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Date Posted: 09/ 4/03 10:55am
Author: SLocal
Author Host/IP: 66.215.114.155
Subject: Re: Expect a crowd at El Paso
In reply to: Gilroy Cowboy 's message, "Talking about this week's WAC games" on 09/ 2/03 2:19pm

Hey Mustangs. You'll be in for a treat in the Sun Bowl...

Sports Thursday, September 4, 2003

Miner fans loyal despite many losses

Joe Muench
El Paso Times

Times file photo
Frank and Jessie Perez and family parked their motor home early in the day and began tailgating before a UTEP home game last year.

Joe Muench

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

One area where UTEP football has not been an underdog is with its fandom. The Miners have some of the best well-wishers in America, Chicago Cubs-type fans of the West.

So says statistics. The team has had few wins and fewer winning seasons in the 41-year history of the Sun Bowl, yet a whole lot of tickets are still being purchased each fall.

Coming up, some observations. But first a few more numbers:

In the 21 years since the stadium was expanded to its present 51,500 seats, the average attendance per game has been 27,417. That's for only 49 wins and back-to-back winning seasons only once. And those were so long ago (1987-88) they are now considered lore.

It's not a 100,000-plus average as at Tennessee or Michigan. But it's a whole lot more than most of the 117 NCAA Division 1-A schools, and always ranks among the best in the 10-school Western Athletic Conference. All those fans for a team that seldom wins.

And a further toast to those who love the Miners is that even more than the average showed up last year despite a second-straight two-win season.

Count 'em

It was a 28,310 count for a two-win, three-loss home schedule. That's more people than quite a few college football stadiums even have seats. And UTEP's average would be a near sellout every game at up-the-highway New Mexico State University, which has a 30,000-seat stadium that fills only when UTEP, rival New Mexico or a rare big-namer comes to play.

Craving a winner

Now the observations:

El Paso is desperate for a winner. The feeling is always, "It could be this year." That's why Don Haskins remains such a big man in town. He's the last hero, again so long ago it has become lore. He won the 1966 NCAA basketball championship with then-Texas Western College. Then he dominated the Western Athletic Conference through the 1980s and took the Miners to the NCAA Sweet 16 in 1992. El Paso, with few other bragging rights, still savors that. There has been no NCAA tournament appearance since. And there has been only one winning football season since.

It's that desperate craving to be one of the proverbial "guys" -- way out here hundreds of miles west of West Texas -- that brings out big numbers of Miner fans every season. It's the feeling that maybe this will be a year like 2000, when a win over Rice meant a WAC co-championship and gave occasion for fans to tear down goal posts and carry quarterback Rocky Perez off the field on their shoulders. It wasn't like UTEP was going to a BCS bowl. Then again, it was.

Also contributing to good crowds is the new popularity in tailgating. Several thousand game-goers will tailgate Saturday in a good atmosphere. It's free. Stay as long as you like. At NMSU, tailgaters are shooed off the lots unless they attend the game itself. At other schools you need a game ticket just to be let into tailgate areas on campus.

But the big thing is El Paso is desperate for something good to happen, and sports is the best venue. It's because the Miners are the nation's window to El Paso. And football fans, just aching to cherish another Haskins, will be in the Sun Bowl Saturday in search of that elusive new hero.

Joe Muench is a sports columnist for the El Paso Times. You may reach him

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