ABC-7 Xtra: Legacy of Bob Stull

>> live, where news comes first, this is “abc-7 xtra. >> it is sunday, november 29th, welcome to “abc-7 xtra. good evening, everyone, i’m danny mata filling in for maria garcia. my guest tonight recently celebrated his 70th birthday, he is the athletic director for the utep miners, bob stull. stull has served since 1998, and before that he spent 10 years as a head coach in college football. he coached utep from 1986 to 1988 and resurrected the program. he’s continuing to push for a standard of excellent today. he’s hired sean kugler, tim floyd who has them unbeaten so far this year. also coach floyd was recently names one of the 20 best xs and os coaches in the nation by coachstat.net. joing us tonight, we are thrilled to have the man himself, bob stull as our guest of honor on “abc-7 xtra. email us your comments and questions right now to “abc- xtra,” you can also reaches a 915-496-1775, on twitter use the hashtag #abc7xtra or tweet me at tweet tweet .” >> i didn’t know i could live that long. time flies if you’re having fun, i guess. >> much of the time and fun happening here at utep. bob stull likely didn’t expect either when he was approached to coach football in 1985. >> the most games they had won from 1970 — and this was 1986 — was two. >> what convinced him? our children, both under the age of three, were a long way from their grandma, which was in los angeles. we decided to take the risk. >> expectations were low. >> people told me, listen, win three games, beat new mexico state and they will put a statue of you downtown and elect you mayor. >> in three years he turned division 1 chumps into champs. he took the miners to their first bowl game in 20 years. >> all of those guys have gone ton to do great things. it was a special year, it really was. >> a miner touchdown! >> the ups come with downs. >> bob stull has got to be happen with them. >> stull’s stint as head coach at missouri when refs accidentally allowed colorado a game-winning fifth down instead of four. >> it took them an hour and a half to figure it out. our chains guy was driving home and when he heard what happened he pulled over he and threw up, he was so upset. >> we are still trying to figure out why we are back. >> eventually he returned to utep in 1998 as athletic director. >> the biggest thing i wanted to do was make a viably recognized division 1 athletics department. >> the larry k. durham center was the first familiarity built during bob stull’s tenure. it helped him clear a major huddle of creating and updating utep’s athletic facilities. >> the helen of troy softball field and the foster stevens basketball complex all made possible through major community buy-in. >> what they have to show right now, an injury-riddled football team with a losing record and a young basketball team attempting a rebound after a sluggish season. stull brushes off drix. >> we have built facilities, hired coaches and made progress to at some point win that championship and stay at the very, very top. but it’s a process that we have to go through. >> stull christmas trees a quality staff, his trusting and respectful relationship with the university president — >> i think that kind of relationship is what i value the most in the time that bob and i have worked together. >> but her vision for the whole campus has been tremendous. >> his strong wife and children. >> the combination of all of being on your own raising the chirp, going through what she does, she’s been a tremendous wife and we’ve been together for 34 years. >> and you. >> what really makes a strong program is the support of the community. >> at 70, stull feels as old as the company he keeps. >> she calls me frat boy sometimes. because we’re always around the student athletes. >> having fun and not ready to slow down. stephanie valle, abd-7. >> now it’s time for the man himself, we’re joined by utep athletic director bob stull. thank you for being with us. >> saturday was a little brisk, anybody that watched the tcu game, it was unbelievable. it was raining so hard, it was like 39 degrees. saturday it was still cold but wasn’t as wet as it was on friday night but it was quite brisk. i used to think that 50 degrees is cold. >> i’m one of those wimps. i like the weather here, i like it when we can keep it steady, 50 degrees is cold, i’m right there with you. i have a ways to go before i hit 70. and my game plan so far is to just stay away from the people that don’t like me very much. outside of that, any pointers? >> well, you have to be lucky to live this long, i guess. i don’t know about pointers. i think that over my career i’ve been very lucky to do something i really enjoy. being a coach for so many years and having great people that you’re with, and our staff here in el paso, andy reid for the chiefs and dirk koetter, the coordinator now at tampa bay, and at the cleveland and marty, and then just former student athletes, like the head coach of at houston now, defensive coordinator at green bay, he was a great assistant for us for two years. he introduced my wife and i. jimmy morah, jr. actually played for us when him and his father were coaching at washington. we had a career we really enjoy, we’ve had success which makes it even better. taking care of yourself is important. fortunately for me i’ve always worked out my whole life. ever since eighth grade. i think that makes a difference. >> you look great, coach. i’ll tell you, when you see those — when you see the story we ran on you, what kind of memories come up for you? >> well, that particular, you know, stretch of my career, you know, i started out at kent state university, my first full-time coaching job. i played at kansas state. nick save backup was on that team, the head coach of alabama, jack lambert from the steelers is on that. we h some success there. we went to nine bowl games and including three