We all have thousands of reasons
why we love our sports teams. Perhaps we don’t know any other way or it’s a way
to remember a more innocent time. Family is a big part of it—how many stories
are out there about how a parent took their kid to a game? A lot of these are
true for me, but my favorite teams make it easy to connect the dots.
Jim
Forbes graduated from Bel Air High School in El Paso and played basketball at
UTEP from 1971-1974 under Don Haskins. Forbes was on the 1972 US Olympic men’s
basketball team that got screwed in Munich. He never played professionally and
was an assistant coach from 1981-84 under the Great Man at UTEP. Forbes has
been a boys’ basketball coach in town for a long time, at Riverside for many
years and currently at my alma mater, Andress High School. He’s taken the
Golden Eagles to one state tournament and a few other deep runs in the
playoffs. I always say rooting for Andress basketball is just like rooting for
UTEP basketball—it connects my childhood (AHS was my first love in sports) to
my upbringing and into the present. I hear about Coach Forbes’ squads and it
reminds me of going to Andress games as a boy and some of those great football
teams Allan Sepkowitz coached in the 80s and 90s.
One
of my first memories as a football fan was going to a game with my dad in the
late 1970s. It was a rainy Friday night game, with the good guys hosting El
Paso High. We stayed for the duration, largely because I could get $1 off
football tickets at my elementary school which was adjacent to the stadium. $3
for adults and $2 for students if you got them before Friday. I remember
getting swept up in football fever as a junior high student in the mid-80s when
we lorded over El Paso football.
Jim
Forbes’ teams also connect me to Coach Haskins, who coached the Miners for 37
years (1961-1999). My brother and I would always watch the Miner games from
Laramie, Provo, Albuquerque, or wherever, since we didn’t go to the games and
there weren’t very many televised home games. Some were local broadcasts (Bob
Nitzburg and the CBS affiliate) and some were regional telecasts. It was always
fun to watch and good to know that while we might not win we sure as hell
wouldn’t be outcoached.
We
watched the famous paper cup game at New Mexico in the mid-1980s when Wayne
Campbell missed a free throw late in the game but got another try because a fan
had thrown a paper cup onto the court. Campbell makes good on his second chance
and the good guys snuck out of University Arena with a crucial conference win.
I
like that Forbes learned under Coach Haskins and is passing those lessons
forward as a coach at Andress, a place that means a lot to me.
There’s
another layer to this connection—Jeff Woodruff coached as UTEP football assistant
under Mike Price from 2004-2011 and has been the head coach at AHS for the last
three seasons. So UTEP athletics has also made it to the Andress football
sideline, although through the years my Eagles have had significantly better
seasons than have my Miners. So rooting for Andress football is just like
rooting for UTEP football. Well, kind of, anyway.
It’s
in that vein that I welcome Dana Dimel as coach of the UTEP football program. Dimel
is a former mid-major head coach at Wyoming and Houston, and comes to El Paso
following his second stint under Bill Snyder at Kansas State.
KSU
is one of my absolute favorite teams. I learned so much, made so many friends,
and even met my bride while living in Clay Center, 45 minutes outside
Manhattan, Kansas. I attended a lot of K-State games with these people, had so
much fun, and fell in love with all things purple. While I never attended KSU
(just as I never attended UTEP), I am still a loyal and dedicated fan who shows
up when it’s raining and when the sun’s out. The only time I take sides against
the Wildcats is when they play the Miners. They are my top two favorite teams.
I
am also pleased that Coach Snyder is a good man. Not a perfect man, but a good
man, who has won 200+ games as he completely reversed the fortunes of a
downtrodden KSU program. I am able to connect Bill Snyder with Don Haskins in
terms of both being good men who truly seem to want to do the right thing. Surely
Coach Dimel will bring some of Uncle Bill’s lessons with him to the Sun Bowl--
16 goals anyone? K-State people Mike Cox, Jeremy O’Hara, Keith Burns, and Jake
Waters are a part of Dimel’s first coaching staff at UTEP. Jake was our QB when
we went to Tempe and beat Michigan in the Wild Wings Bowl in 2014. That bowl trip has special memories for my wife and me.
Miner
football, to put it mildly, is in a bit of a funk following an 0-12 season
during which favorite son Sean Kugler stepped down as head coach. So with any
luck watching UTEP football will become just like watching K-State football.
Go get 'em Coach Dimel, we're counting on you.
