Albuquerque Journal

New Deal Shows Rocky the Love
By Rick Wright Of the Journal

My legal advisor — a fellow named Google — advises me that before a contract can be signed, there must be a meeting of the minds between the parties involved.
       
Roderick J. (“Rocky”) Long, party of the first, uh, party, and Paul Krebs, party of the second, or vice versa, announced on Tuesday that their minds have met. The result? A contract extension for Long, UNM's 11th-year football coach, complete with a raise of at least 70 percent.
       
Tuesday, Long and Krebs, UNM's vice president for intercollegiate athletics, clearly were of one mind regarding the contract extension and what it means.
       
Krebs: “There's been a lot of progress made (within the football program), and I think this is a recognition of all that's been accomplished, and yet recognizing that we have some goals (to reach) as we continue to move the program forward.”
       
Long: “Paul has done some really good things for the football program the last year-and-a-half or so, with increasing recruiting budgets and increasing assistant coaches' salaries. But then again, that means we're gonna play tougher people and we've got to win more games.”
       
Krebs: “I think Rocky and I have national aspirations for this program.”
       
Long: “The new contract gives me a chance to get that done (make an impact nationally) before I leave.”
      
 Meeting of the minds? Tuesday, it was more like reading of the minds. These guys were in lockstep, shoulder to shoulder, infantry men in the same foxhole.
      
 That hasn't always appeared to be the case. But what was real in their relationship, and what was perception?
       
In Krebs' first year on the job, June 1, 2006-May 31, '07, Long saw seven of his fellow Lobo head coaches leave. Not all of those were fired or released, and not all were succeeded by coaches from outside. Enough were, however, on both counts, to make a guy wonder if Krebs simply wanted “his own people.”
      
 Long had accomplished things no other UNM football coach had, bringing long-absent stability to his alma mater. But was Krebs, who'd worked at Ohio State and who'd hired Urban Meyer at Bowling Green, impressed in the least? Long hadn't won a conference title and still hasn't.
      
 It couldn't have been a good thing that Long's first game under Krebs' supervision was a 17-6 loss to then-Division I-AA Portland State. Oops.
       
And, in March 2007, Krebs hired Steve Alford as men's basketball coach for a total package of $975,000 — more than twice what Long was making after a decade on the job.
      
 Consistently, Long has said he was far more concerned about facilities, recruiting budgets and assistants' salaries than his own pocketbook.
      
 “I never felt unappreciated,” Long said Tuesday, “(but) I felt we were playing with a smaller stick than a lot of the other people.”
      
 Judging from this comment from Krebs on Tuesday, Long, if he worried at all about his future at UNM under his new boss, needn't have.
      
 “My observation when I came here on my interview (in March 2006),” Krebs said, “was that we were probably getting a lot out of our football program with minimal resources.”
      
 Other, more needy programs got attention first, however, and then came the turmoil in men's basketball — a program in crisis. The solidity of Long's program might have worked against itself.
      
 Still, Krebs (and UNM President David Schmidly) have come through. Emphatically so.
      
 Now, appreciated as never before by a boss who clearly values and respects the job he has done, Long must produce as never before.
       
As a meeting of the minds, that seems fair.