NMSU Aggies, Coach Kill pull off something special against Auburn

I’ll admit I didn’t watch New Mexico State’s Aggie football team play Auburn.

Auburn is a storied SEC Conference football team. Saturday Auburn plays frequent National Champion Alabama in their annual rivalry game, the Iron Bowl.

The nation’s present No. 1 team (and defending champs), the Georgia Bulldogs, also call the SEC home. Auburn had just beaten Mississippi State, Vanderbilt, and Arkansas.

NMSU was a presentable football team in my youth. I fondly remember friends like Po James and Al Barnes, who went on to the NFL. More recently, NMSU was nationally scorned as the worst Division I college football team. The Aggies lost 21 consecutive games.

Teams may get invited to a bowl game if they win six games and at least half of their games that season. That didn’t happen for NMSU after 1959 and 1960 until 2017. Then not again until coach Jerry Kill showed up last year.

Kill coached well in the Big Ten Conference, at Minnesota, until health issues interrupted his career in 2015. I thought NMSU football lucky when Coach Kill decided to coach again, at 60, and chose NMSU. Watching box scores and occasionally gabbing with his players confirmed that instinct. He took “the worst team in football” to a bowl. It won.

Something new was happening here.

But NMSU is in Conference USA. Not the Big Ten or the SEC. NMSU will play undefeated Liberty for the Conference USA Championship Dec. 1 in Virginia. I was impressed a week earlier when the Aggies beat Western Kentucky in Bowling Green. This is only the second time ever the Aggies have won more than eight games. The other was 1960, when NMSU went undefeated.

Why was NMSU playing Auburn last week? College football has “Money Games.” A major school pays some clearly weaker team to play on the major school’s home field and get its butt kicked. For example, last Saturday, Alabama beat Chattanooga 66-10.

NMSU would get $1.7 million for undergoing a lopsided defeat. Big bucks. One expert predicted Auburn would win 41-10. “Not a whole lot to say here. New Mexico is a decent mid major, but quarterback Diego Pavia is banged up. Auburn is playing its best ball of the season and will continue that in this game, a tune up for a winnable Iron Bowl.”

I didn’t even try to figure out how to watch the game on TV. Usually I check the Aggies’ results online, but I forgot. Not until midday Sunday, when I was out front doing yard work and a pal stopped his pickup truck to gab, did I learn anything!

The Aggies beat Auburn. Not by a last-minute field goal or a fluke fumble-recovery run back for a touchdown and a one-point victory.

The Aggies beat Auburn 31-10. No fluke bounce, but a dominant win.

Congratulations!

Coach Kill, quarterback Pavia, and the whole team did something special – by truly being a team, with single-minded dedication and guts.

Yes, Palestinians in Gaza who aren’t dead are starving. Polls say we could elect as President a guy who broke laws to stay in the White House after losing an election. And recent headlines suggest football is frying the brains of more boys and young men than we ever realized. So, in the big picture, this is what it is; but I admire hard work and exceptional skill when I see it, and Coach Kill is showing us some.

This article originally appeared on Las Cruces Sun-News: NMSU Aggies, Coach Kill pull off something special against Auburn