Albuquerque Journal

No Easy Task For Rocky's Lobos
By Greg Archuleta, Journal Staff Writer

The University of New Mexico football team's 2008 schedule is so rough ... even its spring game is an away game.



On the day UNM's marketing department announced the Lobos' April 26 Cherry-Silver spring scrimmage will take place in Santa Fe, the Mountain West Conference released its football schedule. The MWC did not do UNM any favors.

"I would say we have the most difficult or most challenging schedule in our league," coach Rocky Long said Tuesday, sounding as if he were waiting for someone to yell, "April fools!"
   
As expected, the Lobos will start the 2008 season at home against league rival TCU before they embark on one of their toughest nonconference schedules in Long's 11-year tenure— home games vs. Texas A&M and Arizona preceding visits to Conference USA power Tulsa and in-state rival New Mexico State.
   
"I don't like playing a conference game the first game of the year," Long said, "but the schedule is what it is and we have to get ready to play."
   
UNLV is the only other MWC team without a Division I-AA foe on its '08 schedule.
   
UNM also is the only team in the conference this season without a bye week.
   
"It's funny that we're the only team in the league that doesn't have a bye week and in the last 10 years, we've been 9-1 after bye weeks," said a not-so amused Long. "If you look at the nuances of the deal, we actually wanted to play TCU on a Thursday night so we'd be the only show in town, but instead we're playing TCU on a Saturday. Utah has a bye week before they play us, and BYU has a Friday game before they play us so that gives them an extra day to get ready for us."
   
Javan Hedlund, MWC associate commissioner for communications, said the only dates available for the TCU-UNM game were in August or on the Thanksgiving Day weekend.
   
Long said the schools' athletic directors and MWC officials had a conference call in February to decide on a date.
   
The Lobos wanted the game after Thanksgiving. TCU, Long said, did not. Because the schools could not agree, the MWC put the game on Aug. 30.
   
"Our goal as a league is to try to finish games before the Thanksgiving Day weekend," Hedlund said.
   
Long said he didn't know why the opener wasn't moved to Thursday, speculating that the television contract may have kept the game on a Saturday.
   
Because the opener is a league game, Long said UNM will approach fall practice similar to its 2007 New Mexico Bowl game preparation.
   
"I always try to use nonconference games to get us ready for the conference schedule, and obviously that's not going to work this year," Long said. "We won't spend as much time developing young players. I won't even think about Texas A&M and Arizona because conference is so much more important."
   
The Lobos also travel to Air Force on a short week for a Thursday game, but Long said he doesn't mind because the Falcons did the same last season, coming to University Stadium.
   
Nor does Long mind the road trip for the final spring scrimmage at 1 p.m. at Ivan Head Stadium on the Santa Fe High School campus.
   
"Our players might be a little more excited about it because it's something new and some place new," Long said. "It'll be fun for both the fans and us."
   
Travis Comer, the UNM marketing department's director of sales, said moving the scrimmage is part of the school's effort to attract interest outside Albuquerque.
   
"It's our goal as a department to get out in the state a little more," he said. "We feel this could be somewhat impactful in Santa Fe. It also has the ability to reach up into Española, those areas where it was maybe just too far to come down to Albuquerque for a spring game."