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The original was posted on /r/cfb by /u/usffan on 2026-04-19 22:01:11+00:00.

The cumulative link to the preseason rankings can be found here

It took almost a week before we hit our first team that will be in a new conference in 2026 – UTEP (high = 129, low = 134). The Miners are hoping they’ll find gold in the Mountain West after 21 years in Conference USA, a conference in which they haven’t finished above 6th place in for over a decade. Scotty Walden is hoping for a full reboot as he enters his 3rd season in El Paso, cleaning house and bringing in new coordinators (co-OC’s Lanear Sampson and Joe Pappalardo from Austin Peay, with Kyle Beyer getting promoted to DC after Bobby Daly returned to his alma mater, Montana State). After a 2 year campaign that has seen the Miners go 5-19 without a single FBS win outside of CUSA (and a 1-1 record against FCS)… Magic 8 Ball says “outlook not so good.”

Roster Outlook

UTEP ranks 126th nationally in returning production (which, believe it or not, isn’t even the worst in the new Mountain West). They’re equally depleted on both sides of the ball, ranking 129th on offense and 99th on defense. Gone are both QBs (Malachi Nelson to Syracuse, Skyler Locklear following his OC to Missouri State) who completed more than 3 passes in 2025, along with starting RBs Ashten Emory (to Cal) and Hahsaun Wilson (eligibility) and WRs Wondame Davis (to Wake Forest) and Kenny Odom (to USF). Perhaps the biggest bright spot is that LB Jayden Wilson, second on the team in tackles, returns for his senior season. Walden brought in the 92nd ranked high school recruiting team according to 247 (good for 4th in the new MWC), which when coupled with the 122nd ranked transfer class (amazingly enough ranking 5th in the conference) adds up to the 3rd best Mountain West overall class (still only 92nd nationally). It sure seems like the Miners are going to have to rely primarily on youth to turn things around in El Paso.

Schedule and outlook

9/5 at Oklahoma

9/12 TEXAS SOUTHERN

9/19 at Michigan

9/26 OREGON STATE

10/3 at New Mexico

10/10 NEVADA

10/17 SAN JOSE STATE

10/24 BYE

10/31 at North Dakota State

11/7 HAWAII

11/14 WYOMING

11/21 at Air Force

11/28 at Northern Illinois

If you were going to draw up a schedule that would help shepherd in a young roster, I’m pretty sure road games at Oklahoma and Michigan in the first 3 weeks wouldn’t be on your wish list. If the Miners can survive those early September body bag games, they actually get 5 of their next 7 at the Sun Bowl, with only a relatively short trip to Albuquerque and their first trip to the Fargodome before closing the season at Air Force and Northern Illinois. If UTEP really does have the 3rd best overall incoming class in the Mountain West, and by missing UNLV, things might be sunnier than they appear in 2026.