The state of New Mexico got its name long before the country of Mexico was independent, long before the United States existed, when 16th-century Spanish explorers helped settle the territory.
Unless you live there, you may not have known that. New Mexico is often misunderstood, overlooked. The state is most popularly known for being the production site of the atomic bomb and, more recently, the television series “Breaking Bad”. Other notable exports include Microsoft, which was founded in Albuquerque. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was born there, too.
And recently, there are the talented college athletes leaving the Land of Enchantment in droves, heading to bigger and richer schools, a prime example of the struggles that programs below the high-major level face holding on to talent in this new era of college sports.
At the University of New Mexico over the past year, the Lobos have seen the departures of their athletic director, head football coach, star quarterback, top two running backs, top four receivers, top tackler, head men’s basketball coach, conference player of the year point guard, starting shooting guard and more, all leaving for other schools following brief runs of success. That came one year after New Mexico State quarterback Diego Pavia followed his former coach Jerry Kill to Vanderbilt, where he became a star after the Commodores beat Alabama.
New Mexico, the state, often struggles not to be known for the things and people that left it behind.
“There is sometimes a defeatist attitude of, we can’t have much better,” said Albuquerque Journal sports writer Geoff Grammer, a native New Mexican. “Part of that is from years of, when something gets going good, they leave.”
With no limits on transfers and much less funding compared to Power 4 programs, how can the state’s flagship school compete? And perhaps more existentially, how can it keep selling itself to donors and fans?
“You have to be honest and transparent,” UNM’s first-year athletic director Fernando Lovo said. “Unfortunately, this is the world we live in right now. But we can’t let that overshadow what we’ve accomplished recently. The pride and the passion is still there.”
Lovo took over as AD on Dec. 1 of last year, coming from Texas to replace Eddie Nunez, who had left for Houston. He inherited a winning basketball program and an improving football program.
But four days after Lovo started, football coach Bronco Mendenhall was hired away by Utah State, a program in the same conference as UNM. The Lobos had gone 5-7 in Mendenhall’s first and only season, a slight improvement from 4-8 the year before, a record that got former coach Danny Gonzales fired. New Mexico hadn’t even experienced the big winning that usually comes before a Group of 5 school loses its coach.
Grammer’s summary of the fan base’s response: “Pissed off.”
“People loved that he’d done a couple postgame interviews on TV crying. It got people to buy in more. It was as good a feeling as you could have in college football for a team that didn’t even make a bowl game. So people were pissed and can’t wait until Utah State comes to Albuquerque this season.”
The departure of Mendenhall, who’d won big at BYU and Virginia before resurfacing at UNM, freed the Lobo roster to head elsewhere days before the transfer portal opened. For players, it meant those who stayed would be on their third head coach in three years.
“He had told us he was going to stay for the long run,” Lobos edge defender Gabe Lopez said. “That I was going to finish my career with him. But things happen. I have no hard feelings.”
For his part, Mendenhall said he didn’t expect to leave New Mexico so quickly, either. When he accepted the UNM job after taking some time off from coaching, he sold his favorite horses from his ranch in Utah. But shortly before the 2024 season, Utah State fired Blake Anderson after an investigation into Title IX violations. Mendenhall’s interest in returning to his home state was heavily influenced by his family, especially his mother, who was put in hospice care late last year.
“I get to see her every Sunday, which I never imagined at this stage in my career,” he said. “Two of my sons have transferred to Utah State. All of my brothers live in Utah. It’s my true family. … Ultimately, this was kind of choosing between two families, and my hope was the players would understand that.”
It helped that Mendenhall got an $800,000 raise to a $2 million salary at Utah State. He would be far from alone in finding a bigger payday elsewhere. The day before Mendenhall was officially named Utah State head coach, New Mexico offensive coordinator Jason Beck left for the same role at Utah, tripling his salary to $1.25 million.
Then starting quarterback Devon Dampier and top receiver Luke Wysong announced they would enter the transfer portal. Dampier followed Beck to Utah, continuing the trend of OC/QB package duos, while Wysong ended up at Arizona. Player NIL and revenue-sharing deals are rarely made public, but both are almost assuredly earning more than they did in Albuquerque.
“My decision on leaving was easier because my coaches left,” Dampier said. “My relationship with Jason Beck, I wanted to stay with him going forward.”
From there, the floodgates opened. Players hit the portal and ended up at bigger schools like Louisville, BYU, USC, Kansas State, Cal, Kentucky, Ole Miss and more. The roster was gutted. Again.
To fill the losses, New Mexico football has added 129 new players over the past two years after back-to-back coaching changes, including 72 new faces this year. Just 15 players from the 2023 team are still here, according to the school. Associate athletic director Frank Mercogliano knows the numbers, because he’s had to write new player bios for all 129 of them.
Heavy football roster turnover is common in college sports’ free transfer era, but New Mexico would quickly face a rare double-dip.
While football drives the money train at most schools, men’s basketball has been New Mexico’s jewel. It’s what Grammer describes as the real pro sports team in the state. The Lobos regularly finish in the top 15 nationally in attendance at The Pit, and the program brings in more revenue than football.
In the spring, New Mexico won the Mountain West regular season title and reached the second round of the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2014. But three months after the football departures, men’s basketball coach Richard Pitino left for Xavier, a private school where he is believed to be making much more than the $1.2 million he did at UNM.
