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Dec. 8—Is intercollegiate football at the highest level worth continuing at the University of New Mexico?
Probably not, but good sense has little to do with the politics of running an institution of higher learning.
No university president wants to be remembered for disbanding the football team. No member of the board of regents can abide an angry earful about trashing tradition or relinquishing visibility. A mere mention of the football team on ESPN excites a faction of the alumni, even if those same people don’t buy tickets to the games.
Football will always be important at Alabama and Texas, Notre Dame and Michigan. The game matters less and less each season at UNM and other schools that are not part of power conferences and cannot afford good players with a brand of their own.
College bowl games begin this month, but UNM made news only because head coach Bronco Mendenhall resigned after one season.
He quit the Lobos to coach Utah State, a school in a smaller market with a profile as low as New Mexico’s. No one should blame Mendenhall for jumping to what he hopes will be a better situation. He works in a system that treats players and coaches more as mercenaries than as students and mentors.
There was a time when a football coach’s brief tenure at UNM was the sign of a successful program. But that was long ago.
The best coach ever employed by UNM lasted only a year longer than Mendenhall. Marv Levy became head coach of the Lobos at age 32. He finished 7-3 in each of his two seasons, 1958-59, before leaving for the University of California.
Cal passed over well-known coaches to hire Levy, a phi beta kappa scholar who pressed his players to work hard in the classroom. He seemed like a good fit in Berkeley, except he didn’t win many games. Levy’s record at Cal was 8-29-3.
He stuck with his profession after that disaster,…
Source link : https://www.yahoo.com/news/lobos-mired-world-nots-043500791.html
Author : The Santa Fe New Mexican
Publish date : 2024-12-09 04:35:00
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