This year will be one of the most critical years in the history of UTEP Athletics.  The Miners have a new Head Football Coach in Sean Kugler.  That, in itself, could have possibly made this season qualify for the list.  But, add to that, a seismic shift taking place in the conference membership and the combination has enormous implications for UTEP and the athletic programs.  

After decades of such downright miserable football that was so bad that even the school's fans began to plead for it to be put out of its misery, the Miners got lucky.  The fact that it came at the expense of their savior-and that the school became the savior's savior is part of the amazing story-the amazing story that leads us to this perhaps historic time for UTEP football.  Coach Mike Price had gone from the number one Head Coaching job in college football to maybe the worst.  The first two seasons of his tenure, he made historic turnarounds with the football team, leading them to two 8 and 4 seasons and trips to bowl games.  The next few seasons saw the Miners football program drop back to a program that fought hard to win more than they lost.  But, the years had allowed the program to become competitive in a pretty tough football conference.  Time had come for a coaching change.

When Mike Price arrived at UTEP, the WAC Conference was still squirming around after the departure of the Mountain West schools.  SO, it was UTEP that was leaving the WAC for greener and perceived toug...

The first ever Kyyotes Den Haskins Award Official Prediction Thread Championship has been awarded to SisyphusMiner who led all others with four wins of the Official Prediction Thread competition, during the 2012-2013 Miners basketball season.

Julian Washburn was the runaway winner of the Haskins Award for the Most Valuable Player on the Miners basketball team.  Although a case could be made for many of the players, it was probably Washburn's lock-down defense which made him the clear choice in the end.

It is time to look back at what we have seen.  First and foremost, Coach Floyd made good on his promise to upgrade the schedule.  There are two lines of thought on scheduling.  One is to schedule cupcakes and allow your team to come together against weaker competition, building confidence and a winning record.  This usually doesn't do much good for your team's RPI.  It also doesn't prepare the team for the stiffer competition they will face.  The other is to play the toughest competition you can get, and go to war.  Forge the team, strengthen the team by pressure.  The risks are greater, but so are the rewards.  This is the way CTF will bring in top ranked players who want to play against players of the same caliber.

Playing against the tougher competition, early in the season gave us mixed results, and along with them, mixed feelings about the team.  It seemed as though the team was able to compete when playing at their best, but also showed that they had a ways to go.  Like a mirage in the desert, we could see the team as just needing the players that would join the team for the second half of the season to bring the team to where it needed to be.

Instead of putting the finishing touches on the team, it seemed to start the whole team coming together process all over.  In the end, after all of the games have been played, the team finished  right about where it should have.  It finished behind Memphis and Southern Miss.  The Miners were/are the third bes...

I think the conference realignment that has taken place recently, and for UTEP over an even longer period,  has had an affect on fans that I don't think many people realize.  Fans live and die living vicariously through their teams.  For most of history, our "teams" were the local national guard defending the homeland.  With civilization, mock wars began to be waged on chessboards and lawns.  Teams replaced the national guard, and of course the locals pulled for their friends and neighbors, their team' in competitions of all kinds.

Fast forward into the early 20th century, in America, and colleges began to supplant the local national guard as the teams representing the people of an area or region of the country.  Travel costs played a huge roll in developing rivalries with other teams and schools in the surrounding areas.  But, maybe as important or even more so, bragging rights with those whom people of those towns were involved.  In times when leisure time was spent whitling wood, or listening to a radio show or two in the evening, local sports teams played a very big role in the small, but booming towns springing up across the newly settled land.  Those rivalries were a big deal, then.  In those early days, the world was mostly the part of the country that was part of your everyday life.  The local region, mainly.

Then came television.  It took awhile for the networks to figure out how to broadcast live sporting events, but when they did, they soon re...

Lot's of time.  I was doing some more reading over some of the things that have been said about conference realignment.  I had previously posted about the eventual demise of the ACC, Big 12, or both as the bcs elites move to a 16 team, four conference format.

Well today a light went on over my head when I reread this from Big 12 Comish Bowlsby;

“Look at Maryland and Rutgers. They don’t bring programs that are of the ilk of the others in the Big Ten,” said Bowlsby, a former Iowa athletic director. “But the philosophy clearly is, ‘As members of the Big Ten, we can grow them.’ So, you can apply the same thinking to any possible addition.”

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2013/01/16/4552798/big-12-commissioner-league-could.html#storylink=cpy

Could it be that in the high altitude on Mt. Olympus the Gods have been holding a tryout?  Since '06, we have played 6 games against Big 12 teams.  Yes, we lost the games, but we did show an ability to play, and much more importantly, we showed an ability to put butts in the stands.  They aren't the only teams we have shown we can compete with on that level.  Would we need growing?  HELL YES!  But, could you imagine the potential audience for a school representing a top of the line school with a predominately Hispanic student population, a school so many around the country could be proud of, given a reason like a nationally competitive football program.  Plus, it is in Texas, in the Big ...