Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 3-5
1992Copper BowlW 31-28
1994Alamo BowlW 10-3
1997Rose BowlL 16-21
2001Sun BowlW 33-27
2002Rose BowlL 14-34UTEP
2004Houston BowlL 28-33
2005GMAC BowlL 13-45
2010New Mexico BowlL 24-52
Report card
Offense carries it: 45th percentile offense, bottom-quarter defense at 9th.
UTEP, every completed season graded against the whole field, then averaged.
Offense
Defense
Each season is his team’s percentile among every team with that stat (the share it beat), averaged over his completed seasons here; a mid-season takeover year and the season in progress aren’t graded. Letters: A+ 90th percentile and up, A 80, B+ 70, B 60, B− 50, C+ 45, C 40, C− 30, D 15, F below.
Fans
No fan talk about him on our list yet. His record is on Career.
Stats
Big games
Pick a job to see its years on their own.
The big-game ledger
How he does in the games that matter most — rivalry record, performance broken out by real opponent tier, one-score games, and his toughest historical matchup.
3-11 against his rivals at Washington State. Winless in 5 tries against Rick Neuheisel.
The big-game ledger
How he does in the games that matter most — rivalry record, performance broken out by real opponent tier, one-score games, and his toughest historical matchup.
Just 1-5 against David Bailiff.
Signature games
Tags describe each game; they aren’t scores. The weighting that picks these games is still being tested.
The big-game ledger
How he does in the games that matter most — rivalry record, performance broken out by real opponent tier, one-score games, and his toughest historical matchup.
3-11 against his rivals. Just 1-5 against David Bailiff.
Signature games
These losses tie at the model's current max -- an editorial pick among a real tie, not a clean ranking.
Tags describe each game; they aren’t scores. The weighting that picks these games is still being tested.
How he plays
Run/pass mix, by field position
Called about what the situation called for.
3,822 run and pass snaps at UTEP, 2004–2012, his own games, one row per offensive coordinator. Each cell is how much more often he passed than the rest of FBS did in the same situation (field zone, down, distance, score, quarter, same season), in percentage points.
Pass rate, stint by stint
Where each stint’s offense sat between run-first and pass-first, and how far it moved from one season to the next, against the FBS-wide average of 41% pass. The band is that stint’s real season-to-season range, not a fixed-width box.
Season-to-season pass-rate range for all 449 FBS coaching stints with at least three covered seasons, 2004–2025.
Building the roster
Four numbers on how he actually stocks a roster, from signing day to draft day.
Roster ownership
Roster ownership
of his 2017 roster arrived on his watch — 50 of 124 players. The other 74 are holdovers from before he was hired.
This coach's entire tenure (2004-2017) predates 2021, when transfer-portal tracking begins in this database. Portal usage cannot be measured for this tenure at all -- this is not the same as '0% portal'.
“His own” means the player arrived while he was head coach; “inherited” means a predecessor brought him in.
Size up front
Size up front
Offensive linemen on his UTEP rosters have averaged 5 lb heavier than the FBS average (2010–2017 (4 seasons) rosters on record) — heavier than 79% of FBS coaching runs since 2010.
Average listed weight of every offensive lineman on each season’s roster, holdovers included, against every FBS roster that season (2010 on; a program needs 3+ seasons under him to appear). Weights are the ones programs publish, and programs list differently. This describes size only — not scheme, and not quality.
Where he recruits
is his biggest recruiting state: 133 of 224 signees (59%) across his 2004–2017 tenure, drawn from 20 states in all. Next: CA (49).
62% of his signees come from TX and its 4 border states (NM 3, LA 1, OK 1).
Off this map: 13 signees to the east (MD 5, NY 4, others) and 5 to the north (WA 5).
- median hometown distance
- 602 mi
- within 100 mi
- 26%
- within 500 mi
- 35%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 17%
The map counts signed recruits across his tenure; the distance figures cover his current roster, transfers and walk-ons included. Two different groups, kept separate on purpose.
The NFL pipeline
The NFL pipeline
players drafted into the NFL off his teams here. None were his own recruits yet: all 1 roster-verified picks arrived under Sean Kugler. 7 more can’t be traced to who brought them in (no roster record).
