Snake is back
UNM’s “superfan” has returned to the good graces of the basketball program — even if nobody is saying how he’ll get into the arena
Obij Aget came walking out of a hallway in the Rudy Davalos basketball practice facility on the University of New Mexico’s south campus on Oct. 4.
The 7-foot former Lobos center from South Sudan saw an old friend and flashed a smile as big as any he had on the Pit floor during his fouryear UNM career.
“My guy!” Aget said, arms open for the fan he hadn’t seen in a couple years.
Mark Tichenor, better known in Albuquerque and in basketball circles throughout the west as Snake, was decked out in a black denim Guns N’ Roses jacket and no shirt, a pair of long shorts and a dark bandana tied around his bald head when he saw Aget, and he quickly hopped up.
The two hugged like longlost relatives. Then, Tichenor apologized.
“I let you down,” he said, tears welling up in his eyes.
The polarizing 52-year-old superfan, who was a staple in the Pit for decades before a still fairly ambiguous parting of ways occurred two season ago, feels he let the players down by not being there.
But Aget made it clear Tichenor had no reason to apologize. In fact, current and former Lobo players swear by his loyalty, even if it’s
something other fans don’t fully understand or appreciate.
Now, first-year head coach Paul Weir has extended the olive branch to the program’s most visible fan — the one who has made friends and enemies of opposing teams for decades, was a ball boy and pallbearer at the funeral for the grandfather of Lobo basketball, Bob King, and who says he wants nothing more than to return to his natural habitat in the Pit so he can get back to doing what he does best:
Being Snake.
But how?
While there’s little question former UNM athletic director Paul Krebs and others in athletics wanted Tichenor, and his image, gone for some time, it wasn’t as though they could be blamed when they finally got their wish, and he quit coming to games two seasons ago.
Tichenor wasn’t, and still isn’t, able to pay the required Lobo Club donation plus the cost of the courtside season ticket for a spot near the opponent’s bench he had for years — as powerful boosters now no longer around had for so long made sure he would occupy.
He couldn’t pay, so why should he get special treatment, right?
Never mind the recent revelations that about $400,000 was uncollected since 2010 for Pit luxury sky boxes from some boosters who were still attending games, but who wouldn’t have the long-standing, emotional ties to the program as did Tichenor.
So where will the Snake be in the Pit this year? He’s not saying, nor is Weir. Mark Koson, UNM’s Director of Ticketing Services, and Kole McKamey, Executive Director of the Lobo Club, told the Journal in emails they’ve not been contacted by Tichenor, who says he’s working a stucco job and living in Downtown Albuquerque.
With state audits and media scrutiny hovering over UNM athletics, Weir knows there isn’t exactly wiggle room to just bend rules for a fan.
But is Tichenor just a fan? If anyone has earned a “superfan emeritus” distinction, he certainly has made his case.
He got emotional when saying he regrets not being around the the Lobos when friend and top-level UNM athletics booster Turner Branch died in 2016. When Tichenor lived in Ruidoso for years, Branch gave him gas money to get to and from Albuquerque for games.
Tichenor also talked about his greatest tie to the old guard of Lobo basketball.
“I was a ball boy for Bob King,” Tichenor said with pride. “What does that tell you? And I carried his casket down the ramp. A pallbearer for Bob King. I don’t care what anyone else says. That’s the feather in my cap. My Lobo feather? Giving Bob King his last ride down the Pit ramp and back up the Pit ramp. Nobody can take that away from me. (King’s wife) even gave me his sweater and his tie to wear (at the funeral).”
Unmatched passion
“Yes!” Boise State coach Leon Rice shouted with an accompanying fist pump on Wednesday when a reporter told him Tichenor would be back at Dreamstyle Arena this season. “My man, Snake. We’ve been good buddies.”
So much so, in fact, Rice once landed Tichenor a job at an Albuquerque restaurant run by Boise State graduates, invites him to his team’s shootarounds before playing the Lobos each season, and the two talk on the phone.
“Oh no, he’s got my cell number,” Rice said. “When (Steve) Alford got the job at UCLA, I called him and checked on him.
“… For me, the best thing about college basketball is the passion. The enthusiasm. The environments. It’s such a unique thing. The passion he has about basketball is unmatched.”
Colorado State head coach Larry Eustachy, a popular target for opposing fans, said he loves knowing Tichenor will be back this season.
“He’s like the town greeter at Laguna Beach,” Eustachy told the Journal. “… I love Snake. I think that’s awesome.”
The Rams coach then described how the two usually exchange pleasantries.
“All I say is, ‘Snake, it’s good to see you. It’s good to see the drugs are still good here in Albuquerque. You’re acting just fine,’ ” Eustachy said. “He laughs and it’s great. I love it. Life’s too short (not to).”
‘It just feels different’
Tichenor says he feels comfortable, and welcomed, around the team again.
“The smell in here is different,” he said. “The feel in here is different. … I feel wanted again.”
Since Day One, Weir has said that’s what he wants for all fans, no matter why, how or when they felt UNM turned its back on them.
“I want him back,” Weir said. “But we also want to earn our way back to a point where we can get any fan in the community back who wants to be here and for whatever reason had stopped coming.”
Tichenor knows there are still plenty of fans, boosters and others at UNM who don’t share Weir’s opinion.
“I hear the scuttlebutt: ‘He’s doing dope’ or ‘He’s in jail.’ … My record is as clear as any employee here at UNM . ... It’s public knowledge.”
Online court records show Tichenor had a DWI nearly 30 years ago (he pleaded guilty to one in 1988) and his publicized 2010 arrest for “patronizing prostitutes” was dismissed. (He was represented in that case by the Branch Law Firm.)
As for the new era of Lobo basketball, Tichenor sees no reason the Lobos can’t again rule the Mountain West.
“This guy right here (Weir),” he said, “I chewed on him like a bone (when Weir was an assistant at New Mexico State University). He’s as cool as Ritchie McKay. He’s as quiet out there as Bob King. And he’s kind of got a little bit of Alford in him. I can see all three in him.”
His return to the Pit, Tichenor believes, is very much mutually beneficial.
“We don’t lose three games at home with me, I promise you,” he said. “I put my Snakelihood on that. …
“But the truth is, I needed them (the past two years) more than they needed me, bro.”