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Tuesday morning, Conference USA officials released UTEP’s 2018 Football schedule, featuring six home games.
“Our staff and players are really looking forward to the challenge ahead with our 2018 schedule,” said head coach Dana Dimel. “Eight teams on our schedule were bowl-eligible last season as well as a Northern Arizona team that qualified for the FCS playoffs.”
The Miners, coming off their 0-12 record, kick off the Dana Dimel era with a home game against Northern Arizona, then hit the road to Vegas to take on UNLV.
Things heat up by week 3, as the Miners will be taking on another one of college football’s perennial powerhouses – Tennessee – before settling in to take on long-time rival and Arizona Bowl victors New Mexico State in the Sun Bowl.
The rest of the regular season for UTEP features CUSA match-ups, with a bye week on October 13th.
The full schedule is below
Sept. 1 NORTHERN ARIZONA
Sept. 8 at UNLV
Sept. 15 at Tennessee
Sept. 22 NEW MEXICO STATE
Sept. 29 at UTSA
Oct. 6 NORTH TEXAS
Oct. 13 Bye
Oct. 20 at Louisiana Tech
Oct. 27 UAB
Nov. 3 at Rice
Nov. 10 MIDDLE TENNESSEE
Nov. 17 at Western Kentucky
Nov. 24 SOUTHERN MISS
**Home games in BOLD
***note from UTEP: It is important to take under consideration that all game are subject to date changes and some dates are expected to move in the coming weeks in order to accommodate national television.
“This is a tremendous schedule for our fans. We have two home games each month,” said Dimel. “I really think our fans will enjoy watching our team compete from start to finish, whether we’re hosting Northern Arizona in the season-opener, playing in Knoxville against Tennessee, or battling down the stretch in November against an exciting C-USA slate that ends with Southern Miss in the Sun Bowl.”
According to the CUSA Website, the 2018 alignment will feature seven teams in the East Division and seven teams in the West Division. Charlotte, FIU, Florida Atlantic, Marshall, Middle Tennessee, Old Dominion and WKU comprise the East Division, while Louisiana Tech, North Texas, Rice, Southern Miss, UAB, UTEP and UTSA make up the West Division.
Each school will play every team in its division once for six games, while playing two cross-over opponents from the opposite division. Each team will reverse the location of its 2017 conference opponents, both inter-division opponents and intra-division foes.
The conference is in the second year of a rotation between cross-division opponents that will rotate every two years until 2024, when each school has played every opponent in the opposite division once home and away.