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | R2.02 | Will Hernandez | Offensive Guard |  New York Giants | recruited under Sean Kugler |
| 2008 | R3.36 | Oniel Cousins | Offensive Guard |  Baltimore Ravens | Estimated |
| 2008 | R4.18 | Quintin Demps | Safety |  Philadelphia Eagles | Estimated |
| 2008 | R5.31 | Marcus Thomas | Running Back |  San Diego Chargers | Estimated |
| 2007 | R3.35 | Johnnie Lee Higgins | Wide Receiver |  Oakland Raiders | Estimated |
| 2007 | R6.31 | Jordan Palmer | Quarterback |  Washington Redskins | Estimated |
| 2006 | R2.06 | Thomas Howard | Linebacker | Oakland Raiders | Estimated |
| 2005 | R7.05 | Adrian Ward | Defensive Back |  Minnesota Vikings | Estimated |
A pick counts toward his tenure when the player’s final college season was one he coached, a checkable rule rather than a claim about who developed the player. A blank note means the player is on a verified roster and arrived on his watch. “Estimated” means no roster record, so the final season is assumed to be the year before the draft.
News
No outlet on our list has written about him by name yet. His record is on Career.
Career
Coaching career
The arc of his career is on Now.
Steady no large move in either direction on our stature ladder
10th-best UTEP tenure of 20 by the numbers.
Followed Gary Nord (2000–2003) · succeeded by Sean Kugler (2013–2017) · returned in 2017 · succeeded by Dana Dimel (2018–2023).
| Season | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2017 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||||||||
| Record | 8-4 | 8-4 | 5-7 | 4-8 | 5-7 | 4-8 | 6-7 | 5-7 | 3-9 | 0-7 | |
| Postseason | L bowl | L bowl | — | — | — | — | L bowl | — | — | — | |
| Coordinators | |||||||||||
| OC | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | Brent Pease | |
| DC | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | Tom Mason | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||||||||
| Offense | 44 | 89 | 51 | 61 | 67 | 65 | 16 | 63 | 46 | 0 | |
| Defense | 70 | 62 | 31 | 48 | 13 | 15 | 6 | 17 | 17 | 27 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||||||||
| 1st-down pass% | 41.3 | 47.7 | 52.9 | 47.3 | 44.9 | 50.0 | 45.5 | 44.8 | 34.8 | 37.4 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 36.5 | 41.1 | 55.6 | 42.9 | 53.4 | 36.8 | 42.4 | 42.1 | 35.3 | 34.1 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 27.3 | 32.3 | 26.7 | 20.0 | 18.5 | 38.1 | 21.2 | 28.9 | 27.3 | 22.7 | |
Underperforms his recruiting talent on offense and performs about as expected for his recruiting talent on defense.
2nd-best Washington State tenure of 21 by the numbers.
Followed Dennis Erickson (1987–1988) · succeeded by Bill Doba (2003–2007).
| Season | 1989 | 1990 | 1991 | 1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||||||||||||
| Record | 6-5 | 3-8 | 4-7 | 9-3 | 5-6 | 8-4 | 3-8 | 5-6 | 10-2 | 3-8 | 3-9 | 4-7 | 10-2 | 10-3 | |
| Postseason | — | — | — | W bowl | — | W bowl | — | — | L bowl | — | — | — | W bowl | L bowl | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||||||||||||
| Offense | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |
| Defense | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||||||||||||
| 1st-down pass% | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |
| Red-zone pass% | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |
27 NFL Draft picks: Steve Broussard (1990), Tony Savage (1990), Tim Stallworth (1990), Dan Grayson (1990), Jason Hanson (1992), Michael Wright (1992), Drew Bledsoe (1993), Lewis Bush (1993) + 19 more
All-time wins
Wins at programs this site tracks, 1936–present — one consistent count for every coach, not each program’s own historically reported total.
1st all-time at UTEP
Was he good?
A mixed record — ahead of expectations by some measures here, behind by others. The honest read is that it depends which lens you use.
+8.7 pts at Washington State · #249 of 1290 · top quarter