Tuesday was a rough day for New Mexico State University and the future of its football program. The Sun Belt Conference, NMSU’s temporary football conference announced its decision to not extend membership agreements to the Aggies and the University of Idaho, meaning, after the 2017 football season, the Aggies, for now, do not have conference for their football team. While this decision was not unexpected it generates a huge amount of uncertainty. What should/can NMSU do with football? They have about a year to work on a plan, and they must be able to be flexible as the landscape in which they operate could shift. The hope for the Aggies is there will be another round of re-alignment in college athletics, thus opening a spot in one of the ten, FBS conferences. That is completely out of their control. NMSU hierarchy will have to look at playing as an independent for a while. they will have to look at the possibility of dropping down a level to FCS (some call that Division 1-AA). Mario Moccia, the NMSU Athletic Director and school President Garry Caruthers have been working on plans. They have a little bit of time to get this done. My feeling is, this State is better off with two programs playing in FBS. I would hate to see the UNM/NMSU football rivalry go away. The message from NMSU is “don’t panic”. I hope they’re right…this is a huge time window in the history of NMSU athletics.
