Has 2014 been a great college football season or what? It’s been a delicious smorgasbord of close games, upsets and improbable 
comebacks. Former major powerhouses like Alabama, Texas, Notre Dame, Oklahoma and Florida State have had to share the spotlight with lesser lights like TCU, Mississippi State, Baylor and even Arizona State
Florida State has remained undefeated but it’s been frightened so often it’s a miracle its fans haven’t suffered heart attacks.
All season any number of teams could claim they’re No. 1. All of which will make for one of the most exciting finishes to the season ever.
AND THEN there are the UTEP Miners. Many people, including me, scoffed when my crystal ball predicted they would win six games this year, but there they are today with six wins and bowl eligible.
That makes the 2014 season even more thrilling. Now, people are asking which bowl will pick the Miners. The best bet is the New Mexico Bowl in Albuquerque. That would be neat what with a nifty payoff of $456,250 and close enough for El Pasoans to drive to.
But wait a minute. If the Miners can win their final two regular season games against Rice and Middle Tennessee they could go to an even bigger, richer bowl.
Either way, things are rosy.
TRIVIA QUESTION: Which professional team was the first to put emblems on the helmets? Answer at end of column.
SPEAKING OF trivia questions, ours have become quite popular among some readers. A pretty young lady came up to me the other day and said she looks forward to the trivia question in my column every week. However, she confessed that she cheats. “I look at the answer at the end of the column right away after I read the question,” she said with a big smile, “I can’t wait.”
PICKING AN all-star team in any sport is a tricky thing. There’s no way you can please everyone. I know. I’ve been picking such teams for more than 50 years.
So it was no surprise to me that there were a few complaints that some players were left off UTEP’s Centennial All-Star teams. The most complaints I heard in football concerned Harvey “Pug” Gabrel, who would have set a national single game rushing record in 1949 but for a great act of sportsmanship. When coach Jack Curtice offered to give him the ball often in the second half against New Mexico State so he could set the record he turned it down, saying he didn’t want to pile up the score on the hapless Aggies. It cost him the title.
BUT OVERALL, the folks that picked the Centennial all-stars, and they did it without the help of the media, did a fine job. The all-stars were embraced and highly applauded when they were introduced at last week’s football and basketball games.
Personally, the selection that warmed my heart most was that of Ernest Keily. He was the pulling guard on the Miners’ great teams of the late 1940s. He’s the one who cleared the way for Fred Wendt’s national rushing title in 1948 and would have paved the way for Gabrel the next year. Pulling guards so seldom get attention. What’s more, Keily and I were schoolmates at El Paso High School in the early 1940s.
THE RESPONSE to the offer by Mesa Publishing to hand deliver my latest book, “The Good, the Bad and the Funny of El Paso Sports History,” to anyone within the El Paso city limits was surprisingly good. Most of those who ordered by calling me at 915-584-0626 or emailing me at rayf358@yahoo.com got autographed books within 24 hours. The offer still stands, Mesa Publishing says.
ANSWER to trivia question: The Los Angeles Rams in 1948.