© 2008 by Michael Swickard, Ph.D.
For the last 40 years, every time New Mexico State University hires a new football coach, that poor soul rides triumphantly into Las Cruces on a splendid prancing stallion amid the fanfare of trumpets and cheering. Shortly, this same poor soul is forced out of town riding a broken-down burro amid the jeers of the Aggie faithful, another victim of NMSU football.
The NMSU leadership has spent the last 40 years perfecting an intelligence minimalism when it comes to Division 1 football. This ignorance is not by accident; rather, the manner they have directed Aggie football shows a determined intentional stupidity.
If NMSU was just going through a small “dry spell,” the leaders could be forgiven their mistaken judgments. However, 40 years of doing the same thing again and again and getting the same result again and again qualifies as “40 years of purposefully intentional stupidity.”
Why are the NMSU leaders considered stupid? In the world of NCAA Division 1 football money gets results, and the lack of it causes coaches to suffer the slings and arrows of the aforesaid intentionally ignorant leaders. Money does not guarantee success; rather, it qualifies the program for success. Without it, success is unlikely.
Am I too hard on the NMSU leadership? No, I have watched most of the home football games during those 40 years. I am entitled to be steamed that “the plan” 40 years ago and now sounds exactly alike. Nothing has changed. NMSU plans to play programs that are much better financed with the “hope” that the Aggies will prevail anyway. They have not been able to do so consistently in those 40 years.
Worse, to get some of the football operational money, the leadership has for decades played money games, which is a polite way of saying NMSU has sold losses for money. The way programs are ultimately judged is by their wins and losses. Selling losses for money destroys programs. It leads to the junk heap.
Let us look at facts: What is NMSU’s record against programs that have equal or lesser financial support? Contrast that with programs that are much better financed. See a pattern? It is not just NMSU. Do the same computation for all football programs and the trend will be that the better-financed programs prevail more often.
How do better-financed teams use the money? They have the crème de la crème of coaches, assistant coaches, stadiums, team travel, training facilities, etc. College football is 90 percent recruiting. Every football team needs five for six real impact players backed up by a bunch of very good players. The impact players take a good team and make champions of them. When teams are underfinanced they rarely get true impact players because impact players have a high recruiting value. They want everything that lots of money can buy so they have the best venue for their talents, including a national coach who can call the pro coaches.
Further, most struggling programs need more money if they are not successful since they get little television and fan money. Often the money on campus flows from academics to athletics to balance the books. In big successful programs the money flows from athletics to academics.
Athletics is a part of institutional identity, so there is little enthusiasm for dropping sports. So what can NMSU do? First, NMSU must match its athletic budget to that of its opponents and play teams that have similar funding.
There are two ways to do this. Lower the level of play down to the budgets in Division II, or invest significantly more money in NMSU athletics to match the other WAC football teams.
If NMSU wants to stay in the WAC, the leadership must double or even triple the athletic department budget and put that money into coaching salaries, facilities and recruiting budgets, or it will then be 41 years of intentional stupidity.
Swickard is a weekly columnist for this site. You can reach him at michael@swickard.com.