A Damned Fine Accomplishment

I’ll admit I didn’t watch New Mexico State’s Aggie football team play Auburn.

Auburn is a storied SEC Conference football team. Saturday Auburn plays frequent National Champion Alabama in their annual rivalry game, the Iron Bowl.

The nation’s present Number 1 team (and defending champs), the Georgia Bulldogs, also call the SEC home. Auburn had just beaten Mississippi State, Vanderbilt, and Arkansas.

NMSU was a presentable football team in my youth. I fondly remember friends like Po James and Al Barnes, who went on to the NFL. More recently, NMSU was nationally scorned as the worst Division I college football team. The Aggies lost 21 consecutive games.

Teams may get invited to a bowl game if they win six games and at least half of their games that season. That didn’t happen for NMSU after 1959 and 1960 until 2017. Then not again until coach Jerry Kill showed up last year.

Kill coached well in the Big Ten Conference, at Minnesota, until health issues interrupted his career in 2015. I thought NMSU football lucky when Coach Kill decided to coach again, at 60, and chose NMSU. Watching box scores and occasionally gabbing with his players confirmed that instinct. He took “the worst team in football” to a bowl. It won.

Something new was happening here.

But NMSU is in Conference USA. Not the Big Ten or the SEC. NMSU will play undefeated Liberty for the Conference USA Championship December 1 in Virginia. I was impressed a week earlier when the Aggies beat Western Kentucky in Bowling Green. This is only the second time ever the Aggies have won more than eight games. The other was 1960, when NMSU went undefeated.

Why was NMSU playing Auburn last week? College football has “Money Games.” A major school pays some clearly weaker team to play on the major school’s home field and get its butt kicked. For example, last Saturday, Alabama beat Chattanooga 66-10.

NMSU would get $1.7 million for undergoing a lopsided defeat. Big bucks. One expert predicted Auburn would win 41-10. “Not a whole lot to say here. New Mexico is a decent mid major, but quarterback Diego Pavia is banged up. Auburn is playing its best ball of the season and will continue that in this game, a tune up for a winnable Iron Bowl.”

I didn’t even try to figure out how to watch the game on TV. Usually I check the Aggies’ results on-line, but I forgot. Not until midday Sunday, when I was out front doing yard work and a pal stopped his pickup truck to gab, did I learn anything!

The Aggies beat Auburn. Not by a last-minute field goal or a fluke fumble-recovery run back for a touchdown and a one-point victory.

The Aggies beat Auburn 31-10. No fluke bounce, but a dominant win.

Congratulations!

Coach Kill, quarterback Pavia, and the whole team did something special – by truly being a team, with single-minded dedication and guts.

Yes, Palestinians in Gaza who aren’t dead are starving. Polls say we could elect as President a guy who broke laws to stay in the White House after losing an election. And recent headlines suggest football is frying the brains of more boys and young men than we ever realized. So, in the big picture, this is what it is; but I admire hard work and exceptional skill when I see it, and Coach Kill is showing us some.

                                                        – 30 – 

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 26 November, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's website, as well as on KRWG’s website under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). ]

[Because of Thanksgiving, my deadline for that column was the Tuesday before Turkey Day by noon. Since then, the Aggies have won again, taking down another conference rival before the conference championship game with Liberty. Meanwhile, Auburn played the Iron Bowl with Alabama. Until the last second, Auburn was winning. Aggie fans were joking that if Auburn beat 8th-ranked Alabama, maybe NMSU belonged in the top ten too. But Alabama scored on a long, last-minute touchdown pass.

Still, NMSU holds the second biggest upset of the season, if you figure by adding the points by which they were the underdog (expected to lose by 25) to the points they won by on the field (21), which is 46 points. I hope some loony NMSU fan with his or heart in the right place bet money on the Aggies and made a bundle.

The Aggies play Liberty at 5 pm our time on Friday, December 1^st. I’ll try to figure out which channel CBSS is on cable. They won’t be favored; Liberty is undefeated; but they could win. Win or lose, this has been a good season.

One thing the good season means is that other, bigger schools will be on the phone to Coach Kill or his agent. NMSU’s classic experience, mostly in basketball, is that a successful coach is soon gone that way. Maybe there’s a chance Coach Kill stays. He likes it here, but other schools have more money to spend on a football coach. He says he’s told NMSU what it would take to keep him here. That likely means an enhanced contract, but likely also means expenditures to improve facilities here. That could leave NMSU making some tough value judgments.

In the mid-1970s, NMSU wanted to build a new stadium. One Friday the County Commission, then three guys meeting in a tiny conference room in the old Courthouse building, agreed to put to the voters issueing bonds obligating the county, to help build a new stadium. Weirdly, the commissioners asked the news folks not to say anything until Monday! Surprisingly, the Sun-News (not yet Gannett-owned) actually did hold the story, even though it was destined to be one of the year’s biggest local controversies. (As the El Paso Times guy here, I told ‘em that of course I wouldn’t hold back a news story of such public interest.) There was quite an active campaign by equally passionate supporters and opponents of using public funds for such a purpose. ]