OT: College football is back
- Thread starter minerfan_14
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That last tweet is so very telling. This could easily be UTEP if only the last sentence were true about UTEP!
#Marshall had the No. 1 or No. 2 recruiting class in C-USA in six of seven years from 2013-19, despite a lack of local talent. The facilities are also there.
False equivalency. Marshall was winning when the facilities were the same for everyone in the MAC. There was no money in the 90s and early 2000s for those teams to spend on facilities. Who's the team now with shit facilities and no players in their back yard that's winning? They may be out there, but I cant think of one.
It’s always something with UTEP. We didn’t win when the playing field was somewhat even. We didn’t win when we ended up in a conference with a majority of teams that played FCS or didn’t have a team within the last decade. Now we’re not going to win cuz our facilities aren’t up to par with LT and UNT.
Those two games showed that a coach with a bit more football iq would have won them. It’s not a talent issue or lack of fancy lockers. It’s a simple coaching issue that could easily be fixed.
Every coach in our conference won with what they had then they received upgrades. We don’t need to give Kugler/Dimel class a facilities to know they would still fail.
Those two games showed that a coach with a bit more football iq would have won them. It’s not a talent issue or lack of fancy lockers. It’s a simple coaching issue that could easily be fixed.
Every coach in our conference won with what they had then they received upgrades. We don’t need to give Kugler/Dimel class a facilities to know they would still fail.
Just took a look at athletic websites in cusa and the only advantage I can see that some have are the indoor or covered football practice area. I don't know what the housing/dorms are like for the fb team or the training table. I know that there was a fund raising effort about a year ago for the training table.
I see some indoor fb training areas are little more than a metal roof with open sides or inflatable rubber buildings.
With EP weather is an indoor practice area really necessary?
Hard to believe the Larry K Durham Center is almost 20 years old. Its always been a really great facility and it's for use by all sports, but mainly football. The one thing the vision got correct was the weight room and coaches offices.
What it lacks is the upscale locker room and lounge areas as well as the history telling walls. The new facilities have swimming pools for the athletes but not sure if that wins over recruits.
The Indoor Practice Facility race has raged in for a while and is now a recruitingmust have. In fact, it's the newest battle ground in Texas High School Football. The Indoor Practice Facility seems to be apart of every bond election east of here.
What it lacks is the upscale locker room and lounge areas as well as the history telling walls. The new facilities have swimming pools for the athletes but not sure if that wins over recruits.
The Indoor Practice Facility race has raged in for a while and is now a recruitingmust have. In fact, it's the newest battle ground in Texas High School Football. The Indoor Practice Facility seems to be apart of every bond election east of here.
So are you saying then that every coach UTEP has had doesn't know what the hell they're doing? The odds of it always being the coach are very slim. It's possible, but very unlikely. At some point people have to stop blaming the coach and start looking at the other things that could possibly be contributing to the fact that the program is not winning. Yes, there are some talented players on the team. There are not enough talented players on the team to be in contention for a championship. If the goal is just to be competitive every once in a while, Mike Price should still be the coach.
When you don't have a history of winning every little amenity counts. An indoor practice facility would be a huge boost. But that's not where it needs to stop at. They need a top to bottom overall of all of the amenities. The arms race waits for nobody and UTEP needs to decide whether or not they want to get in the race or not. Wasting money on half measures is not going to get it done. If they don't want to invest the money, go all in on basketball. It's a far cheaper sport and the returns could be pretty good. Nowhere near as good as football though, but that requires a top to bottom commitment from the people in power.
We could blame the AD for hiring awful coaches and not letting them go when their time is up. Other than Stull which HC has gone on to be a HC somewhere else?
Our root problem has always been bad hires.
I cant speak for all of the them, but I know first hand Mike Price is a very good coach. Had he been given the financial support needed, he could have turned UTEP into something really nice. End of the day, it really doesn't matter how good a coach is if they don't have the players. Does UTEP have better players than the record last year? I would say yes. But two or three more wins last season isn't what I'm looking for. I want this program to be much better and it's possible if they commit to it financially.
Houston built an indoor practice facility for football in 2017 for $20 million. UAB built a covered fb practice facility (no walls) for less than $5 million and industrial size fans could help with heat.
He was. From contractors donating work to fix and scrub the SB when he got here, to businesses splashing his face on the side of trucks and dump trucks that pick up your trash, his face was seen all over El Paso county. Local (sports) media gave him air time when he wanted it. Stull opened up the check book for recruiting "clinics" and recruiting travel. UTEP couldn't give him power conference money but they donated the tangibles to make it feel like he had such a contract (his loaner was a fully loaded Hummer he wanted). He said "change the turf!", BAM!, it was changed quickly. His contract was loaded with incentives he wanted since UTEP couldn't pay power conference dinero. He was afforded all the luxuries he craved. I'm not saying it's was wrong or right, it's a fact. I'm not saying he didn't do anything for UTEP because he did.
