The New Mexico State Aggies are playing in a bowl game for the first time since 1960, and just the fourth time in program history. That’s the Arizona Bowl against Utah State on Friday in Tucson (5:30 p.m. ET, CBSSN).
New Mexico State’s Arizona Bowl is the program’s first bowl since *1960*
NMSU is easy to root for on Friday.
Thomas B. Shea-USA TODAY Sports
NMSU beat South Alabama in Week 14, 22-17. That brought NMSU to 6-6 and made them the fifth bowl-eligible team in the Sun Belt. NMSU’s’ conference, the Sun Belt, has exactly five bowl ties, and they didn’t get passed over for a bid.
(Utah State’s nickname is, confusingly, also “Aggies.” It’s an Aggies-Aggies bowl!)
That the Arizona Bowl extended a bid is fortunate. NMSU probably wouldn’t have been able to play in any of the Sun Belt’s other bowl games for financial reasons.
According to a report from NBC 9 in El Paso, New Mexico State can’t afford any of the Sun Belt’s bowl bids with the lone exception of the Arizona Bowl.
“If you stick us too far back east, then it becomes a financial issue with our fans and if you’re obligated to buy X number of tickets and we can’t sell them to our fans, then it becomes a costly enterprise,” New Mexico State chancellor Garrey Carruthers told the station.
So it’s either the Arizona Bowl or New Mexico State will have to decline their first bowl bid in 57 years.
According to the Las Cruces Sun-News, New Mexico State balanced its budget and cut a total of $12 million. The athletic budget has been reduced by approximately $1 million over the past two years.
NMSU sounds really excited just to be here.
“This was the bowl that we all wanted to be in, just the proximity to Las Cruces and our fans being able to get here, and again we have a lot of kids from this area,” head coach Doug Martin said upon the team’s arrival on Tuesday. “So, there was some nervous time to the end there, but we finally got that done and then we saw who we were playing and that was even better. Things couldn’t have worked out better for us.”
Here’s how they celebrated when they got their bid:
Try not to get emotional watching this scene
NMSU has been fielding a top-division team for nearly 85 years. The Aggies hadn’t been rewarded with a bowl bid in nearly six decades. Watching on mute as fans storm the field, players embrace, and head coach Doug Martin cries through his postgame interview, you’d think they’d just won the national title.
NMSU had a quietly special year, and this game is the reward.
It’s hard to win in Las Cruces, which is in a recruiting wasteland. The football program has comparatively little money and had gone 2-10 or 3-9 in each of Martin’s first four seasons leading the program.
Not this year, though. NMSU has a postseason, and that’s awesome.
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