Wright: UNM-NMSU is not Utah-BYU, for better and for worse

Sep. 24—There are intrastate rivalries, and then there are intrastate rivalries.

In parsing the difference, Bronco Mendenhall qualifies as an expert.

He’s seeking to do his part in making the New Mexico-New Mexico State football rivalry more like that of Utah and BYU —without the harmful side effects — in the only way he can: by making his Lobos a better team.

Mendenhall, New Mexico’s first-year head football coach and the head coach at Brigham Young University from 2005-15, was asked for his take on the BYU-Utah rivalry during his weekly news conference on Monday.

In doing so, he made it clear he wasn’t trying to diminish the New Mexico-New Mexico State rivalry by comparison.

So, based mostly on Mendenhall’s recollections and impressions, I will. When held up against the Utah-BYU “Holy War,” Lobos-Aggies is a tea party. A coffee klatch. An ice cream social.

(Am I not aware that a UNM student was shot to death in November 2022 by an NMSU basketball player stemming from a fight on the concourse at NMSU’s Aggie Memorial Stadium during the Lobos-Aggies football game earlier in the fall?

I am, yes. But, as terrible and tragic as that incident was, it was peripheral to the rivalry itself. We continue).

Of the Utah-BYU rivalry, responding to a question from the Journal, Mendenhall shook his head, rolled his eyes and said, “Oh, crud. That’s a tough one to explain.”

But he did his best.

“My family and I,” he said, “we’d have a meeting, like a sit-down meeting the Sunday before (the Cougars-Utes) game, and ‘OK, here this comes.’

“The kids at school, my wife, Holly, in the grocery store line, getting gas. I mean, you’d buckle up when you’d go outside during that week, with your helmet and your chin strap.”

Thus, as Mendenhall buckles up for his first Lobos-Aggies game as a head coach — he was UNM’s defensive coordinator from…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/wright-unm-nmsu-not-utah-030200757.html

Author : Albuquerque Journal, N.M.

Publish date : 2024-09-25 03:02:00

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