspx
I hate to use this example, but this basketball team is full of Locksley's... They are athletic and look good on paper, but without good player development. That's where it stops. This team had all the makings for a successful season, but obviously it takes much more than that. I still hope they can find a way to play their best basketball down the stretch! Go Miners!