Again, when a coach left, players followed him out the door. Mountain West Player of the Year Donovan Dent went to UCLA. The Santa Fe New Mexican reported Dent got $3 million, citing UNM sources. Shooting guard Tru Washington went to Miami (Fla.), a school leading the way in player payments.
The basketball team’s success made the moves more understandable to fans than football. But they hurt just as much. Lovo had to explain to his six-year-old son why Dent left.
“Basketball has always sold itself as the fans make the program, so it’s been able to survive (transition),” Grammer said.
Lovo hired Eric Olen from UC San Diego off an NCAA Tournament appearance, and every single player on the 2025-26 Lobo roster is new to the team.
“I joke that Coach Olen walked into his first team meeting and there was nothing but chairs in the room,” Lovo said. “You have to shift to talking about what it means to those individuals to be in The Pit and have that confetti falling, hugging and laughing, high-fiving each other. That’s connected with the individuals I’ve talked to.”
Richard Pitino (left) accepted the Xavier job after leading the Lobos to their first NCAA Tournament win since 2012. (Jeff Lange / USA Today Network via Imagn Images
New Mexico’s predicament is not exactly unique in the Group of 5, but to see it happen here all at once highlights the struggle these schools face. Court rulings to allow unlimited transfers in the NIL era have decimated Group of 5 programs, with most of the top talent moving up to Power 4 programs and being replaced by P4 castoffs or lower-level players earning promotions of their own.
Pro Football Hall of Famer Brian Urlacher became an All-America linebacker at New Mexico in the late 1990s and went through a head coaching change. Would he have stayed if today’s rules were in place back then?
Utah, which took Beck and Dampier, reported $126 million in athletics operating expenses last year and has said it will pay the full $20.5 million in revenue sharing to athletes. UCLA, which added Dent, spends around $180 million on athletics.
New Mexico’s budget is around $47 million, and Group of 5 schools are expected to only pay as much as a few million at most in revenue sharing, if that. Lovo would only say UNM will share a “meaningful percentage” of revenues.
The New Mexico government helps with some funding for both the Lobos and Aggies, but they’ll never keep up with the biggest spenders in college sports. They move forward finding whatever they can. New Mexico is losing players and coaches to schools that just have a lot more money. That’s not new on its own, but the rule changes have made moves more frequent than ever.
Conference realignment hasn’t helped, either. Half of the Mountain West is leaving the Lobos behind next year for a rebuilt Pac-12, citing a desire to separate from the bottom-spenders in the MWC. The Lobos’ budget is the second-lowest in the conference.
The question that floats over everything: Will anyone stay?
To replace Mendenhall, Lovo hired Idaho coach Jason Eck. Football is a tougher sell to UNM fans because of the lack of success, with no winning seasons since 2016, but Eck is trying his best, and Lovo is backing him up.
Eck is speaking at local car dealerships. He’s going to alumni outings an hour away. Earlier this month, New Mexico filmed a spoof of the “Scott’s Tots” episode of “The Office”, with Eck announcing that kids 12 and under will get in free to five of the six home games this year.
It’s not tuition or laptop batteries… it’s 𝙁𝙍𝙀𝙀 football tickets for kids! #CoachEcksTots #GoLobos
📰 https://t.co/S8sOl84ZJs pic.twitter.com/WddyRkU6hd
— New Mexico Lobos (@UNMLOBOS) August 4, 2025
“It’s easy to be apprehensive about supporting something when a coach leaves after one year for another team in your league,” Eck said. “Being out and introducing yourself to people, getting to know them, that adds a personal side to it. So when I ask them to support us in University Stadium, that’s not the only time I’m coming out. I’m going to embrace this community.”
Eck knows how to reinvigorate fans. His previous stop, Idaho, is the only program to voluntarily leave the highest level of college football for the Football Championship Subdivision, which it did in 2018. Eck took over a team coming off five consecutive losing seasons and posted records of 7-5, 9-4 and 10-4, turning the Vandals into a top-10 program at their new level. He’s said his biggest joy in coaching comes from turning nothing into something.
Eight months into his New Mexico tenure, the coach has developed a feel for the state and its people.
“New Mexicans are very proud of being from New Mexico,” the 47-year-old Wisconsinite Eck said. “A community like that is dying for something to be proud of that’s theirs.”
They’ve had it before. While J. Robert Oppenheimer and Walter White might be the most famous characters to come through, none is quite as beloved as Johnny Tapia.
The Hall of Fame boxer is still a legend here, 14 years after his death. Born in Albuquerque and raised by his grandmother after his parents were murdered in separate incidents, Tapia turned to boxing at a young age. He went through personal battles with substance abuse but won his first WBO championship in The Pit in 1994. The New Mexico crowd exploded at the TKO. Tapia did a backflip. Unsure how to contain his emotions, he twice lifted his opponent up in his own celebration.
Tapia would start 45-0-2 in his professional career, winning five world titles and holding multiple big matches in his home state. He died of heart failure in 2012 at age 45, shortly after he stopped boxing. A community center in the city is named for the star who never left them behind.
“This is still a fighting state,” Grammer said, citing the popularity of boxing and MMA. “The pride of that plays into everything.”
New Mexico is still fighting to keep people. Coaches. Players. And most importantly, fans. The reality of modern college sports makes that harder than ever. New Mexico has lost talent before and always gotten off that mat. It’s up to the people in charge to stay in the fight and keep the fans believing, even as the faces change.
“We’re built to weather that storm,” Lovo said. “We’ve got to do our part.”
(Photo: Aryanna Frank / USA Today Sports via Imagn Images)
