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News Article
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The winning economics of Orange Fever
By Sito Negron
It took much of the season to kick in, but with coach Tony Barbee and the UTEP Miners on a winning streak and boasting a top-25 ranking, Orange Fever now is in full swing.
Behind team leaders like top-scorer Randy Culpepper and junior guard Derrick Caracter, the Miners appear to be a sure bet for the NCAA tournament.
Barbee said the attention to the ranking and the winning streak is fine, but it’s not as if the team hasn’t already had success.
Last year, he points out, UTEP won 23 games, its fourth-highest total in 20 years – including wins over Texas Tech and New Mexico – and he’s aiming for consistency.
“I’m not just building a team,” Barbee told El Paso Inc. “I’m trying to build a program.”
“Everybody talks about marketing,” said Bob Stull, UTEP’s longtime athletics director. “The best marketing tool is winning.”
said being ranked in the top 25 is an “added value,” but what really draws fans is the chase for the championship.
“Everybody talks about marketing. The best marketing tool is winning,” Stull said.
And when UTEP basketball wins on the court, it seems a whole lot of people win off the court.
The university sells more game tickets, and more people make a night of it, eating and drinking, usually before but sometimes after the game.
“We’re a lot busier now on game nights than we were earlier in the season,” said Brenda Hayes, owner of the Rib Hut restaurant on North Mesa, not far from the Don Haskins Center.
It’s hard to figure the exact economic impact of winning, but it’s clearly better for the bottom line than the alternative.
Since a crowd of 7,768 saw the Miners beat Tulane Jan. 27, attendance has been over 10,000 for three straight games, including 12,092 for the Feb. 6 spanking of Tulsa. That’s impressive in an arena that officially seats 12,000.
Going into this weekend, UTEP had two more home games, Saturday against Rice, which sold out, and next Saturday’s final home game of the regular season versus the University of Alabama-Birmingham.
“You will see a sellout against UAB next weekend,” said Steve Yellen.
Yellen is the color commentator on radio broadcasts of Miner games, as well as a former player and basketball fanatic. He lives in Kern Place, an entertainment destination that really takes off on game nights.
“This area of shops, nightclubs and eateries is hot right now, but watch it on a sold-out night like Saturday,” he said.
Attendance at UTEP basketball games has bounced around over the years.
The best season was 1983-84, when the team – featuring Fred Reynolds, Juden Smith, and Kent Lockhart – ranked as high as fifth but lost to University of Nevada-Las Vegas in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
That team sold out 11 games and averaged 11,568 fans.
Attendance dipped to 7,367 in 1998, but rebounded during the Billy Gillespie years. In his last season, 2003-04, the crowds averaged 10,282 with eight sellouts. It was about the same the following season, but started to dip again until last year, with average crowds of 8,675.
The average this year, which should go up with the last two home games, is 8,229.
This year’s team is the first to be nationally ranked since the 1991-92 season, and there’s something about this team that reminds long-time fans of that era, when the NBA-level talent of players like Greg Foster, Antonio Davis and Tim Hardaway led to consistent NCAA appearances.
Stull said there’s a solid base of about 7,000 basketball fans. When the team is competitive, add about 20 percent, he said. And if they’re going for a championship, that’s when the sellouts kick in.
“ESPN1 and ESPN2 scroll only the top-25 schools 24 hours a day and show highlights from them as well, so UTEP gets incredible exposure when they are ranked,” said Yellen.
He added, “It is a source of pride for the alums to see their school’s name all the time on ESPN and people want to be part of a winner.”
City Rep. Steve Ortega, a sports fan who recently pushed for the city to co-sponsor the 2011 Conference USA tournament here, said athletics can provide a rallying point for the larger community.
“When the team wins, the community’s esteem and pride is lifted – and you feel good about yourself and your community. Very few things do that,” he said.
And the money?
“When the University of Texas at Austin came to El Paso to play in 2007, that one game had a $4-million positive impact on the local economy, according to the Institute for Policy and Economic Development at UTEP,” Ortega said. “Athletics is big business.”
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