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Price tags winner label on Texas-El Paso
By Jack Carey, USA TODAY
Perhaps the only thing more surprising than Mike Price landing the coaching job at Texas-El Paso is the turnaround he's engineered there.
Price, who took two Washington State teams to the Rose Bowl but lost his job at Alabama 18 months ago before he could coach a game after an infamous visit to a Pensacola, Fla., strip club, is making the most of his chance in the Southwest.

The Miners, who have had three winning seasons since 1970, are 5-2 in Price's first year after Saturday's 44-27 victory at Louisiana Tech and are one win from being eligible for their third bowl game since 1967.

UTEP has lost only to No. 21 Arizona State and No. 15 Boise State and will take a four-game winning streak into this week's contest at San Jose State.

"We changed the attitude, emphasized discipline and worked on their confidence, and it's been working out," Price said Sunday. "We've tried to be positive and tried to make it fun."

People are noticing. The Miners received votes in the USA TODAY/ESPN Coaches' Poll and Associated Press media rankings Sunday, heady stuff for a program that was 6-30 the last three years.

Quarterbacked by sophomore Jordan Palmer, whose brother Carson won the 2002 Heisman Trophy at Southern California, the Miners are averaging 33.7 points using a one-back, spread offense.

Palmer, who played the position for only a year in high school, passed for 259 yards and four touchdowns Saturday. "It's kind of on-the-job training for him, and he's proving to be very coachable," Price said. "He played his best game (Saturday)."

The season has been personally gratifying for Price, whose career was in limbo less than a year ago. "I'm not going to mess this up," he said. "I'm going to be the best employee UTEP's ever had."

Record coming: Hawaii quarterback Timmy Chang passed for 318 yards against San Jose State to close in on the NCAA Division I-A career passing yardage record. Chang needs 241 yards this week against Boise State to surpass the 15,031 yards by Brigham Young's Ty Detmer from 1988-91.

•Arizona State's Andrew Walter threw for 415 yards and six touchdowns in a 48-42 win against UCLA. He tied Danny White for the second-most TD passes in a game by an ASU quarterback. His 76 career TD passes are one shy of John Elway's Pacific-10 record.

Kicking woes: The foibles of placekickers have been well documented throughout the season, and there were a couple of more big misfires Saturday.

Rice's Brennan Landry missed an extra point with 4:41 left, allowing Navy to hang on for a 14-13 win, and Notre Dame fell to Boston College 24-23 after D.J. Fitzpatrick missed an extra point in the second quarter.

BC's win was its fourth in a row against the Irish, who are 5-3. Patience among Irish fans for coach Tyrone Willingham seems to be wearing thin (if it wasn't already after last year's 5-7 record). One thread on a Notre Dame Internet fan discussion site Saturday was named "The Ty-Tanic is sinking."

Buckeye sits: After Saturday's victory against Indiana, Ohio State coach Jim Tressel offered no timetable for the return of suspended senior tailback Lydell Ross. The Buckeyes' leading rusher was suspended Friday after he was named in a Columbus police report accusing him of passing phony currency at a strip club Oct. 17.

Contributing: Wire reports









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UTEP is winning games, but it looks like a quick fix to me.

I bet their deck chairs are all in dis-array.



Full Steam Ahead

At this point, I would settle for a quick fix. Heck, if we could actually show an upward trend in improvement I would be happy.

It seems like we are trying to cure cancer. It's not as difficult as some would have us believe.

For us it is always patience, next year, next year, next year, we're young (Boise State is the 2nd youngest team in D-1), the players are trying hard, the coaches are really very good it's just all of the previously listed problems.

I believe this time around coaching is a very big part of the problem. I hope Coach Bennett makes me eat a very large crow dinner, but I haven't ordered any crow from Central Market in anticipation.

Anyone who has been to El PAso can't tell me it is an easier sell than SMU. There is no reasons for SMU to be lagging behind a UTEP.

Maybe it is easier to get in there...only minimum NCAA requirements needed or more importantly easier to stay qualified once in.

It is also easy to get into jail but that doesn't mean anybody wants to go.

There are plenty of tough-nosed, hard working, smart high school athletes in Texas where that excuse does not hold water. Dallas vs. El Paso, come on.

more anectodal evidence to satisfy your ignorance-or do you really want to compare the facts of successful Division 1A football. I'm still waiting on you to back a single opinion up with logical support for your argument.

huntnfish wrote:Anyone who has been to El PAso can't tell me it is an easier sell than SMU. There is no reasons for SMU to be lagging behind a UTEP.

I'm from El Paso. Believe me, if a kid is on scholarship and cost is no object, SMU is miles ahead of UTEP as far as location, campus, reputation, etc. The only thing we don't have is a recent tradition of winning.

Who does the ignorance reference refer to?

One difference happening right now at UTEP vs SMU: The Hawaii game in E.P. was a sellout (or looked like it on TV). The game was played in front of a rather large gaggle of potential recruits, who I later read, were suitibly impressed with what they saw. Now... let's invite them here to Dallas for a visit to the next SMU home game to experience the "large" crowd, 60% of which they won't see because they are up in their cushy stadium boxes, then witness how impressed they are with SMU football. Then afterward, they might go somewhere and discover how grossly inferior the mexican food is in Dallas compared to that in El Paso. See where they might want to play next year.

One of the biggest recruit "killers" in recent SMU history was when SMU blew that big lead against Ole Miss in front of a bunch of very talented recruits.

Mike Price inherited Nord's players, yes, but he's setting the program up for some more-than-adequate newcomers. That's more than I can say for this particular "5 year plan".

It's hard to say that the team with Cavan as a coach ever recovered from that debacle against Ole Miss.