UTEP Football: Miners should win at least once in 2018

UTEP football went winless in 2017 for the first time in 44 years. Can new head coach Dana Dimel turn things around and get the Miners back to winning ways in 2018?

It would be disingenuous to say that UTEP has ever been anything approximating a powerhouse in its long history of playing football. In more than eight decades of playing in one conference or another, UTEP boasts just two league championships. The first came in 1956, when the school was still known as Texas Western. That year, the Miners went 9-2 and beat Arizona State to claim the title in the six-team Border Conference.

Nearly half a century later, the Miners won a share of the 2000 WAC championship alongside TCU at 7-1 in league play. (UTEP, though, lost the head-to-head contest against the Horned Frogs.) In between, the occasional bowl appearance was the best most fans could expect from the plucky but overmatched outfit in El Paso.

So it wasn’t entirely Sean Kugler’s fault that things went sour last year in El Paso. Yet Kugler felt compelled to depart UTEP midway through the season after a 0-5 start to the season. In came Mike Price, who spent nine years as head coach of the Miners between 2004 and 2012, to take over as interim coach. Price couldn’t muster a single win in his return to leadership, and his 10th season at the helm in El Paso prove to be his worst of the lot.

Now it falls to Dana Dimel to see if he can resurrect UTEP. It is unlikely that the Miners are about to become the next Group of Five powerhouse, even given the advantages of being a Texas school in a talent-rich state. But they can get back to the respectability of middle-class status in Conference USA and fighting for semi-regular bowl eligibility.

Can Dimel find six or seven wins in his first year at the helm and get the Miners back to the postseason? Let’s look at the offense and defense before assessing the schedule and the prospects for UTEP in 2018.