Here’s a no vote on Davie returning
Bob Davie says that he’s the man to lead University of New Mexico football into its immediate future. It’s time to respectfully, reluctantly, disagree.
It’s not that back-to-back 3-9 (or maybe 4-8, if 6½-point underdog UNM wins Saturday vs. Wyoming) seasons are necessarily a disqualifier, except that the program is trending in the wrong direction as he finishes his seventh season.
It’s not that we take exception to Davie’s rhetorical question on Tuesday: “Have I done more with less? Or, have we done less with more?” The answer: the program has done much less in the last two years with what you have.
It’s not that the game has passed Davie by — I absolutely believe he knows more about football than I do about anything — but some of you fans have whispered such concerns in the wake of said free fall. In fact, you should worry more about it passing by coordinators and position coaches than Davie, the CEO /head coach of the organization. But even so, those coordinators were hired by that same CEO/head coach.
It’s not that the new offense is ill-fitted for UNM football. But refusing to run parts of it for fear of injury to a quarterback tilts the playing field in the opponents’ favor.
It’s not that the defense is or isn’t ill-fitted either, though Davie’s wondering aloud on that point, so very late into the 12-game season, likewise fails to inspire confidence.
It’s not that Davie should be punished further for the acts that led to his 30-day unpaid suspension earlier this year, though his defiance in the aftermath of the suspension is troubling.
It’s not that he should be held responsible for the bad behavior of one Lobo reportedly beating up another one badly enough to require his hospitalization at one late night Saturday postgame party, though allowing Evahelotu Tohi back at practice soon after the fact is a head-scratcher. A football team is not a court of law where due process is necessary. Davie should have kept the player away until, or unless, he learned mitigating or exculpatory factors that would suggest Tohi should stay. He apparently never got to “until or unless,” and it remains a bad, bad look.
No, the reason it’s time to thank Davie for his seven years of service, then make a change, is that the fan base is estranged from Lobo football. Perhaps it is for one or more of the reasons above, perhaps for one not listed, perhaps for reasons that aren’t even legitimate, yet still create a challenge in the relationship.
The five home games so far have averaged 17,051 in official announced attendance. However many people actually have shown up, we know the Lobos won’t hit their already modest (and drastically reduced) budget mark of $1.2 million in ticket revenue.
That’s a problem. As the fan base has abandoned the program, it has become a burden, a drain to the rest of UNM athletics — which has finished in the red eight times since fiscal year 2008 — and is a scapegoat for the decision to cut other sports.
One can read this and say it’s swinging at low fruit, calling for a change at a time football is failing. But how does a program in a financial crisis cover a Davie buyout that would total at least $1.05 million (three times a $350,000 base, per the terms on a deal that has been extended through 2021)?
That’s where the legislators and a governor-elect who made dramatic pledges during campaign season to save men’s soccer need to step up to save UNM football as well.
Of course legislative meddling to save soccer is not a given. But if state government can pony up the funds to do so, it can loan money to athletics, low- or no-interest, and earmark it for the buyout of the football coach.
That idea surely is as popular as contracting the flu, of course, and it offends my taxpayer sensibilities, too. But at least this way, UNM can hire a young and hungry and, probably, unproven coach (beggars can’t be choosy, after all) and the same type of assistants who will accept a more university-friendly contract, and that can help repay the loan over a short period of time. In other words, pay them New Mexico State money.
I’m sure athletic director Eddie Nuñez wouldn’t be thrilled at the prospect of government micromanaging athletic funds, but it seems we are heading down that slippery — greasy? — slope already.
And I am certain of this — lose or drop football and you lose the Mountain West Conference. You lose the Learfield Sports Properties marketing deal as structured, which currently brings in more than $4 million annually. There would be additional domino effects. UNM athletics as we know it would change, and not in a good way. It is a mistake to presume otherwise.
Maybe down the road, it still will make sense to give up on it. But at least on this Black Friday, 2018, UNM football is worth saving. It just needs a savior. Doesn’t mean The Savior. Just somebody who can revive football fans’ now-dormant, hopefully not dead, interest in the Lobo version of the sport.
Otherwise, if things remain status quo, maybe, somehow, things still get turned around in 2019 and beyond.
But for the life of me, I don’t see it.