UTEP Football Should Have a 30 for 30 Movie Made

We are less than a month from the start of the 2021 college football season and everyone keeps asking me if I think that the UTEP football program can turn the corner this year. I feel like I have been asked that same question a million times over the last 26 years.

It made me start thinking about the Miners since Bobby Dobbs was replaced during the 1972 season. In the nearly 50 years since his departure, Tommy Hudspeth, Gil Bartosh, Bill Michael, Billy Alton, Bill Yung, Bob Stull, David Lee, Charlie Bailey, Gary Nord, Mike Price, Sean Kugler, and Dana Dimel have all taken their best shot at head coach of the Miners. Of that group, only Stull (twice), Nord, Price (twice), and Kugler have finished with a winning season. It's fascinating to think about how many players and coaches have all tried but failed to turn the Miners into a winner.

The more I began exploring the now six decades of UTEP football, the more I started to wonder if a filmmaker could dig deeper into the program's history and find out why it has been so hard to build a winner on the Sun Bowl field? I know it would make a fascinating ESPN 30 for 30 documentary if the film was done right. There are plenty of former UTEP players, coaches, administrators, and fans that would all have an opinion on the subject.

Maybe this will be a moot point if Dimel can deliver on the promise he made when he took the job back in late 2017. At that time, he said that he wanted five years to build the program the right way. He was not given that luxury at Houston, when Art Briles came in and almost immediately reaped the rewards of the program Dimel had been building. Hopefully, this time around, the Miners can finally turn the corner. If they do, what an ending it would be for that 30 for 30 documentary.