UTEP president Diana Natalicio talks next week’s season opener

NORMAN — I’m working on a piece for Monday’s newspaper about UTEP coach Mike Price and the personal redemption he has found since taking over the Miners’ football program in 2004.

This morning, I had a telephone interview with UTEP president Diana Natalicio, who was initially a little hesitant to hire Price after the incident in Alabama that led to his firing just months after he took the Crimson Tide’s head coaching position.

At the end of my conversation with Natalicio, who has been UTEP’s president since 1988, she said that she’d been at a meeting for the University of Texas System’s Board of Regents on Thursday in Austin, Texas.

“I told the president of UT-Austin that we’d do our best to ensure that Oklahoma would be not as competitive after they left El Paso, because we will have shown them a surprise,” Natalicio said with a laugh.

“We’re looking very much forward to welcoming the Sooners to the Sun Bowl.”

No. 4 Oklahoma opens its 2012 season next Saturday, Sept. 1, at UTEP.