Bob Davie has led N Mexico out of the college football wasteland. Now what?

TideEngineer08

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I have actually been considering this. N Mexico is a lot closer than BYU and Cincy. The problem is they don't bring many TV sets nor a large recruiting field, so it looks they are stuck in the MWC.
Apparently they were being considered back when the SWC and Big 8 were breaking apart/joining together. It was mentioned in the Wikipedia article about the formation of the Big 12 back in 1996. It's in this article under the heading "Future Expansion."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Big_12_Conference
 

Redwood Forrest

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bvandegraff

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As an ABQ resident, I can tell you that Bob Davie has done a good job at UNM. He inherited a program that was in shambles thanks to new Bama consultant Mike Locksley who won 3 games in 3 years and had legal problems. The big problems for UNM are that there's very little HS talent in the state, and the few FBS prospects from NM end up going elsewhere (the QB Gentry that Saban wanted is now playing TE for Michigan). As a result, very few UNM players get to the NFL (Brian Urlacher the most notable exception, though he mostly played safety in college and bulked up to play LB in the NFL). For all that, Davie went over 500 this year, beat Boise in Boise, and gave Arizona all they could handle in the bowl. No coach (including Fran) has been able to sustain any success here, and the measure for Davie will start this coming season. Also, fan support is a big issue (UNM thinks they're a basketball school) so the program loses money hand over fist, not good in a state in big trouble from low oil prices. If he can keep winning and start drawing better talent, that may change, but it's a steep uphill climb out here. Looks like he's good at coaching up the talent he has.
 
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bvandegraff

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Another interesting note, the last time you all heard about New Mexico was probably when Cyrus Kouandjio had them on his list of finalists before eventually (wisely) choosing Bama.
 

selmaborntidefan

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I grew up in Indiana during the Lou Holtz days and was a tried and true Irish fan until I got into Grad School @ Alabama. I have a different take on Bob Davie.

Bob Davie killed Notre Dame football until Brian Kelly took over and has pulled it back to being a respectable national presence. I saw it first hand.
If you saw it firsthand then you're well aware of the fact that Lou Holtz.....like he did at virtually every coaching stop......jumped off the ship right before it hit the iceberg.


The school forced out Holtz so that they could make Davie the head coach where he proceeded to do absolutely nothing.
In Holtz's last three years, he was 23-11-1; in Davie's first three years that included the fallout from the Kim Dunbar embezzlement/sleep with players and have a love child by one of them.....Davie went 21-16, which is what, three games worse?

Big Kenny;2804998 The school felt that 10 years was too long to have not won another championship so they forced Holtz to retire. The school seemed to forget that if the defense would have held at the end against Boston College in 1993 said:
I just find all this about impossible to believe. It makes a good after-the-fact justification for things, but is there any evidence of it? Did the brass at Notre Dame - the group that had watched Gerry Faust flame out with no college experience and that had Gary Barnett from Northwestern primed and ready (a guy with college experience who had won in the Big Ten at the toughest place to win with high admission standards)......and that Dinky Bob Davie somehow conned the lot of them?

I'm sorry, I don't believe this any more than I believe the dude on here last fall telling me he knew in October 1982 who was taking over for Coach Bryant because some guy in the stands told him. (You REALLY think those stories wouldn't get out?)


There MIGHT be some truth to it but it's not the whole story in either case.
 

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