New Mexico State may have lost to Liberty in the Conference USA Championship Game but make no mistake, the Aggies are the best story in college football this season. A historically lousy program with limited resources that has found a way to punch above its weight, at least for a moment.
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Pop quiz…who is the most famous New Mexico State alum to have played in the NFL? I’d argue it’s Joe Pisarcik. You might otherwise know him as the quarterback who fumbled the ball that allowed for The Miracle at the Meadowlands to happen.
Sure, there have been a few other Aggies to have made a name for themselves in the pros. Charley Johnson started more than 100 games at quarterback during the 1960s and 1970s. But the program doesn’t have a long track record despite having played the sport in some form since 1894.
New Mexico State won back-to-back Sun Bowls in 1959 and 1960 with the latter season seeing the team go unbeaten and finish the year ranked in the AP Top 25. The Aggies managed to stay competitive until 1967. After the campaign, school administrators forced Head Coach Warren Woodson into a mandatory age retirement as he would turn 65 before the next campaign began. The two sides had numerous issues over the years, so it was a convenient reason for the school to get rid of him.
Boy, was that a mistake. In Woodson’s final two games, NMSU beat Northern Arizona 90-0 before crushing in-state rival New Mexico 54-7. He was in charge for ten seasons and finished above .500 seven times. Over the past 55 years, the Aggies have finished with a winning record seven times…in total.
Their bowl game appearance in 2023 means they will have finally surpassed what Woodson accomplished. This period over the past five decades has been punctuated by losing streaks, body bag games and a lot of uncertainty.
Two separate stints as an independent, being one of the last two schools standing in the old WAC and getting booted out of the Sun Belt only made the mountain they had to climb all that much steeper. Of course, there was one thing the school had working in its favor.
A pair of primary rivals is always willing to schedule a home-and-home series with them. That is ultimately what doomed Idaho. New Mexico and UTEP have no issues scheduling games with NMSU, no matter the conference affiliation or how bad the Aggies are from year to year. That is huge. For Idaho, Boise State and Washington State told the Vandals to pound sand.
That brings us back to this season. For the first time since 1967 and 1968, the Aggies have finished with a winning record in consecutive seasons. And for the first time since those back-to-back Sun Bowl trips, the team is going bowling two straight years.
The college football landscape is wildly different now than it was back then. That is what, perhaps, makes NMSU’s achievements today all the more remarkable. We are in a time when money is everything, yet the Aggies have found a way to do more with less.
Auburn paid Bryan Harsin US$15.3 million to not coach the team. They then handed Hugh Freeze US$6.5 million to coach the Tigers in 2023. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. Auburn’s football operation costs for 2022 were more than US$50 million. Expenses for all of New Mexico State’s athletic department were US$23 million.
This makes the Aggies 31-10 victory over the Tigers even more incredible this season. In a sport where athletic departments are flushing cash down the toilet as if they were drug dealers disposing of coke when cops come knocking at the door, New Mexico State is figuring out how to make it work with less.
Look, it’s not sustainable long term. And New Mexico State has probably reached its peak as a college football program. A few winning seasons mixed in with a few losing seasons is likely the best the school could hope for. And certainly, a lot of this success has to be attributed to Head Coach Jerry Kill. Who knows if that level can be maintained should he eventually leave?
However, when you look at the previous 50+ years of New Mexico State football along with the current realities of the sport, what this program has accomplished is better than anything else that has happened in college football this year.
New Mexico State was a bright spot in a season defined by cheating, greed and a complete disdain for fans. Sure, you can say it’s only C-USA or it doesn’t really matter. And that may be true in the grand scheme of things. But for the students and fans, this is a season they will never forget.
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