Doing some rummaging around I found some things worthy of notice e. Back in the fifties and early sixties the world of football was all ground and pound. UTEP was horrible at it. Sound familiar? So there was a head coach up in the CFL at the same time who had turned a perennial loser into an instant winner by using a spread offense. The CFL team had passed him over for the GM job so he said screw you. Now horrible UTEP was trying to get into the WAC at the time. UTEP hires the coach and the Flying Miners take to the runways. The world is set ablaze. The coach is second only to Bear Bryant in putting players in the NFL! Glory Road was a side street off of Sun Bowl Drive. The Miners showed they could whup Hell out of WAC teams and judged good enough to get into the conference. The conference caught on quick to this passing the damned ball thing though and caught up. The WAC became the Wacky WAC.
Eventually, we decided to return to power football and returned to being horrible. Stull came in and opened up the offense and we won. He left and we began putting the power football team back together. There had been a change over the years though. Our power football was anything but winning football. It was a defense mechanism for keeping the number of humiliating scores down. Back comes the spread and Price has the team winning and everyone having fun. Teams adjust we let Price go and go back to what we do best-being horrible playing what we have now changed to calling ball control football.
We are currently thinking seriously about using some more passing I think. Maybe. We might even go for points wins instead time of possession wins this year.
So the Flying Miners? Billy Stevens was unable to play so his backup quarterback got the start against the Lobos. Brooks Dawson stepped in and threw five incompletions. But his first six completions were for six touchdowns. Sixty seven was a rough year for New Mexico including the 75-12 loss to the Miners. By the way, he was benched after the third touchdown pass in the first quarter for Billy Stevens-the guy who was in the hospital a few days before. But Dawson came back in and threw four and five in the first half and number six in the third quarter.
Finally, most of you probably know that Bum Phillips was the head football coach of the Miners for one year. But did you know he returned to coaching high school football after the Miners?
