“You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas” — Davey Crockett (1835)
Court mobbing has a time-honored history at UTEP, too.
Several short years ago, UTEP coach Sean Kugler invited Don Maynard, along with his son Scot, to address the Miners during training camp at Ruidoso, N.M. The young Miners had little way of knowing they were kneeling before a walking legend, surely one of the most eccentric athletes in school history.
The day Roy Heard’s parents drove him from Odessa to the Texas Western campus, they saw where he would be living — in barracks in the shadow of old Kidd Field — and very nearly did a buttonhook back east.
Most years, UTEP starts the football season with major question marks, a heavy underdog looking to earn a quick payday against a national powerhouse. Not quite the case on Sept. 3, when the Miners open at OU, as in Oklahoma Unsettled.
If you’re a UTEP basketball fan who loves defense and rebounding, you well know the name of a Don Haskins favorite — Jim Forbes.
In the early 1970s, Scott English was one of the most accomplished all-around athletes in the nation. Signed out of California by UTEP basketball coach Don Haskins, English was a multiple-year finalist in the NCAA high jump championships for Coach Wayne Vandenburg.
Now that superior human beings of UTEP have reestablished our rightful place as overseers of New Mexico and all its underlings, life is back to normal.
Confined to a wheelchair but still mentally nimble and cheerful as ever, Willie Cager of the Miners 1966 national basketball champs was a welcome sight during a recent campus reunion.