We are probably the only school in the country who's never had a capital fundraising campaign for facilities. It's beyond pathetic. Never had a marketing company come up with a campaign and put together websites or flyers. Everyone does this and guess the only school I can think of regardless of division who has never had a capital fundraising campaign: UTEP.
I thought UTEP did? I remember in prior years you would keep this site abreast of Stull's fundraising (mostly his desire for corporate/big booster seating).
UTEP actually does have athletic endowments. How much is in them and what campaigns have been utilized, I don't know. Senter has in his resume that he raised $6 million for an athletic endowment at the Citadel and money for facilities at Idaho when he was an associate AD there. Why in the world we haven't yet heard of a funds campaign for facilities I just couldn't tell you.
If this game was rescheduled OSU fans would pop a vein, literally. They're worse than OU, ND and 'Bama fans.....well maybe not as bad as OU fans. Jesus Christ can show up in Norman in June and OU football would still dominate the dining room dinner table discussions.
That wasn't a public campaign. He courted who he thought were the big money donors behind closed doors. He didn't have a public fundraising campaign. He never showed the renderings to the public. There were no websites. It was closed door meetings with groups of donors who during the Stull era became very divided.
The blowout of UTEP became less impressive as the season progressed.
Ah, thanks for the clarification. I thought it was public because I personally heard him talk about it on Kap's show years back.
UTSA has broken ground on their $41 million athletic training center on their main campus. It includes a Larry Durham type building plus an adjacent football practice field with artificial turf and a roof but no walls. Adjacent to that covered field will be an open air practice field with grass. They have raised some of the money through fund raising and the city of San Antonio is helping with bond issues. The city and university have a partnership with the slogan "Whats good for UTSA is good for San Antonio". Maybe UTEP and El Paso can work together like that.
I don’t know if UTEP and El Paso governments even know the other exist.
I will also point out that UTEP does have some excellent facilities. The combo of the Sun Bowl stadium and Larry Durham center is awesome. Glory field is a very good outdoor practice field, the Foster basketball training center is something most G5 schools lack. We definitely need a training table for the football team and I'm not sure of the status of that since there was an effort within the last year or so to raise funds for that. Most seem to think we need an indoor football practice facility and it would not cost more than 4 or 5 million to build what Rice, UTSA and UAB have or are about to have. 9 schools in our conference don't have one. We do need to ensure that the living quarters are as nice as the competition for our football players.
Price used to say once recruits came for a visit it was not hard to sign them. The hardest part was getting them to visit in the first place. If you are the parent of a prospect in the hotbed Texas recruiting areas and your kid is being recruited by SMU, Houston, UNT, Rice, UTSA, Texas St and UTEP, you have no ties to that far away city in west Texas, you are likely going to push your kid to choose sa school close to home so that you can see them play more easily and so on. Its definitely harder to recruit to El Paso but not impossible. Our coaches have to have the facilities to sell them on and we are very close to having that. Just add some icing on the cake, hire the best recruiters we can and UTEP can have a championship quality football program.
One thing UTEP can sell to recruits is that when they start winning they will play in front of bigger crowds than any in cusa by a good margin and close to the best crowds in all of G5.
Price used to say once recruits came for a visit it was not hard to sign them. The hardest part was getting them to visit in the first place. If you are the parent of a prospect in the hotbed Texas recruiting areas and your kid is being recruited by SMU, Houston, UNT, Rice, UTSA, Texas St and UTEP, you have no ties to that far away city in west Texas, you are likely going to push your kid to choose sa school close to home so that you can see them play more easily and so on. Its definitely harder to recruit to El Paso but not impossible. Our coaches have to have the facilities to sell them on and we are very close to having that. Just add some icing on the cake, hire the best recruiters we can and UTEP can have a championship quality football program.
One thing UTEP can sell to recruits is that when they start winning they will play in front of bigger crowds than any in cusa by a good margin and close to the best crowds in all of G5.
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I like this a lot! Time to start thinking outside the box that UTEP has been in.
I do believe the football players will be getting a nutrition station this upcoming season. That's a basic thing that every division one school (FBS&FCS) I've ever been to has.
Sidenote: how in the hell is rice so bad? They have amazing academics, a beautiful campus and tons of money. Not to mention that Houston has a plethora of division one level football players! WTH man!
If Rice is like Northwestern, not all those plethora of players would get through admissions.
That's a good point. I bet they do have really stringent requirements for admission.
Let's put the bourbon down for a sec and look at this with sober eyes. They have their $4 million dollar coach. We have President Heather A Wilson. She has brought more (defense) research dollars, a research supporting facility being build somewhere in the lower valley and carries a shat load of academic and government weight at the national level.
We did the Mike Price thang, you all can keep Harbaugh.
Harbaugh needs to coach the Cowboys and apply some discipline and accountability to that team (same way he re-built the 49ers). It will never happen because Jerry wants a puppet.