rose bowls. i’m from iowa and we played iowa and we won 28-0. i saw people i hadn’t seen for 20 years there. robinson was the most valuable player i recruited in the rose bowl as a freshman and in the orange bowl as a senior. his son is nate robinson with the nba. i tell a funny story, again, in the newspaper we were hired, they put tombstones on the front of the paper. they had all of these different tombstones. the coach was hired and the big one would be with a question mark. i rember we were introduced in the basketball game and they booed us. they saw i came from massachusetts. really a couple years earlier we had played in the sun bowl, played texas at washington. had that hired me then they probably would have had a parade for me then that. group, the coaches we had, two of them became head coaches in the nfl, another one with arizona state now still at tampa bay. all five of them are with the nfl. so a special group coaches. and then absolutely great group of players, sean kugler was one of them. they were quite a group, a bunch of characters, i’ll tell you that. we won first play in the austin film festival for a screenplay, played for denver for three years. tony tolbert, all-pro with the dallas cowboys. we had a lot of excellent players. they all came together and it was just a fantastic year, it really was. it was lot of fun. and getting to a bowl game, there isn’t — they didn’t have 35 bowl games at the time. we were supposed to — the only way we’d really get to the bowl game was to win our championship. we lost to wyoming on television, and we didn’t think we could go then. we came back home and vince said listen, if you have nine wins we’ll play you against southern miss with that brett favre guy, whatever his name is. >> yeah. >> in that game we scored every time we had the ball. no huddle. then we played air force the last game. but really, there was a point we weren’t going to be invited. it’s a long story but we were supposed to be invited but the independence bowl was promised if wake forest beat appalachian state they would take them instead of us. and that was not expected. they had only won like seven games. they ended up tying appalachian state so we ended up going to the bowl game. >> it’s great memories. a lot of people were probably not thinking you made a great choice coming to utep at the time. when you came here, a lot of people look at this as a gamble. what sold you on utep initially? what made you think i can win there? >> first of all, the person who got me here was jim paul, we worked together at penn state. when he got out of the army he worked there for one year and he called and really got me involved. really, the reason we did, i had always been division 1. i had played at kansas state and i took my first full time coaching job at umass, 1-aa. great competion, some excellent teams but not what i was used to. and we had two children under the age of three. and my wife’s family was in los angeles. it would take six hours to get there every time we wanted to go. being more west coast oriented, we decided to try and take the risk. although like my mentor and stuff, don james said, don’t do that. just don’t do that. nobody would survive that. >> but i’ll tell you one thing, the community here is wonderful. that’s what i really enjoyed coming back. it was so much fun. the east coast is a little bit more formal, a little tighter. i’m here he and the people are so friendly. we really got into it right away. my wife loved it and we really enjoyed it. it was difficult to live missouri quite frankly, it was a tough decision because we liked it so much. >> imagine it was. you did a terrific job, of course. this past year for the football season just ended over the weekend, it was a rough year. so many injuries, team goes 5-7. when you think about the injuries and everything they went through, i look at coach kugler and i thought he did a pretty good job keeping the team afloat. what did you think? >> a dallas loses one good player, the quarterback, what player do you lose? losing aaron jones early was huge. but along the way we lost another 14 kids. it’s really devastating. but what he did and the staff did was a great job of keeping everybody focused and like he says, next person up. even towards the end we were finding a running back we didn’t even know b a walk-on, gets 107 yards against louisiana tech. a really nice job of preparing the kids and getting the buy-in to compete. even he though the situation was very capitol them, losing so many quality players. i think it’s interesting if we miss a field goal, if we had made that field goal we would still be bowl eligible. i’m not sure we could present ourselves very well with the injured players but we still were in a position to do that. i think next year will be fantastic. >> there are reports that have surfaced that your offensive coordination, and defensive coordinator will not be back for the team next year. what can you tell us about that? >> i think it’s really important for our youth to ask that question of coach kugler. but i will never speak for him. in the situation he’s going to do this, he’s going to evaluate the coaches, what they are doing. then he will make his determination about what is really best for the program in the few. he’ll make whatever changes he wants to do. whether that’s personnel or offense or defense or whatever. i think it’s important to talk to sean personally about that. >> you’ve been good about giving your coaches the reins and allowing them the freedom. some a.d.s are very impatient. you’re giving coach kugler and coach floyd time. where does that philosophy come from? >> from coaching, i’ve been around a long time. and it got so that the fans are very impatient. and but just like coach adams is a great example, he said — she really struggled, i think she won four games her first year. it took her to