Let me count the ways selling losses is a bad idea: first, every football team is judged primarily by their win/loss record. Bowl appearances are determined by win/loss records. Further, the win/loss record has a positive correlation with home attendance. Teams who give up losses each year do not go to Bowls. NMSU has not gone Bowling since 1960
So I have protested dozens of times about selling losses. Each time I am told I just do not understand educational administration. Psst: I have a Ph.D. in that field. They trade short-term employment for themselves for long-term institutional losses.
Every year I am told the money just does not work any other way. Yet in all those years the NMSU administration has had to shift money to the Athletic Department a number of times. Remember, "Easy money is always the hardest."
So there is a new Athletic Director, Mario Moccia. He is a former Aggie great in baseball. In his senior year at NMSU the Aggie football team was winless. That year then football head coach Mike Knoll was fired after a 4 and 40 career. How's that selling losses doing for you Mike?
The next coach finally stopped the skid with a victory so NMSU Football only lost 27 straight games, some of them sold losses. NMSU was playing with players hurt in sold games. Add to that, the home attendance over the decades has been poor at best and nearly non-existent at all other times.
The NMSU administration said it had to sell losses because the fans were not coming to the games. They got it backwards. If they play and win, the fans come. Incidentally, since 1967 I have attended Aggie football. Many seasons I have six season tickets though this year we only got four.
Not because of the sold game, I was not able to attend most games this year. It was because of the illness of a relative for whom I am the caregiver. But we bought the tickets. And we supported as we have all of these years. We are the few remaining Aggie fans.
The Aggie mantra has been: just wait until next year. We have. Through that whole string of seasons without winning and without fan support the administration has been belligerent about criticism. They want to play the big programs for cash and for the fact that they go to the sold games and experience what a winning program looks like. Unfortunately, it is not the NMSU Aggies who have the winning program.
So NMSU is at a crossroads. Some people say that a recent NMSU President got fired for publicly saying that NMSU was going to end the football program. I was not there but that perhaps is the reason. And I have nothing but immense respect for the current NMSU President Garrey Carruthers. No, I am not sucking up to him, he and I have known each other for a very long time.
We now have a new Athletic Director. Can we take money from our reserves, hold bake sales, car washes, administration kissing booth, (bad idea) or whatever so that next year NMSU has a good chance to win those games that they have been selling? The NMSU football program can turn around quickly with wins, and will be mired in cow dung with losses.
The University of New Mexico was pressured years ago to fire their successful football coach who had gotten them full stadiums and bowl appearances. How has that worked for you? Three wins in three season and then mercifully a new coach whom I like. The program is coming back. Will UNM sell losses? I think not.
Can NMSU learn from these decades of losses. They can, will they? That depends on the new Athletic Director. Yes, we are buying our football tickets for next year regardless. It would be nice to sit in a full stadium.
Dr. Michael Swickard is co-host of radio talk show News New Mexico 6 to 9 a.m. Monday - Friday on a number of New Mexico radio stations and through streaming. Email: michael@swickard.com
