UNM’s new AD seems to have right tools for tough job

Welcome to the Lobo family, Eddie Nuñez. Now, get to work. Lord knows, he has plenty on his plate when he slides into his desk later this month.

The résumé Nuñez brings to The University if New Mexico, which announced his hiring as athletic director on Aug. 31, indicates he’s a good fit. While at LSU, Nuñez gained plenty of expertise in marketing and licensing, plus he worked with the Tiger Athletic Foundation, which is a major fundraising entity for the school.

He also has a basketball background, having played and coached for Billy Donovan at Florida in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and that never hurts in a basketball-crazed state.

Still, Nuñez walks into an athletic department that is in utter chaos. It has a more than $4 million deficit from the past 10 years and is under investigation by the state’s auditor and attorney general for a golf junket gone wrong. UNM handled the dismissal of head men’s basketball coach Craig Neal badly and the hire of his replacement, Paul Weir, awkwardly. It was castigated for its inability to collect money from the basketball suites to the tune of $432,000 over the past six years. Oh, and the former director of basketball operations for the men’s basketball program is alleged to have bilked the university out of more than $63,000 as he misused a purchase card during his time from 2014-15.

And we’ve yet to mention the problems of dwindling attendance with the UNM football and men’s basketball programs — the presumed cash cows that are the backbone to running a strong, solvent athletic department. If the early return on attendance of UNM’s opening night college football win over Abilene Christian on Saturday is to be judged — 21,457, compared to 20,221 for last year’s win over South Dakota — 2017 might be a better year for the football team in the ticket office. Might. All of that, though, is just within the department. The bigger, and more important, task for Nuñez is to exude an air of confidence and stability to a department and a school desperately in need of it. He has to tackle the budget with a vengeance not seen in years, while also assuring boosters that the university is earnestly working toward stabilizing perhaps its most visible arm to the public.

Nuñez has to encourage fans who have abandoned the football and basketball programs — for whatever reason — that their money is worth spending on them. It should be for the football team, at least. The Lobos have gone to two straight bowl games (snicker all you want, but the New Mexico Bowl is still a sanctioned bowl).

For all the howling about the Lobos hiring Weir from down south, he showed he can coach talent. Weir also made attempts to engage the public in the few short months he’s been here, even coming to Santa Fe for a camp.

Perhaps Nuñez can take a page out of Weir’s playbook and engage the public in much the same way. The dialogue might not be warm or cozy or even fun, but it might show people that he’s listening.

It might be the only way to drown out the dissonance.