Why can't UTEP out-recruit these teams?
There's nobody in the stands for the CUSA Championship
- Thread starter FeralFelidae
- Start date
A CUSA championship game here would have at least 30,000.
As to why, because fans don’t put pressure on the AD and kept going to the games. Now that Kugler put it in a nose dive, more and more fans don’t give a f anymore.
Fans that boycott and don’t attend games show the administration, you gotta do better. Fans that continuously go, tell them everything is fine.
If we could somehow get a GOOD coach that can recruit, then we could easily dominate CUSA. Senter needs to figure this out quick. We need a splash hire to get the ball rolling. Raise money and get it done. If UTEP wins, we would have the best attendance by far.
Invest in football and it will pay dividends for the whole university and community. UTEP is at a point where it needs to sacrifice to get things going. A student athletic fee could go a long way in this regard.
Invest in football and it will pay dividends for the whole university and community. UTEP is at a point where it needs to sacrifice to get things going. A student athletic fee could go a long way in this regard.
that to me is as backwards as it gets... people who don’t show up to games show the admin they don’t care!!! The fan bases that show up have power and carry a much bigger voice than the ones that don’t ....
If UTEP sells 30,000 season tickets for next season that tells Senter we like Dimel ball. If only 3,000 or sold, tells him we don’t right?
You seem like a smart person. You don’t continuously buy bad products do you? You would not keep going to a bad restaurant would you? Why should fans be expected to buy tickets to the worst FBS football program?
Just curious. How? Not sure how you arrived at that conclusion.
I was at the UAB/UTEP game. Their "crowd" is almost nonexistent. Their fansite made fun of our attendance from the old Bloomquist article yeah, but they were defending Champions at the time when we had won two games in three years
"Student Services Fee $15.50 per credit hour, with a maximum of $186.00 (12 credit hours) A compulsory fee to fund student-related services such as intramural activities; student government, disabled student organizations, career services, cheerleaders, student publications, health services, intercollegiate athletics and others."
https://www.utep.edu/vpba/student-b...dule/summer-2018/required-fees-undergrad.html
They're are getting a brand new 45 000 seat stadium. It will be the nicest in C-USA and one of the very best for a g5 school. I think it will help attendance a little I think. It will be a huge upgrade to Legion field which is in a crappy part of Birmingham.
The place looks in bad shape. All that seating goes unused and is covered with tarps.
This is the biggest knock against Conference USA. Attendance for good C-USA football teams is mediocre. Ten win seasons don't get much more than for two win seasons. That's a big reason why tv revenue sucks. The conference as a whole better figure something out or it will always be a third rate conference. And UTEP is part of the problem right now. Any good ideas? I don't at the moment. Nothing that hasn't already been mentioned.
One day Dimel and Senter will be gone.
One day we will quit chasing 14vseeds and fully fund football for the first time ever.
On a positive not. El Paso is one of the largest cities in the country with no pro sports teams. El Paso will never have a pro sports. UTEP has a unique situation where they are the only game in town in a very large city. If UTEP wins they can still draw crowds of over 40+.
They are not the only game in town and you can argue that they have lost quite a bit of fan base due to the Chihuahuas and Locomotive. Those 2 teams have been very successful and don’t have UTEP “stench”. If you have disposable ticket income, you’re more likely to spend it on the others, than UTEP. UTEP is hanging on to its older fans and praying dummies, “super fans” keep buying tickets.
Both are minor league teams. Neither is cutting into to UTEP's fan base. UTEP's ineptitude has eroded the fan base.
Schedule Nebraska. They travel, like the Sun Bowl Stadium and grandpa loved the Mexican ladies while he was stationed at Fort Bliss.
I'm kidding
Has UTEP ever averaged over 40K in football? I know they had games here and there with over 45K.
Yes we averaged over 40,000 a game in 2000, 2004 2005. I think we just missed in 2008 38,000 per game
That is true. Conference co champs in 2000 and Price hire lit up El Paso.