about the sixth year before she really became a available competitor at the conference level and won a championship. it took a long time to get that type of player. there was always so many coming and going. you see that all the time at live levels. because texas, they have mccoy, shipley, first-round picks. they leave and the record drops. they have guys coming up young but they don’t have the experience. as far as the programs are, you want to build the type of players you need, built the facilities, get the coaches. >> coach, it’s time for our first break. you’re when we come back w >> welcome back to “abc-7 xtra, i’m danny mata and my guest tonight is utep athletic director bob stull. bob, thanks oregonian being with us. we were talking a little bit about some of the success you’ve had with other programs. a lot of people gauge success by football and basketball, those are the big ones. i think one thing that is important to recognize is it accomplishments the university has had since you’ve been the a.d. here. >> you’re talking about football and basketball, everyone wants to win those championships. we’ve done it once in football, several times in men’s and women’s basketball. each year we have the cross-country championship and have won the national championship in the steeplechase for three years in a row. the year before we won the indoor track, women’s golf championship, men’s golf championship. we’ve had championships with different sports but we’ve tried to build facilities for every one of the sports we have, and give everybody a chance to compete. of course you look at the university itself, the whole university has transformed from 1998 when i was here, there’s 14,000, now we have 25,000 in the whole entire campus, it’s simply different. the buildings they have, the programs they have, doctoral, massive programs and everything she’s done is spectacular. we try to build onto that and try to enhance the mission of the university through our success. >> we have the larry k. durham center, the foster stevens center. i know there are some questions about, is there going to be — is there a plan for the sun bowl itself? are there plans for a memorial gym? some people want to know. >> we have the hell lent troy and all those to replace all the turf and the video boards he and all those things. what we’d like to do right now is a couple things. but number one, focus on the press box. what we’d like to do is renovate the stadium, the press box itself, have luxury suites, club seating. we’d like to redo the concourse and the bathrooms at the stadium. it’s a big project a multimillion-dollar project. we are on our way working on those things. >> actually one of the questions treated to us, oso from el paso asked about the condition of the memorial gym, when they were going to build a new modern facility. we have another tweet, when will utep install a don haskins statue in front of the don haskins center? >> i’m not sure. there are some issues with the system. i don’t know that there’s any statutes really, with the texas, austin campus. there’s quite a process when you do anything. even the naming of a building or a room in a building, there are a lot of issues that surround any type of a statue or naming opportunity. >> you know, i know a lot of people have looked at conference usa and how we’re a little out of the way. you’ve got dallas he and houston, san antonio, really our closest conference usa rivals. when you look at the current state of utep and our conference affiliation, how closely are you looking into the possibility of relocating to a different conference? a lot of people talk about the mountain west here, it’s interesting proximitywise. >> the mountain west is always of interest to us. historically they were part of the wac. but the whole transition of what happens what happened, just briefly, i was here for four weeks and all of a sudden the mountain west broke loose. the commissioner of the league didn’t know that was happening. they called one hour before the press conference. i think we were left out because i don’t think they thought we had a come i want to athletic. we didn’t have the facilities or attendance. i think that pulled them away. when that happened it was very evident the wac was going to disappear. nobody was sticking there. they no longer even have football. we were fortunate really to jump in there along with rice, smu, houston, and get over to conference usa, which has done well for us because of that. there was a period of time where it looked like the — our two conferences would merge because boise was going to the big east, four or five schools from our conference was going to the big east. we would have went to the west side, which would have been perfect. but along the way, what’s interesting is that when boise and sandy went to the big east, by the time they got there the big east had dissolved. rutgers, syracuse, pitt, all those people had left. so all of a sudden boise and san diego state go back to the mountain west. and so then the presidents really got go tired of all this, we’ve got 12 now, let’s stick with that, okay? so we’re always looking at opportunities for any type of movement. the biggest thing would be to the mountain west because of our affiliation in the past. but we don’t choose to do that. you have to be invited, you have to put yourselves in the position. we’re in competion across the country to see if there are any other opportunities. >> we’re certainly intrigued by the possibility for that, for anything. one thing i have that i wonder, when it comes to your career avenue everything that you’ve gone through, is you were at the university of missouri at one point. we know about your time there, the fifth down game and everything. you but recently they had a president who was asked to resign by the students protesting, there was a lot of racial tension