I received this magazine a couple of weeks ago in the mail because I had bought an Aggie Country Pass this season. I know I’ve gotten a couple of these, but looking back, I could only find a link to the first one I got (11-9-16). I liked it a lot, because it broke down Aggie Sports economics. It was actually fascinating and explained why NMSU has been so desperate to keep their Football program at the FBS level. 40% of all of Aggie Sports’ income came from really good teams paying Aggie Football to play them for an easy win (except for Auburn, see below).
Tickets sales were 22% of total income with Football and Men’s Basketball accounting for over 90% of that. That was 2016, though. The only numbers available in this years’ edition just focused on ticket sales. 76,044 tickets were sold, a 25% increase from last year, for $1.5M in ticket sales, a 20% increase. For perspective, 2016’s sales were $1.1M and the tickets were cheaper then.
This report is from NMSU’s first year in C-USA (though the Swim and Dive team is still in the WAC). It was pretty successful with soccer, volleyball, and football going to conference championship games. Soccer was a standout by winning the regular season and Loma McNeese being the Player of Year. Desirae Spearman was also Player of the Year in Softball. Football had their first 10-win season in over 60 years and went to another bowl game. Men’s Basketball had a losing season, but still led the conference in average attendance by a 1,000. (They had a pair of Pack the Pan-Am events.)
Here’s a few dates listed that I thought were interesting.
7-10-23 Thalia
Chaverria passed away.
7-31-23 Jack Nixon and Anita Skipper were honored for their broadcasting of the previous Men’s Basketball season.
9-1-23 The Pan-Am
Center installed a Teraflex floor for Aggie Volleyball.
12-11-23 Wave the Wonder Dog, who retrieves tees for Football, won an American Kennel Club award.
12-16-23 Jack Nixon called his 500-th football game at the
New Mexico Bowl.
1-18-24 The Pan-Am Center installed new seats and Men’s Basketball had a 23-point comeback win over WKU.
Soccer was tremendous last season in light of their preseason tragedy. They entered C-USA with a WAC championship behind them. They faced a ranked Liberty team and beat them in an away game. They won the regular season championship, but did lose in the tournament final to Liberty.
Volleyball likely would have crushed the WAC, but in C-USA, they ran into WKU, who haven’t been beaten in conference in like three years. UTEP, a monster of Coach Jordan’s making with his former assistant running the program, ended up being the closest competitor to WKU.
Football had a great season with their 10 wins and appearances in the conference championship game and a near-home bowl game. Still, it was that completely unexpected win over Auburn (11-18-23) that had to be season highlight. Somehow, the Aggies have Hugh Freeze’s number (coach of Auburn and Liberty last year).
If quarterback Diego Pavia had been able to play for the entire championship game (and was playing hurt to begin with), I think they might have won. Blaze Berlowitz did a great job in relief. The team was badly beaten in Albuquerque at the New Mexico Bowl by Fresno State even with essentially a big home crowd. The Bulldogs were probably a better team, but after beating Auburn, that shouldn’t have intimated the Aggies. I don’t know if Diego was still hurting or if the pregame controversy with UNM officials sabotaged the team. I suspect Coach Kill’s angry exit from coaching after the game was also a factor.
Coach Kill had been at odds with the university since he’d started. His frustrations with the facilities and behind-the-scenes stuff we didn’t hear about boiled over before the bowl game. His retirement triggered most of his staff’s departure, along with Diego, Blaze, and a bunch of other players. The team has had to nearly start over the quick hire of Tony Sanchez, a former Aggie player, former Nevada head coach, and then current Aggie wide receiver coach. Losing the two big games was tough, but losing the winning team right after was a real gut shot.
Men’s Basketball had a losing record, but were 12-3 in the Pan-Am Center. Part of that home record was because they couldn’t get anybody to play them at home. This season, they couldn’t even get the Lobos to play here. When UTEP changes conferences, I wonder if they’ll follow suit. It was hard to take this team seriously last season, since they could not win on the road.
Coach Hooten came in and had to completely rebuild the program after everyone was dismissed from last season. There were also some eligibility issues and a storm of injuries to deal with it. I look to this season to see what he can really do.
