Relative to Dana Dimel’s five-year tenure as UTEP’s head football coach, trips to Rice, like the one they are making Thursday, represent the best of times and the worst of times.
In 2018, Rice Stadium was where UTEP ended its 20-game losing streak and earned the first victory of the Dimel era.
The debacle in 2020 was as far from that as imaginable. Two years ago, UTEP showed up at Rice expecting to play another game in that troubled COVID season.
Instead, the Miners agreed to go through game-day testing. Ten positive tests later — tests UTEP later said proved to be false-positives — the game was off and those 10 players boarded a Greyhound bus for the longest of trips home.