Picking Himself Up

Mike Price looked out from his stadium-top office at the Sun Bowl and pointed down to the city of Juarez, Mexico.

“You could throw a rock and hit it,” he said.

There was a time, in a dark-but-not-so-distant past, when Price might have considered a midnight swim across the Rio Grande in search of asylum.

He could have changed his name, found a place where no one was telling Mike Price jokes.

On second thought, in this age of digital satellites, could there be such a place?

Luckily, in America, on this side of the Rio, a man can survive a career suicide attempt and work his way back into good graces provided he disappears for an appropriate period of time, drops 30 pounds, undergoes Lasik eye surgery and takes his case to confessional TV (pick one: Oprah, Barbara, Dr. Phil ... ).

Price, 58, did it all -- except for the Oprah part.

After a public scandal cost Price the Alabama football job and made him poster boy for “Coaches Gone Wild,” he has re-surfaced at the University of Texas El Paso, otherwise known as Second Chance Ranch.

It has been a perfect fit: fix-it-upper program paired with fix-it-upper coach.

Price, who has altered his appearance and lowered his professional sights, braced himself for the worst upon his return to coaching.

“I was waiting for the guy in the pickup truck to come by and say, ‘Hey, you dumb jerk,’ so I could turn around say, ‘You got that right,’ ” Price said. “But it never happened.”

The Miners, off to a 4-2 start after Saturday’s 51-20 victory over Hawaii, have already won twice as many games as last season and are poised to post only their second winning season in the last 16.

No one ever said the man couldn’t coach. There was a reason Alabama, college football’s creme de le crimson, went to the outskirts to find Price, who for years had been working minor miracles at Washington State.

Pullman, Wash., wasn’t the end of the world, but you could see it from there.

After leading the Cougars to the Rose Bowl in 2002, Price said he couldn’t resist Alabama. He had spent 14 years at Washington State, trying to recruit players to the lunar-like landscape of eastern Washington.

Alabama, by contrast, had a curbside drop-off zone for blue-chip players.

“It was about getting to a spot where you had an equal playing ground with everybody else,” Price said of his decision to take the Alabama job. “I had never really been in that situation as a coach. I wanted to see what it would be like to have everything, and they certainly have everything.”

Price had 10 million other reasons to leave Pullman -- the number of dollars in his contract.

What happened next, well, Price blew it.

He never coached a game at Alabama.

In April 2003, after attending a Southeastern Conference golf outing in Pensacola, Fla., Price walked into a strip club, “Arety’s Angels,” and got very drunk.

He woke up the next day with a stripper in his room and $1,000 worth of charges on his room-service bill.

Price maintains nothing happened, although Sports Illustrated told a different story about two strippers and a night of “aggressive sex.”

Price has vehemently denied those charges and is suing Sports Illustrated for $20 million.

“It’s kind of almost a vendetta because it’s like they did me wrong,” Price said of the magazine, “what they said about me wasn’t true.”

Sports Illustrated is standing behind its story.

Price could not stop the momentum of a story that became tabloid fodder. Alabama, already embarrassed after Dennis Franchione had jilted the school after only two years to coach Texas A&M;, took a hard-line stance.

Price said many at the school wanted to give him a second chance, but the new university president, Robert Witt, made the final call and fired Price.

“I didn’t think he had to do what he did,” Price said. “I’ve admitted my mistake many times and want to make sure that it’s clear I still admit I made a mistake that night. It’s just that the punishment did not fit the crime.”

To make matters worse, at the time of his firing Price had not signed his $10-million contract.

Price said he had good reason because the school, reeling over Franchione’s departure, had insisted on a $10-million buyout clause.

“If I ever wanted to leave, or my wife got ill and I wanted to leave, or I just got sick and tired of coaching, or I wanted to get out of the profession, it would cost me $10 million to buy my contract out,” Price said. “There’s not a contract in the NCAA or probably professional football that has a $10-million buyout.

“A healthy buyout is a million dollars, isn’t it?”

Price sued the school over his contract, but the lawsuit was dismissed.

*

Dark Times

Price did not drift into a depression -- it was more like a skydive from 10,000 feet.

