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A few comments:
- For those that assume that because Price did a relatively good job recruiting in Pullman, WA for WSU he'll do a similarly good job recruiting in El Paso, TX for UTEP, I offer this: Yes, Price did a great job of selling Pullman as a family-style environment where players could get away from the distractions of a big-city and play somewhere more "wholesome" and really devoted to supporting the local college. He also had the advantage of recruiting for a Pac-10 school - those players that wanted to stay on the West Coast, have a chance to play big-time football but couldn't get schollie offers from USC, UCLA, Washington, ASU, Oregon and Stanford could still play Pac-10 football at WSU and prove the doubters wrong. Price can still use the family-style environment and push the upsides of a more rural setting on behalf of El Paso, but the WAC carries much less prestige than the Pac-10 - it will be harder for Price to get top-notch talent to go to UTEP.
One thing working in Price's favor - he did an outstanding job of projecting players and developing success stories out of lightly recruited H.S. players - he took a lot of H.S. TE prospects and groomed them into successful O-linemen and defensive ends. He also relied fairly heavily on JC transfers, something he'll likely continue to do with some success at UTEP.
- Price did a pretty good job in WSU, but he also had what appears to be a very strong staff there, most of whom remained at WSU when he left. Bill Doba is a real good defensive coach, and the Coug's offensive coordinator Mike Levenseller is also quite good. A lot of the better Coug coaches are alumni of the school and feel strongly enough about the school that it'd be hard to lure them away. I wonder if Price can get the same caliber of assistants in UTEP, and if he can will he be able to keep them there? How good will Price be without Doba and Levenseller?
- Regarding that article calling the Mike Stoops hire an 'A' and describing him and Arizona as being the next Pete Carroll and USC - I'll believe it when I see it. I've seen a number of criticisms of Stoops that claimed he rested on the coattails of his brother Bob, and gave a lion's share of the credit for the Sooners' defense to the co-coordinator there Brent Venables. There are also claims that Stoops has some skeletons in his closet that could come back to really bite him in the ass.
I think Arizona has the potential to be a big-time football school, but I'm not yet convinced Mike Stoops is the guy to make it happen. Time will tell as always...
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