Note: This story is featured in the 2026 edition of Dave Campbell's Texas Football's Summer Magazine, which you can order here.

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Scotty Walden subscribes to the Bobby Bowden notion that there are four stages to building a winning program in college football. First you lose big. Then you lose close. Then you win close. And finally, you win big.  

UTEP has suffered through the first two stages under Walden, who is 5-19 overall and 4-12 in conference play since taking over the Miners in 2024. The average margin of defeat in nine losses during Year 1 in 2024 was 19.44. That fell to 12.5 in 10 losses last season. Two of those were by a field goal as the Miners were 0-3 in one-score games in 2025.  

But Walden believes victories are on the horizon in El Paso. His optimism is buoyed by an older, more experienced roster. Nearly 60 percent of the roster are Year 2 and Year 3 players because roughly 80 percent of his first two recruiting classes have played. 

“I came here to win games, and we haven’t done that yet,” Walden conceded. “But I didn’t come to El Paso, Texas, and forget how to coach. And neither has my coaching staff. We have a formula and we’ve played a lot of young bucks, a lot of young kids over the first two years. Those puppies are growing up now.”  

A grown-up roster gives the Miners a chance to do something the program hasn’t accomplished in nearly 60 years – win a bowl game. They’re 0-7 in the postseason since knocking off Ole Miss in the Sun Bowl in 1967. Instead of hiding from the lack of history, Walden is leaning into it and using it as a carrot for his roster to make history.  

“That 1967 number is on every power point slide and is on every script I have at practice,” Walden said. “It is something that our kids know about and we have the ability to make some history and be the first team at UTEP to win a bowl game since ’67.” 

Reaching that bowl game requires traveling a tougher road than in years past. That’s because UTEP finally got its wish to join the Mountain West Conference, reuniting rivalries that were collecting dust on the shelf from the old WAC days. The move will add money and prestige for an athletic department that could use every cent in the modern landscape of revenue sharing.  

But it’ll also make reaching the six-win threshold needed to reach the postseason more challenging. Games against former FCS programs like Kennesaw State, Delaware State, and Jax State are now conference contests with established FBS programs such as Air Force, Wyoming, and Nevada. Luckily for the Miners, they avoid UNLV in 2026. And the one recently former FCS program that they will face – North Dakota State – is a wagon.  

That’s led Walden to do some soul-searching. He knows that UTEP must close the gap on higher-resourced programs with intangibles. He believes one of those can be about leadership. He’s empowered the leaders on his team to take charge and believes this roster is closer than in the past because there wasn’t a spring portal window looming in the distance.  

“With us probably being the lowest revenue sharing team in the Mountain West outside of Air Force, one of the things I’m always asking the coaches is, ‘what is our edge?’ Walden said. “We’re going to have to be different. We’re going to have to be unique and on the cutting edge. And so, being a player-driven program has got to be something we hang our hat on.” 

Walden, known for his optimism and unshakeable belief, won’t listen to excuses. Sure, his Miners play non-conference games at Oklahoma and Michigan before even getting to the MWC. And sure, the conference schedule is harder. So what?  

“My goal is every year to be in the conference championship conversation and to play in a bowl game,” Walden said. “Our standards are our standards.”