Why Is The Star On The Mountain Orange?

As night fell over El Paso, the familiar star on the Franklin Mountains took on a different color.

This week the star will be orange to mark the city-backed campaign called “Orange Out Week.”

It’s a good week to be a UTEP Miner.

The football team is fresh off a bowl-eligible win on Saturday and basketball season is just around the corner. Now a week-long campaign to kick up spirit among Miners fans is starting in anticipation for the men’s basketball season opener against Pacific on Friday.

Local businesses and buildings around town will sport orange decorations for UTEP sports. Submit your Orange Out photos here.

Hope and Anchor, a bar on Mesa street, is just one of those businesses. They’re offering two drink specials all week: the Miner-Rita and the Miner-Bomb. A percentage of the proceeds will go to the UTEP Athletics Wellness Program.

You may notice other changes around town. The Star on the Mountain will be lit up orange instead of white. A worker in charge of replacing each of the 454 light bulbs told ABC-7 he’s happy to support the hometown team.

In downtown El Paso, the Plaza Theatre will be lit up orange on Friday for the basketball game. The Wells Fargo building will also be decorated “appropriately in UTEP fashion” according to a media release.

That’s not all. At intersections near UTEP’s campus, 15-foot pickaxes will be places in the pavement.

The excitement is part of the community’s welcome home hospitality toward Tim Floyd who is beginning his first year as UTEP’s Men’s Basketball Head Coach.

“I think it’s just fantastic,” he told ABC-7 of Orange-Out Week. “I told them they might as well have put dye in the Rio Grande! (They) got everything else covered,” joked Floyd.

The team will be wearing a version of the old Texas Western jerseys for the first game in a tribute to Haskins. Floyd worked as Haskins’ assistant coach at UTEP from 1978-1986.

“What’s made UTEP basketball special through the years has been the crowds, that’s what I remember. We gotta get that back and get it going,” said Floyd. “This is a new era in UTEP basketball, we’re getting the word out.”

The mayor and city council have declared that El Paso be renamed “Miner Orangeville” on Friday. That’s when they’re hoping to sell out the Don Haskins Center for the season opener.

For a list of all Orange-Out events, click here.