going on down there. you haven’t been down there. what were your thoughts about that? was that something that was a challenge culturally when you were down there? >> my son actually lives there, he’s the head golf pro at the country club there. we know the whole situation, but when i was there, and “sport illustrated” called me abou this. the only thing i thought there was a real tension in saint louis, the black community there felt like it was not a good place for their students to go, to columbia. there was a prevalence there. but the kids we had on campus, i thought had a great experience and we never had any type of issue that you’re facing right now. with the coach, when they stood behind the protests, the coach wasn’t standing behind firing the president or anything else. all he did was support the students’ rights to express themselves. unfortunately, that’s not the way it turned out. but gary — gary would not support firing the president but he did support the kids to express themselves. >> all right. well, thank you so much. we have one more segment left in the show, you’re watching “abc- xtra.” when we come back we’ll wrap things up with utep athletic director bob stull. give us at call at 915-496-1775, email us at abc7xtra@kvia.com, @dannymatajr. >> welcome back to “abc-7 xtra, i’m danny mata in for maria garcia. my guest tonight is utep athletic director bob stull. thank you oregonian being with us. one of the questions i wanted to ask you and one thing we were talking about during the break is baseball. for all of the youth programs we have at utep, there’s a high hispanic populace here, baseball is very popular in the community. why does utep not have baseball? is there any thought about adding the sport? >> baseball was there in 1984 before i came back even as a football coach. the whole issue is title ix, it has to do with the office of civil rights, we need to have equal opportunities for men and women. it’s easy to go men’s you know, tennis for instance or golf and women’s golf, same numbers, women’s boy, men’s basketball. but the difference is football is 100 players. there’s no support that equals out that number. what has to happen, right now we have 10 women’s sports and only six men’s sports. and you’d have to add, if you add baseball you’d have to add two more women’s sports, too. the president loves baseball, she goes back every year to saint louis, she’s got a baseball with her uniform on it. we’d love to have it but you’re talking about adding two sports, you need the stadium, a place to play, and really, it’s all about the title ix issue. there are only two sports that make money, football and men’s and women’s basketball. everything else is just an expense. at some point we’re always looking at people with strong interest in the sport, and we would never rule it out. we’ll really like to have it. but i think it’s very difficult with the civil rights rules with title ix. >> we have a phone call right now, mark from the west side, he’s got a question for you, bob. go ahead, mark. >> i’m — mr. stull, how come we’re taking so much for those tickets, when we had a mediocre team? instead of making it seven and eight-dollar tickets for the city of el paso and raising it too much for the public. that’s my question for you. thank you. >> well, really we have probably the cheapest seats you can buy. you go to texas tech or texas you can’t even buy a general admission for $75. if you get the family pack, basically $8 a ticket for the whole family for the whole season. our attendance was down because we didn’t play for the first four weeks because we had texas tech here before and new mexico state, we had to go home and away. we couldn’t get arkansas off the schedule. next year we have seven home games including armey. but also then we had a complete rainstorm on homecoming, we would have had well over 30,000 people for that. then we had a friday night game against the same time as the high school playoffs. and we had a 30 miles per hour wind in our last game. we were not really good with the weather. if we were playing for the championship, we would have filled it. we’re always the top two to three in football, usually number one. we’re always number one in basketball. although people don’t realize it, most people only have 30,000, 40,000 seat games, we have 52,000, a little more difficult to fill. we have the best fans, we have a great group that come no matter what the weather is. >> bob, there’s one question i definitely wanted to ask you. i’ve heard if you had not taken the missouri job, there’s a lot of people that wonder could tep have become a boise state-like team, you know, nonbcs team that was consistently in there. is there a grain of truth to that idea? >> i have no idea. you have to build facilities, you have to do the things we have. until i came in 1998 we couldn’t recruit players or coaches because or facilities were so poor. you need the infrastructure first. mike price came in and said your facilities are better than we have at washington state. so we have to do the infrastructure first. it’s still hard to recruit here compared to some places. number one, we’re so far from population. the teams that recruit are the ones that have a lot of people around them. the other thing, we had a lot of negative publicity over the years with what’s going on with mexico. a lot of people think the same thing is happening in el paso. we know this is a great place to live, very safe, one of the safest places in the country for cities over 500,000. but the general public doesn’t believe that. the more kids we have here that have success, the word gets out and we’ve gotten better. >> bob, unfortunately we are out of time. thank you so much for joining us. happy birthday belated and we’ll see you soon as the year goes along. best of luck for the athletic program. that does it for us, i’m danny mata in