Aggies envy Lobos’ facilities, finances
NMSU, playing as independent, has 2 to 3 money games a year against national powerhouses
ALBUQUERQUE — From a distance, it seems as though the state’s major universities are close to being on equal footing when it comes to athletics. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The University of New Mexico’s athletic budget is on average $12 million to $15 million more than its counterpart at the southern end of Interstate 25. In football, the chasm is even steeper, and nowhere has that been more apparent than in the infantile stages of the 2019 season.
Just this week, New Mexico State football coach Doug Martin talked about the logistical challenges of preparing his team after a water main break on the Las Cruces campus flooded his practice field and left four-fifths of it unplayable.
The day before, the team was forced off the field early when a thunderstorm’s successive lightning strikes made for unsafe conditions.
A few days later, the Aggies were pounded in their home opener against San Diego State,
dropping them to 0-3 heading into Saturday’s latest rendition of the Rio Grande Rivalry against UNM at Dreamstyle Stadium in Albuquerque. Kickoff is scheduled for 2:30 p.m.
Martin called the SDSU loss the most frustrating game he’s had in 34 years of coaching, but more than that, it underscores the differ
ences between his program and UNM’s.
“They’ve got every resource in the world up there,” Martin said. “They’ve got an indoor facility, they’ve got money, they got a great conference. They should be at the top of that conference every year. So, they’ve got everything going for them.”
The Lobos (1-1) haven’t had things quite so rough. Both of their outdoor grass practice fields are in pristine condition, and the towering indoor facility is, as always, ready and waiting. Their only hiccups came with their head coach, Bob Davie, suffering a medical emergency that has kept him out of action since the season opener.
In many ways, said NMSU athletic director Mario Moccia, this is a battle of the haves and have-nots, the classic David vs. Goliath/big brother-little brother thing.
While the outcome of Saturday’s game is more for the fans and alumni rather than the administrators, there’s still a sense of pride each time the Aggies come out on top.
Still, the chasm exists, and it’s not about to shrink anytime soon.
Moccia sat in a UNM-area brewpub on Friday alongside New Mexico Bowl Executive Director Jeff Siembieda and talked about his school’s arrangement to send the Aggies to one of 16 ESPN-owned bowl games should New Mexico State become bowl-eligible between 2020 and 2025.
It’s a lifeline to a postseason dream for an NMSU team that, for most of the last half-century, has been a laughingstock in college football.
The 2017 team went to a bowl game, but it has been rough ever since.
The Aggies rely heavily on the so-called body bag games to make ends meet financially. While UNM has been committed for a decade (and remains so through at least 2025) to playing one national powerhouse on the road, NMSU is locked into at least two of the cash-grab games every season.
This year the stops were Alabama and Ole Miss, with a third added against Pac-12 power Washington State.
As Moccia explained it, it’s all about dollars and cents — and sense. “We inherited a $9.5 million budget deficit when we got here, one that we’re mandated by the state and the university to pay back,” he said. “At the end of this past fiscal year, that deficit sits at $3 million, so we’ve been balancing our budget while making that mortgage payment.”
That mortgage payment this year is approximately $450,000.
“So you can think of it this way; I’m playing a game to make the mortgage payment,” Moccia said. “I’m playing another game to make the operation work because I need to. We’re playing the third game this year because we’re independent and sometimes you do things you don’t want to do.”
When he listens to his football coach make a point about his team’s logistical nightmares with practice, what Moccia hears is a coach not complaining about his lot in life.
What he hears is a coach committed to finding a way to connect the dots and possibly come into Albuquerque on Saturday afternoon and get a win.
He hears a coach who helped facilitate the game against the Washington State in a way that benefited both the football program and got the Cougars to agree to a home-and-home series with the NMSU men’s basketball team.
“I wasn’t happy with it, but the silver lining is the benefit to basketball,” Moccia said.
“That’s what it takes at New Mexico State. For us to keep moving this thing in the right direction, we need to get creative and have everyone on board seeing the big picture. We’re getting there.”
LOBOS NOTES
UNM officials had anticipated a crowd of more than 30,000 for Saturday’s game, but the temperature at kickoff will climb into the mid-80s under cloudless skies. That, alone, could hurt attendance. … After Saturday’s game, the Lobos will not play at home again until Oct. 11 against Colorado State.