I love UTEP. It is my school. I enrolled in 1982 and graduated in 1986. I have been a fan since the day I started classes and I will love her until the day I die and so of course I will be a fan until then, too. As a UTEP football fan you learn to be prepared for bad in ways that other people can only have nightmares about. But, like the one-armed bandits at the casino off of the highway there are just enough payouts to keep you coming back, right after you leave the pawn shop. The basketball has been a little better, but not a lot. Like the tadpole shrimp that appear from seemingly out of nowhere at Album Park after the monsoon season creates the big ponds over the soccer and football fields below, UTEP fans are just waiting for an opportunity to support our teams more than in silent desperation. Public humiliations aren’t what they’re cracked up to be and perhaps over the decades they have taken their toll on this Miner. The orange coating on the lenses of my orange colored glasses has worn thin, I am afraid.
The Athletic Director just up and retired, after the Head Coach of the Football team, a former player of the AD’s, just up and quit in the middle of the season, one that would end up being a winless season, followed by the sudden retirement of the Favorite Son basketball Head Coach! Now, almost any fan in the world would be asking just what in the Hell is going on? But, for most UTEP fans that have been around awhile we just say, “We are the Miners”. Not with pride, not dripping with sarcasm, just a recognition of reality. It’s how we roll.
But, a thought began to creep into my brain that perhaps there was a connection that might explain such an odd occurrence of events. I am wondering and think it is entirely possible that the administration may have given the AD and coaches orders to raise the academic standards above what the NCAA requires. Hey, when you are a fan of a team that went 0-12 your time isn’t occupied talking about all of the great things and talking about how bad the team is, gets to be pretty much a drag after a while. The fan that has run a website dedicated to his team for years isn’t supposed to be writing negatively about things. If the administration has made demands that have impacted the ability to recruit players to play, win, and get and education in trade for requiring coaches to recruit students to play and get good grades and an education, that’s a good thing, right? You see, that’s the rub. Have we been watching really inexplicably bad football because the coaches had to recruit really good students? And is that bad. Should we even complain about that? So, while the Athletic department seems to be exploding, I have this to wrestle with. The administration seems to be not as committed to winning as the other teams we compete against in order to have better academic performance.
So, today, our brand spankin’ new Athletic Director and the University President have given us our new Head Football Coach. Now, maybe it is the many years of losing in particularly humiliating ways, and the whole fool me a fricken’ thousand times…! thing, but I was still on the old thinking about winning track. I am an old dog and damned slow at that. With cataracts. I was think that this wasn’t a splashy name. I wasn’t a name that inspired. It was a twice re-treaded old obscure guy. To say I was disappointed would be quite an understatement. Then, I tried to place the hire from the perspective of the conspiracy theory that makes winning games a nice thing but getting good grades is the goal. Did they have a hard time getting a coach to come here? Twice head coach with what some would say steps backward along the way and a record the last time that was dismal at best in the late stages of his career is the best candidate for the job? Well, shit fire and piss champagne! I have reached a point in my long career as a Miners fan that I don’t even half give a shit who it is anymore and what is worse is I don’t even know if I am supposed to expect or even hope for winning or what, smile proudly when we are losing 70-0 knowing that our guys get better grades.
Sometimes, I just figure the Hell with it, but the thing is, you can’t quit your school. It is your school. Give up? Give up what? Hope? Like hoping your horse that you put money on in the race will win but finding out that the jockey isn’t really into getting horses all sweaty. In the end, I am a Miner. This isn’t my first rodeo. Hell, you’d think I would be used to it after so many years of it. I don’t know, are we supposed to smile and act like we are very hopeful, or not be stupid and silly and all. Don’t expect to win, but be proud of the work we are doing here at UTEP. Family!
Final note, everyone knows that the offensive linemen are usually the smartest guys on the team. Kugler was an offensive lineman and an offensive line coach. Do you have to ask how our line that could never get a yard when the team needed it does in the classroom? Hint, this might be a hint to explain 0-11 from a power running team with now power to run. Now, here is the last fact I will leave you with and it is from the UTEP Football website; “Dimel was a two-year letterman as an offensive lineman at Kansas State.”
Smile, be nice. It isn’t his fault. Maybe he will help. Help raise the grades or the win totals? Both? Yeah, sure! There’s the ticket! We are the Stanford of the Borderland! Only without the prestige of Stanford or the wins. But, we are trying really hard. And trying to do it with less. We are the Miners.