A coach and team that need each other

So where do you go for a good, hearty meal when you’re in El Paso, Texas?

Mike Price went to a car wash. You read that right. But this isn’t your typical car wash.

It’s the H&H Car Wash, where you not only can get your flivver cleaned up, but your belly filled up. And, if you like, your shoes shined.

First Lady Laura Bush has eaten there. So has the governor of Texas.

And Monday morning, the clientele were treated to another big name, the new head coach of the Texas-El Paso Miners football team. And to say they were inspired about having Mike Price on board might be underplaying it a bit.

“We’re so damned excited about having this guy, you can’t believe the enthusiasm he’s created,” said Maynard Haddad, co-owner of the H&H. “I’ve been involved in this program for years and I’ve never seen anything like this. Thank god he messed up or we’d never have had him. He’s got this town on fire.”

So much so that someone who works at the H&H even remembered what Price had eaten several hours after he’d been there: a breakfast taco.

“We’ve gotten a whole lot of publicity because we’re kind of a different place,” Haddad said about his business. “We’re an old-fashioned counter type of place with four tables and 15 stools. And the food’s good.”

That’s where I happened to catch up with Price.

I’d called Miners athletic director Bob Stull, a former UW assistant football coach and administrator, to talk about his new hire, and 20 seconds into the conversation, he said, “You want to talk to Mike? He’s sitting right here.”

From the background noise, it sounded as if a lot of cars were being cleaned and a lot of bellies filled.

And from the pitch of his voice, it sounded as if Mike Price was speaking with a mouthful of smile. “I feel like I’ve been reborn,” said the man who grew up in Everett.

His hiring brought the media spotlight to a school that doesn’t often get such attention. “It’s been tremendous for us from a national standpoint,” said Jeff Darby, the sports information director at UTEP. “We were the second story on SportsCenter at 6 p.m. Sunday. We just don’t get that. It’s been a godsend.”

The El Paso Times played the Price hiring on the front page of the first section, and there were fan and player reactions in the sports section. Most of the players had gone home for the holidays, but the few who were still there were highly excited at having Price as their coach.

One fan who was interviewed wasn’t in favor of Price’s hiring because of what got him fired last spring before he ever coached a game at the University of Alabama – a night of partying that included a visit to a strip club in Pensacola, Fla., during a golf outing. But the tenor in town was largely upbeat, according to Haddad.

“We’re not used to winning, but when you play competitive, you’re going to draw crowds,” he said. “We open with Arizona State on the road and we’ll give them a helluva game, and I guarantee you our first home game will be a sellout. I had two people tell me this morning they were getting ready to cancel their season tickets, but now they’re going to renew them.

“You have to be here to realize what’s going on.”

What’s going on is that a man who made a mistake is being given a second chance to do what he loves to do. As he told the El Paso Times, “I was born to be a football coach. Some kids grow up wanting to be firemen or policemen. I wanted to be a coach. While everybody was learning their ABCs, I was learning football from my father. God gave me that as my calling.”

Now that he’s been given a second chance, he vows not to blow it. “I’m going to be a perfect employee,” he said.

It’s a good situation for him. A place where a 7-5 record will win him toasts and not roasts, as in a lot of other towns around the country.

El Pasoans are thrilled that they could land such a high-profile coach.

“I don’t know that he could be much more popular than he is right now,” said Matt Aguilar, who covers UTEP football for the El Paso Times. “People like him already because he genuinely seems to like that he’s here. El Paso is not a town people appreciate, and the fact that he gave the city a chance (has won him favor). Someone used the example: ‘It’s like two people who needed each other.’”

Price needed to get back into coaching, and this place seems like a perfect fit. Out of the spotlight, not a great deal of pressure, the only game in town. Just three winning teams in the past 33 years, only one in the past 15 years. That one winner – in 2000, when the Miners captured a piece of the WAC title – brought crowds of 45,000 to Sun Bowl Stadium. Since then, with the Miners winning two games each of the past three years, they’ve dwindled to under 30,000.

“We weren’t making a lot of progress,” said Stull, a former UTEP coach. He was an associate athletic director at Washington when UTEP brought him back as athletic director in 1998.

Stull has known Price for better than 20 years. “The thing I knew about Mike was that never in all the years I coached have I ever heard anything but good things said about him,” said Stull, who served on Don James’ staff for 10 years with the Huskies.

He laughed about having to introduce a former foe as his new football coach. “I never thought I’d be hiring a damn Cougar,” he said.

Price got a taste of the town when he took WSU to the Sun Bowl two years ago. “My wife and I kind of fell in love with El Paso,” he said. As far as the football program is concerned, he said, “the sky’s the limit.”

Since Stull took over, a state-of-the-art weight room has been built at one end of the stadium as part of a $10 million construction program to upgrade athletic facilities. “The one missing piece was to get a guy in football to pull it all together,” he said.

Now he thinks he’s got that guy.

Most of UTEP’s players come from Texas, but the school also recruits in California and Arizona. One of its returning quarterbacks is Jordan Palmer, brother of Carson Palmer, the 2002 Heisman Trophy winner and the first pick in last year’s NFL draft. Jordan Palmer started six games last fall, passing for 1,168 yards and seven touchdowns with 13 interceptions for a team that went 2-11. The starter in the other seven games, Orlando Cruz, also returns, as does the leading rusher, Howard Jackson, who ran for 1,000 yards.

Aguilar said the Miners are “in pretty good shape in terms of depth,” with the last three freshman classes having been redshirted.

He also said there has been a “debate” in the state about whether what happened with Price last spring will hurt him in recruiting the Bible Belt. “I don’t think that it will,” Aguilar said. “I think people are going to jump at the chance to play for Mike Price.”

The new coach might want to use the H&H Car Wash as a recruiting lure.