Will A New Athletic Director Change Anything At UTEP? Part 2

[kyyote]

I left off with the student athletes and for this particular Athletic Director I believe that this has to be a priority and is a key to making the kind of changes needed to halt a downward spiral of the UTEP Athletics program since the break up of the old WAC and formation of the Mountain West Conference.  Mike Price and Bob Stull showed that years of losing do not shackle a program to continued losing.  The “losing tradition” could be broken in a matter of one or two seasons.  They may have done it differently, but they showed it can be done.  Maintaining it is another matter.  First and foremost it begins with the right head coach, but it has to be more than the personality of a coach that builds consistent winning programs.  Here is where I want to see improvement.  Again, this is a key as I see it to fixing what is not working.
Finally, the public and the fans.  In Part 1 I added it as an afterthought.  It seems too fitting to have changed it, as both the fans and the public are pretty much treated as an afterthought by UTEP.  And the good people of El Paso feel the same way about UTEP.  Neither one treats the other with the respect it deserves, and what is much worse....

read the rest here if you want;

http://www.kyyotesden.com/will-a-new-athletic-director-change-anything-at-utep-part-2/

[utep2step]

I think you're spot on.  Morale among the fans is low. The only thing I disagreed with Senter's presser is him saying filling up the gym and stadium does wonders for recruiting and the programs. Yes it does, however, you have a former AD, one former head coach and and one current head coach in their respective revenue generating programs who have done a pretty good job alienating the fans. You don't hear alienating comments coming from monster show 4x4 drivers when they visit a stadium and yet they fill out the Sun Bowl the entire weekend and for $10 bucks a kid and his parent get every bang for their buck.

They need to say often, like a dwi commercial, why it's beneficial to have a FBS program in our city.  Reintroduce rivalries developed in CUSA (stop talking about the old WAC dagnabbit!). Rive vs UTEP. UNT vs UTEP. La Tech vs. UTEP for football and basketball. Hype up games against ODU and MTSU in basketball. I saw only one, just one game on public billboards for UTEP against a CUSA opponent along the I-10 corridor in El Paso and that was for TV! Not even a home game.