Women’s Basketball also had a losing record, but did make it into the semifinals in at the conference tournament. Coach Adams is really getting the most out of her players. She seems to just need to recruit a couple of really good prospects to make the program competitive for a conference championship. One of my co-workers was at a seminar where Coach Adams. She was really impressed with her. (I wonder she could book Coach Adams in place of one the usual insipid motivational speakers they hire for our meetings.)
Softball did well this season with the Player of the Year and Newcomer of the Year (Dezianna Patmon) on the team. They won their first two games in the conference tournament and beat Nebraska (2-16-24 though I wasn’t able to stay for the whole game) and Arizona State. That said, I’m kind of surprised this team didn’t do better, especially with two star players. Coach Rodolph must have felt the same way too and decided to delay retirement to come back this season. New LED stadium lights were set up at the end of the season, though I’m not sure if they got used during the tournament.
Baseball had an interesting season. They finished with a 25-27 record, but also beat Arizona and TCU. Those 25 wins were also the best total in five years. I thought that the team definitely showed progress over the last two seasons. (Though one of those poor seasons somehow resulted in a WAC Championship, 5-28-22. I still haven’t figured out how that happened.) I saw some fun games last season (especially 5-4-24, which was epic). Keith Jones II, who provided a lot of that excitement, has moved on to the Texas Rangers’ farm system. Hopefully, Coach Angier has some more great players in the pipeline.
How about the future? The Power Five conferences are now the Power Four. The PAC-12 is trying to reconstitute themselves, but they’re not going to be able to regain their status poaching Mountain West schools. The predictable domino effect was that the Mountain West conference is looking for new members and picked up UTEP. (Why aren’t the PAC-12 and the Mountain West conferences just merging? Or would that make too much sense?)
This made Miner fans ecstatic. They’re out of Conference-USA where they have had little success. Their Track and Field team has done well, Women’s Basketball had a moment, and recently Volleyball has been good, but Football and Men’s Basketball are usually in the bottom half of the conference.
With the Mountain West, they’ll be in a regional conference with teams fans are a bit more excited to see. Most importantly, they’re no longer in the same conference with NMSU. That was a big deal for them for some reason. Unfortunately, the first fan question AD Jim Senter got was if they were going to start a baseball program. His answer was a no hope, “No.” So, we’re still better than UTEP no matter what they think of themselves. (Thinking about it, a theoretical UTEP Baseball team might not even need a new stadium. Maybe they could play their games at Southwest University Park.)
NMSU AD Mario Moccia said he was happy being in C-USA, where their budget matches the other teams, except for Liberty. He did seem a bit hurt that neither the Mountain West nor the PAC-12 has made an offer, though NMSU would have the smallest athletic budget in either conference. UTEP will have that honor in the Mountain West. They were hardly a peach acquisition. NMSU has had more accomplishments recently, but El Paso is a much bigger market.
I’m sure Aggie fans would like to be Mountain West with UNM, but even in a depleted conference, it’d be rough going. The PAC-12 would likely be competitively even worse, but they still don’t have enough members. (Upcoming new member, Fresno State, may have trouble meeting their minimum budget requirements and now having to field a Men’s Soccer team.) A move could still happen.
I wonder about C-USA in any case. The conference has already been cleaned out once, so they’ve been aggressively pursuing new members, but nobody anybody’s heard of. Liberty is sort of the tent pole of the conference, but I’m sure they have bigger ambitions. What happens if they leave? (Again, why haven’t C-USA and the Sunbelt conferences merged?) Mario did once tease that the WAC had some clause about playing football. You’d think Grand Canyon would have a football program, but they don’t. The facilities for their other teams top notch. If they ever go into football, they’ll go big like Liberty.
I think I’ve gone far afield of the actual Annual Report contents. Between more possible conference realignments and the outcome of a couple of pending lawsuits against New Mexico State Athletics, it’s hard to predict the future past this school year. There’s a real question about what happens to Softball after Coach Rodolph leaves. I’m also wondering how much patience AD Moccia going to show with Coach Sanchez and Football. Now that the Aggies are in a conference, they can’t afford to be bad for long. Mario sounded defiant when Coach Kill left that the program and said they would not regress. The other teams feel reasonably set for a while, barring coaching departures. We’ll see what the future brings.
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