MondoMiner Wrote:I love how everyone who doesn't like UTEP has the "Price will be leaving" argument. He loves El Paso and UTEP. Sure, he MAY leave, but there's been no indication as of yet.
just the accumulated experience of all 53 non-bcs programs - if you have a coach that is successful, he'll get offered a job at multiples of the money he's presently making to revive a dormant bcs program. it has nothing to do with utep as a school or price as a person - it's just the way it works.
there are exceptions (but they are usually those coaches who went to said school and wouldn't leave no matter what) ...otherwise, your town/school is just a stopover on a long journey to become notre dame's next coach.
nobody wishes it on utep - but we've all seen this before.
and back to the topic of c-usa and their opinion of themselves:
- they are 5-0 vs the i-aa: no one cares unless you lose to the i-aa, so this doesn't mean anything
- they have one win over the bcs (ecu over duke) which is relatively meaningless - we all know there are about 20 bcs programs that are bcs in name only - duke is one of the worst of those.
- they are 5-0 vs the non-bcs (which is good) but two of those we're over the sunbelt *(who hasn't beaten a single i-a team this year), two we're over the mwc (smu over tcu, utep over new mexico) - which are nice wins, and one win over the wac (utep over nmsu) - which isn't one of the better wac teams.
all in all - i would say, they're playing a weak non-bcs schedule (aside from utep playing new mexico and smu playing tcu - which are both traditonal games for those programs), but they are handling it.
as an aside: you don't see c-usa programs signing up to play utah, colorado state, air force, hawaii, boise state, fresno state, miami(ohio), toledo, northern illinois, bgsu etc in their ooc schedules (the non-bcs teams that are generally good - which is the best you can do with schedules made years in advance). some of them won't turn out to be good in a particular year that you might play them (for example: bgsu this year) - but at least you were scheduling with the "intention" of playing good non-bcs competition. they'll counter that they play tough bcs programs - and they do --- but so do all of our conferences.
as a second aside: c-usa plays more i-aa games per conference member than any other non-bcs conference (other than the sunbelt - who has two teams fresh out of i-aa, so it is expected).