2022

LSU vs New Mexico

The state of New Mexico is famous for beautiful towns like Santa Fe and Taos. It’s greatest claim to fame, however, is not being Arizona, a superheated hellscape populated by bleach-blonde, leathery women with fake titties. If New Mexico is the “Land of Enchantment,” Arizona is the Land of Enhancement.

Founded in 1889 as New Mexico’s flagship institution, The University of New Mexico now occupies nearly 800 acres in the heart of Albuquerque, a metropolitan area of more than 900,000 people, some of whom rarely ingest meth.

When the university began playing football in 1892, the team was called "The University Boys.” In 1920, a student manager of the team, George Bryan, suggested the nickname be changed to Lobo, the Spanish word for wolf. Bryan was promptly beaten with a saguaro cactus arm and stuffed into a sombrero by dumb jocks who thought Lobo was Spanish for Homo. Still, the name stuck because, when all was said and done, nobody gave a burro’s turd what they were called as long as they were called for mescal.

After “Lobo” was adopted as the school’s nickname, a real Lobo was brought into the school under the care of a student named Bowman. One day, Bowman made the mistake of wearing a red cloak which, at the time, was called a riding hood. The wolf, of course, ate him.

The killer wolf was put down, and replaced by a wolf pup handled by the cheerleaders. Unknown to the cheerleaders, the pup had no interest in domestication, and, in fact, nursed something of a grudge for making him a witness to UNM football. When the wolf had grown, and the time was right, he devoured the entire cheerleading squad before huffing and puffing and blowing down every building on campus. Those buildings, constructed of straw, and, in some cases, sticks, were later rebuilt using the drab adobe masonry we see today. The live wolf was replaced by a human in a wolf costume. “Lobo Louie,” as he is known, has worked out well for the university, though, in 1939, he was briefly incarcerated for humping a referee’s leg.

In the 1890s, the UNM colors were black and gold. A teacher in the art department suggested a change in school colors because black and gold did not evoke the true feeling of New Mexico. She suggested “Sand” (tan) to represent the desert, and “Doo Doo” (brown) in an homage to frijoles. School administrators gave the idea a fair hearing before covering the teacher in honey and staking her to a giant ant hill. The colors were changed to “Cherry” and Silver because, as one administrator put it, “They weren’t taken and nobody else wanted them.”

The Alma Mater (Latin for “Alma’s tomato”) was a source of contention at UNM in 1947. The original Alma Mater was set to the tune of “Achy Breaky Corazon” written by Guillermo Ray Cyrus, but was later changed to “The New Mexico Hymn,” which goes:

New Mexico, New Mexico

Our throats are parched, we need a drink

Before we sing this song.

Aah…there, that’s better

Where were we?

Oh, yes:

This golden haze of college days

Will live in memory.

Or it won’t. Who cares?

We’re all going to die anyway.

Say what you will about the Lobos, but nobody can doubt their sincerity and endemic depression.

Which brings us to Saturday night’s game against the LSU Tigers:

The crowd’s reaction to the Jack Bech 76-yard punt return to the end zone was nothing short of adorable. They were simply naive, enthusiastic fans energized by an exciting runback. I, on the other hand, yawned and waited for the score to be erased and the Tigers penalized. You see, I am not only a sports journalist, but I am also an astrologer.

In his classic work On Special Teams, Nostradamus wrote: “Yay and verily, it will come to pass that an oblong inflated pigskin shall be dropped onto the foot of a man whose leg moves upward thereby propelling the object to a man who receives and returns it, and that returner shall be called Tre’Davious; and, further, the said Tre’Davious will run like the wind and avoid his enemies such that the object he carries crosses a line into a region that creates for the friends of Tre’Davious something called ‘points,’ and there shall be six of them awarded; and those points will not be erased and forgotten through the appearance of yellow cloth strewn upon the field of battle. And these circumstances shall not be repeated thereafter, for even if a man should once again return the object into the scoring land, his efforts shall have been in vain on account of yellow cloth.”

That’s just science.

Jayden Daniels’s pocket awareness was much improved. I haven’t experienced such pocket awareness since junior high when I, while watching the cheerleaders practice, discovered a hole in the pocket of my blue jeans. Talk about a “rub route!” Daniels also improved his accuracy, and threw to everyone on the team except Kayshon Boutte who had hyperventilated while coaching his girlfriend through Lamaze breathing.

I continue to be impressed by the defensive coaching of a group cobbled together with a few studs—I’m looking at you, Harold—and a bunch of transfers, Mekhis, and Hyphenated-Americans. New Mexico was held to 88 total yards and two first downs. That’s hard to do, even against a team wearing Cherry helmets.

Yes, the competition gets much tougher, and LSU will lose some games. But, to borrow a line from New Mexico’s Alma Mater, “Who cares? We’re all going to die anyway.”