There’s room for optimism for UNM sports
So it appears the Lobo men’s basketball team is getting better. That’s good. The team’s current roster is clearly a dramatic improvement over what it has been, and the prospects for the immediate future aren’t too shabby. The fans are starting to get behind coach Paul Weir and, if the numbers are correct, they’re making a move to fill seats in The Pit once again. What’s more, football looks like it should at least show signs of bouncing back from its moribund 2017 season and, knock on wood, the struggles for the baseball team this past spring are probably just a onetime thing. All good news. But that’s as good as it gets. Hard as it may try, the inescapable fact is that the University of New Mexico’s athletic department is standing next to its mid-major brethren — lookin’ at you Mountain West, Conference USA, American Athletic, Sun Belt, Missouri Valley, Western Athletic — on one side of the crevice watching the other side, the one with the Power Five teams, drift further into the distance.
On that side is the party music and fancy toys. Over here, it’s a cheese platter and hand-me-downs. It’s simply life in big-time college athletics where the haves continue to separate themselves with big money TV deals, while the have-nots drift into the land of afterthoughts and wishful thinking.
Some conferences have such a massive piece of the media pie that each school’s cut dwarfs the entire annual budget — roughly $33.5 million — for
New Mexico. And that cut for the have-nots is getting increasingly smaller and harder to come by, too.
Not to bring up a sore subject, but former UNM athletic director Paul Krebs said it best a couple years ago: This isn’t sustainable. The current model of feeding so many mouths with less and less revenue won’t work when the gap between the big boys and everyone else continues to grow.
If they’re lucky, Lobo fans will see their basketball team return to the postseason next March, maybe flirt with the national rankings or, one day, crack that mystical land of the Sweet 16 — or beyond.
Maybe the football plants a player or two in the NFL, perhaps becoming something other than a doormat for the big-money opponents it has lined up for the next six or seven years. An upset here and there, six to eight wins a season, a late-season push at a conference title and home crowds in the 25,000-plus category.
Unfortunately the grass will always look greener somewhere else because it is. A Final Four run here, a not-New Mexico Bowl or College World Series run there won’t make a difference because the Power Five isn’t looking to expand any time soon.
So with the inevitable elimination of team sports at UNM coming (again) in another week or two, the real focus shouldn’t be saving the sports the university can’t maintain but somehow making the most of what little there is to go around in the first place. Even then, it’s still not enough. Welcome to the world of playing second fiddle as a mid-major.
Will Webber’s weekly opinion piece, which deals with all things sports from the college ranks to the kids, runs each week. Contact him at wwebber@sfnewmexican.com.