“It wasn’t slowly, no,” he said. “The unraveling was so public. It wasn’t slowly.”

It remains difficult for Price to speak about this period.

He is sitting on his office couch at this point, in a defensive, almost confessional stance -- head down, hands clasped, elbows on knees.

After 23 years as a coach, Price explained, he was out of a job and a public pariah.

Worse, he had brought his two sons to coach with him at Alabama -- and now they were out of jobs.

Joyce, his wife of nearly 40 years, was furious but ultimately forgiving.

Price spent the 2003 season in a funk, wandering the country in a recreational vehicle. He even attended a Washington State game, incognito, wearing sunglasses.

He sought refuge at a Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, cabin owned by Ryan Leaf, who played quarterback for Price at Washington State.

Price sought counseling for depression and leaned heavily on loved ones.

“It was not a good feeling,” Price said. “But because of the support of my wife, and family, my kids and friends, I was able to get through. But it’s never going to go away. No, not for me, it’s not going away. There will be a new story next year, for you people in the media, but it’s never going to go away for Mike Price. It’s always in the back of your mind.”

Price wondered if he’d ever get a chance to coach again.

An opportunity arose last fall after Arizona fired John Mackovic.

Jim Livengood, the Wildcats’ athletic director, is a longtime friend of Price’s and wanted the coach to succeed Mackovic.

Yet, before the idea could gain traction, Arizona President Jim Likins quickly stepped in to say Price would not be considered.

It was a painful rebuke for Price, but soon the call came from UTEP, a program coming off a 2-11 season and looking for an answer to ousted coach Gary Nord.

Bob Stull, the Miners’ athletic director, knew the pursuit of Price was going to be tricky. Stull admitted that when he broached the idea of Price to Diana Natalicio, “her eyebrows kind of raised.”

He asked his president not to say no right away.

Stull researched the Alabama situation, interviewing several people at the school, and was convinced Price deserved a second chance.

“It certainly wasn’t Mike’s best night,” Stull said of the strip-club incident, “but we had reason to believe a lot of what was reported did not happen, some of the more embarrassing things. When all was said and done, we felt like he was probably one of the least-risk guys in America right now.”

Natalicio signed off on the hire after her own lengthy interview with Price, announcing at his introductory news conference, “He paid dearly for that grievous error in judgment, and all of us believe he has earned the opportunity to restart his career.”

Jordan Palmer, UTEP’s sophomore quarterback and the brother of Carson, said players were thrilled with Price’s arrival.

“We all focused more on what kind of coach he is, that’s what really matters,” Palmer said. “And now we realize what kind of person he is, and we don’t really talk about the other stuff.”

Stull said Price’s life experience might provide a valuable life lesson for UTEP players.

In describing Price’s situation, Stull likes to quote an ancient passage: “Your reputation for 1,000 years could depend on one moment.”

Stull views Price’s story as uniquely American.

“People love to see something bad happen but almost get as much fun watching them come back,” Stull said.

*

Next Chapter

In the same way he remade himself, Price has set out to overhaul UTEP.

An $11-million facilities upgrade had already spruced up the Sun Bowl’s exterior -- Price’s job was to gut the interior.

He ordered new uniforms and attitudes and delved into the cultural history of the program -- tapping into the hard-work ethic of the Miners.

Before home games Price, hoisting a pick over his head, leads his team out of a stadium tunnel made over as the “Mine Shaft.”

Price concedes the stunt is corny but says, at this stage of his life, what does he care?

The mine-shaft routine beats Price’s first official entrance, when he ran onto the field for the spring game to the coincidental backdrop of the song, “Sweet Home Alabama.”

His name alone has been good for business. Interest is high and attendance is up.

Next year, the school will upgrade from the Western Athletic Conference to Conference USA.

Tyler Ebell, the former “mighty mite” UCLA tailback, has transferred to UTEP and will be eligible next season.

Price took a pay cut to coach at UTEP -- he makes $225,000 per season -- but the chance for a career do-over trumps any monetary loss.

“I’m a good man,” Price said. “I don’t do bad things, you know? I messed up that one night....

“I’m going to make the very best of it. I told the president, ‘I’m going to be the best employee you’ve ever had.’

“I’m not getting a parking ticket.”