UTEP DC Andre Patterson: Miner Fan's "Dont Respect What They Have" in Mike Price

This has been a topic discussed on many message boards for quite a few years now, and it seems the answer is always"if they win I will support them". The answer is education, someone needs to explain to the people of El Paso how the system works in black and white, they need to understand how the funds generated at a home FB game are important to the program and athletics overall, will this fill the Sun Bowl? No, but I believe it will draw out more support and in the long run will have a positive impact.

GO MINERS!!!

Not supporting utep. I noticed at the smu game that theyre support is worse. The attendance was 26k with maybe 5k tickets for utep. A city with over 2 million should be able to sell out every game. Smu is trying to become a bcs team, they are top 4 in c-usa, have a great coach in june jones, played a rival game vs utep on their home opener. We played ateam weve never heard off with very low expectations going into to the season n we still got better attendance

And I think that is basically it. He is not very politically astute if he thinks trashing the fans will generate any goodwill in the community and a wilingness from fans to attend games if the Miners lose. He may have done more PR harm than good. Yes, the Miners have been to bowl games under Price. Sure, the anticipation and expectations were high when Price was hired — possibly too high. Not to mention, the team was QB’d by none other than The Brother Of A Heisman Winner! With pedigrees like that, why wouldn’t the Sun Bowl sell out!? But after the first season the seasons began to end disappointingly with more losses than wins; QBs take beatings playing for Mike Price which means that they frequently don’t play the entire season or at least not with all their parts intact. The disappointing finishes together with the massively recessed economy,why wouldn’t the people in El Paso tread carefully before spending their hard-earned bordertown cash to buy tickets?? Patterson gives the fans little credit.

I was born and raised in El Paso so I remember The Lost Decade (1970’s). We suffered through the disastrous tenures of Tommy Hudspeth, Bobby Dobbs, Gil Bartosh, Bill Michael, and of course, "Hill"Billy Alton. I remember 0-win seasons, 1-win seasons, 2-win seasons, and the infamous 82-6 shelling the Miners suffered to Utah in 1973. I remember feeling a perverse pride that the Miners were continually ranked in the weekly national sports column The Bottom Ten. At least we got press - the bad kind.

With each new head coach came the vague sense of hope that maybe this one would do it: take the team, the town, and our hopes to new heights; The Flying Miners redux with the ghosts of Billy Stevens and Don Maynard looking down beatifically from the clouds. Gil Bartosh who in 1974coached the Mighty Mojo, Odessa Permian to a Texas 5a championship and the mythical National Championship. In three years, Bartosh won 6 games. Then came Michael, whose background as an Offensive Line coach at the University of Oklahoma seemed like it might allow him the cache needed to lure recruits. Alas, he had the cache but not noodle to be a head coach. He won an average of one game for each of his five seasons.

Si senor, recordemos bien la miseria del pasado. I would say, though that unlike those coaches, Price has a few things going for him that the UTEP coaches of that era didn’t: the NCAA’s restrictions on scholarships prevents the BIG SCHOOLS from hogging all the best and even better players. The advent of cable television and a 24 hour appetite for news allows schools like UTEP to appear on national television and make their case for potential recruits. Even social networking works to the benefit of UTEP and its ilk by democratizing the news dissemination process and allowing any one person or institution to infiltrate any previously inaccessible audience. Plus, he has been to two Rose Bowls and coached a noted NFL QB and Heisman finalist, Ryan Leaf.

Being the parent of three millenials, I can tell you that their sense of history and perspective is diddly. So you can imagine what young footballers their age think about Price’s claims to fame - Who? When?

As for the lower attendance— UTEP’s attendance has been on par with the remaining CUSA schools of similar records. What does Patterson expect?? Methinks he expects to feel the heat if his defense surrenders 200 plus yards in the first half.