NMSU upset Arizona State the weekend before and the next game against UTEP brought down aggie hopefuls. Price brought in Tech and "The Pirate" Leach was blown from the noise due to the SB being built into a mountain. UNM players (at that time) stated they were overcome by the crowd noise before and during the game during Price's first year. Houston first trip into SB (UTEP first year in CUSA) and Houston fans loved the electricity and some said it had that big game atmosphere.
Good times long forgotten.
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Thanks, I knew During the Mike Price era there were some near sellouts, but I had no idea that they averaged over 40K. I haven't lived in El Paso since '95. I missed the 2000 and Mike price years though I did make it to a couple of games.
UTEP averaged over 40k in 1987, Stull's 2nd year. UTEP has had I believe 9 games of over 50k and 24 games over 40k and numerous games between 30-40k. Some years crowds have dwindled quite a bit due to accumulation of losses.
I said that because we have won and the crowds didn’t come back. In 2014 Kugler was rebuilding the program. After having won only two games the previous year we entered senior night at 6-5. A bowl wasn’t guaranteed. We were essentially in a playoff game against a 6-5 MTSU team. The winner was guaranteed to go bowling. It was cold that day but the crowd was small. Officially it was 27k but far less were in the stands. That’s the kind of game that would have easily drawn over 40k. I don’t know if it was Kugler ball or the cusa 3.0 opponent. I feel that with our current conference affiliation we won’t draw the big crowds even when winning.
After the second and third year collapse during Price days the tires started to develop a slow leak. The sickening loss to ECU at the Sun Bowl started his demise at UTEP. I can't recall a non traditional opponent leaving a disgusting feeling, maybe perhaps the Buffalo at UTEP loss comes second?
To Kugler's credit he did take the NMSU rivalry uber seriously and knew what it meant, unlike this current staff. Price sold it like trying to sell a car or mortgage rate for a new home which is ok but he had some ugly losses.
I think two things happened. The AAC CUSA split was big. To lose the name brand schools UH SMU Tulsa Memphis ECU was terrible for the conference and our casual fan base. It was a downgrade and the unfamiliarity of new opponents combined with losing has been a disastrous combination. Stull hanging on to Price and Floyd way too long started the attendance decline. If you let a coach have seven losing seasons in a row or tells the fan base you arent committed to winning. We've lost most of the casual fans in both sports and we have no bandwagon much less bandwagon fans.
Funny thing is that ECU was the last conference game that drew over 40k to the Sun Bowl. That was back in 2007.
Are you saying that many of those fans went to the game because we were playing ECU?
They sure didn’t show up the following week for the game against Houston. Or the previous week for the home game against Tulsa. Think of that whatever you want.
IMO that game was the downfall of Mike Price and UTEP football since. Why we didn't have 8 guys near the end zone on that last play still perplexes me. Most people probably didnt show the next week because they were still vomiting in disgust.
Two things:
1.) Is that on the 1st or 2nd down of that Hail Marry Drive, UTEP's defensive line collapsed the pocket and got a big sack. The QB was going down for a big loss and the clock was running. Except that one of our D-lineman tackled the QB by grabbing his face mask. The QB was surrounded and going down regardless, it was a needless penalty because other defenders would have gotten the sack had the first guy missed. ECU gained 15 yards on that penalty, instead of losing 15 yards from the sack. That's a 30 yard difference. ECU never gets into Hail Marry position if that penalty doesn't happen.
2.) On the hail marry, UTEP had 4 DB's back in the end zone and ECU threw it to a wide open guy on the 2 yard line who then walked into the end zone. If you look at the picture about 3/4 of the way down in this old MinerRush article below, you will see the ECU WR wide open in the middle of the field catching the ball on the 2 yard line. It technically wasn't even a hail marry, we just had 4 DB's standing in the end zone thinking it would be:
https://www.minerrush.com/platform/...-east-carolina-halted-the-mike-price-momentum
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Yeah. A good AD would have told MP thank you for everything you’ve done to resurrect this program but we’re moving in a different direction. At that point the list of candidates would have been a lot better than when he was finally let go.
