November 9, 2009
I’ve seen all the nasty comments and calls for Coach Prices resignation already this morning. It’s been less than 48 hours since UTEP lost a close one to the Tulane Green Wave and the trash talk is already making its way through the blogs and on the radio airwaves. It’s sad how little you people know about how good we actually have it. Let’s talk about your attitude.
First off, if you think you can do better, go put your resume in. Hell, go coach a youth football team and then come back tell me how easy it is to win every single game, or even half of them.
I know that since you’re from El Paso, that you’re probably not a fan of college football. You’re a fan of the Miners. That means you know about jack-squat when it comes to Division I football. You assume that because you have a UTEP sweatshirt and a little Miner pickaxe stuck to your bumper that the team owes you a national championship every year. I’ve got news for you – you’re delusional.
We’ve got a good coach. He came here under some odd circumstances otherwise he would have never landed here. Had there not been the falsely reported incident in Alabama, he’d be there with a number two next to his team’s name in the national polls. With his name cleared you can bet every February he gets phone calls from all around the country asking him to bring his years of experience to a new campus. Undoubtedly those offers are from schools with far more money dedicated to recruiting and athletic facilities than UTEP has, thus making those jobs so much easier than this one. He chooses to stay here and I hear it’s because we gave him a chance when no one else would. If you know much about college football, you’ll know that loyalty is becoming more and more rare.
If you want to kick him out and grab some other coach, you’re crazy and uninformed. If you haven’t been paying attention to what has happened with UTEP’s basketball program since the great Don Haskin’s retired, I’ll fill you in. Coaches come in and they move on when they either get a better deal or get into too much trouble without enough wins to make us forget about their indiscretions. Basically we don’t pay enough to keep any of the good basketball coaches around. Look for Barbee to sprint to the next available seven figure job shortly after he leads UTEP to a winning season this year.
If you get rid of Price we’ll have a steady stream of coaches who land here for a season or two and then move on to another better paying position. We’re not a destination, we’re a rest stop between a place where a coach was and where he wants to be.
Is that what you would like? Would you like for UTEP to hire some hotshot Division II coach or an offensive coordinator from a PAC 10 team just to have them leave after their first winning season? Do you know what that does to your recruiting? It kills your ability to recruit talent because they can’t guarantee the coach that brought them in will be there from one season to the next. It’s extremely important to recruits that they have a solid program to commit to. Coach Price is building a reputation as a guy who’s going to be around. Be happy that while he’s building you the best possible football team he can, he gives us a chance to win every game we play.
You’re going to have to enjoy the fact that our recruiting is a craps shoot right now and that occasionally we get great players like running back Donald Buckram that make every moment of a game a joy to watch. Sometimes you have to look at the bright side of a situation.
Speaking of UTEP’s bright side…
UTEP’s main purpose in this community is not to provide you with football bragging rights. In fact it has no sports purpose at all. What sports we do have are nice compliments to the real goal of any university – the education of individuals to further the progress of our society.
UTEP is undergoing a remarkable transformation right before our eyes. They are expanding programs in nursing and medical/biological research to provide the next generation of professionals in industries that will be based in El Paso. While you’re bitching about UTEP’s third down conversation rate, the school is poising itself to be an outstanding international school of business, engineering, nursing, communications and research. The leaders in our community have asked for smart people who can take us to the next level as a community and UTEP is trying hard to make that happen. So excuse them if they aren’t too worried about a football program that is decent enough to compete in their conference every year.
Coincidentally UTEP’s progress as an educational entity will be the key factor in bettering our sports programs. Just look at schools that do have powerhouse football teams. They are all great places to get an education, and they were focused first on that goal.
Once UTEP is churning out the best and the brightest in the many fields they offer a degree in, you can expect those successful graduates to kick back some of their earnings to non-scholastic endeavors like football and basketball. You will come to know them as “boosters” and they are the key to great sports programs. The important thing to remember is what comes first – education.
Build the foundation and the rest will take care of itself. You’ll treasure your child’s graduation day from a top notch university like UTEP a lot more than you will ever treasure a national championship. You’ll enjoy the games a lot more when you look at our school from the proper perspective.
David Karlsruher is a frequent contributor to Newspaper Tree, a graduate of UTEP’s communication program and the alum they call “the one whose name we do not speak.” You can tell David where to go and where he can stuff it at davidkshow@gmail.com.