Andress, UTEP, and Kansas State

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.

Hero Worship

Jon Teicher has broadcast UTEP football and men's basketball for 37 years, or since I was nine, taking the reins from Gary Gallup. As a UCLA graduate he called around in the early 1980s looking for a broadcasting gig and learned the El Paso Diablos minor league baseball team didn't even air their games. That's how he landed in town. He also called games for New Mexico State, and in Portland, Oregon, and in Wichita, Kansas. But he made it back to the border and stayed.

On Tuesday, December 5th the National Football Foundation awarded him the Chris Schenkel award, given to a sports broadcaster who has had a long and distinguished career broadcasting college football. The award seeks to recognize broadcasters with direct ties to colleges and universities rather than strictly national types. Past winners include Larry Munson at Georgia, Max Falkenstein at Kansas, and Ray Christensen at Minnesota.

Working radio in Athens, Georgia, I can tell you what the locals feel about the late Larry Munson is very similar to what we El Pasoans/Miner fans feel about Jon Teicher. I don't know Miner athletics without him. One of the things I like most is that he an El Pasoan, that he is our guy, and that he is one of us. We don't have to share him with anyone. He is our connection to great years, great teams, and great games. He's a beacon at a time when we could use some positive news from out athletic department.

Jon is the reason I started out in broadcasting. I would listen to the Diablo games in my living room with my engineer's graphing notebook (the straight lines were already drawn) and keep score of the game while listening. When I worked in radio he would air check my Levelland High School broadcasts when I breezed through town. I don't know what possessed me to reach out to him, but he made time for a guy calling class 4A games on a 6,000 watt FM station near Lubbock. Surely I was a little awestruck, but he was as down to earth as could be. I've also stopped in just to say hello in subsequent years. When we lived in Alabama a few years ago I'd stop to say hello after the UAB games. He recognized me and we'd chat for a moment or two.

He's the radio voice in UTEP's win over Kansas in the 1992 NCAA basketball tournament when Johnny Melvin stepped to the line and swished two free throws, and he was as ecstatic as everyone else when time ran out on the win. I've read the accounts on how the MinerTalk post-game call in show ran seven hours until they got kicked out of the arena. He was there in Tucson in the '88 tournament when we had to overcome a ton of adversity to win what amounted to a road game vs. Arizona. There are YouTube clips of those games with his audio that serve as comfort food when I need some.

An old friend took me to the 1988 Air Force football game at the Sun Bowl on a sunny and cool November afternoon. It was one of the first times the good guys wore orange tops and orange britches. I brought my radio and listened and it's how I learned Wake Forest tied their game, opening the door for us to go to the Independence Bowl. Tony Tolbert made a big stop on fourth down late to preserve a 31-24 win. Jon was there for that one too.

He cites the Great Man Don Haskins as one of his mentors. I heard in an interview that Jon lost his father early in life and that Coach became one of his role models in the 18 years they worked together. It's a little wild that Jon has been Voice of the Miners for 37 years and that Haskins was our coach for 39. They both found El Paso and loved it so much they stayed.

Dad and I went to a Diablo game in, I don't know, '84 or '85. We sat in the third-base grandstand and Jon came up to us and asked Dad a few questions as part of a survey. My eyes about popped out of their sockets because I knew exactly who he was since I'd already been listening to him for a while.

Jon also bitched me out once when I was about eight. We'd won a lucky number drawing and scored something like a free car wash or whatever. To claim your prize you had to go up to the press box since there was no guest services booth back then. There was no raised press box, it was more like a high school stadium where the top row of seats is directly in front of the press box. So when Dad went to claim our prize I stopped right in Teicher's sight line as he called the game. He barked at me and said I had to move. I don't blame him-- I'd have gotten in my grill too.

He's the soundtrack of my time as a Miner fan. I don't know him well, but I do know him and he seems like a very nice man. The Chris Schenkel award is a great honor and it is well deserved.

Congratulations Jon. And thank you.