Preseason Polls for Mountain West Football Released

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The Mountain West has released its official preseason polls, and for the New Mexico Lobos, that poll was a reflection of the past.  UNM was picked to finish sixth, or last, in the Mountain Division.  Head coach Danny Gonzales didn’t really give it much thought.

“Don’t care.” he said, adding, “We won’t be picked last for long around here.”

He’s got a point.

The poll is based on recent past, and recent past doesn’t look all that poll-worthy if you are a Lobo fan.

2017: 3-9

2018: 3-9

2019: 2-10

So the 21 members of the league media entities that voted can be forgiven for not putting much stock in what Gonzales is cooking in Albuquerque.  Here is the thing though.  He is cooking.  Cooking like Jeff Mauro or Geoffrey Zakarian.  While the media in the Mountain West might not be smelling with Gonzales has on the stove, others have taken notice.

For years, UNM has ranked low in the recruiting rankings, partially by the design of the former offense, a triple-option based package.  But that’s out, and UNM’s recruiting game has skyrocketed.  UNM is preseason magazines were ranked either fourth or fifth in the Mountain West’s overall recruiting rankings, and nationally, UNM finished ahead of a few Power 5 schools, something completely unheard of prior to the current staff and their arrival in the Duke City.  UNM was just 0.46 points from ranking third in the league by Street & Smith’s

Lobo recruiting, once treated as sort of a prohibition era speakeasy in that it was going on and everyone was working the angles, just behind the scenes so let’s not talk publicly, is now more like a V-J Day celebration, with UNM coaches extremely visible on Instagram, Twitter and various platforms.  While we might not see Gonzales on TikTok anytime soon, suffice to say that UNM’s recruiting is front an center for recruits, and fans to see.

Athlon Sports surely noticed.  It’s right there on page 275 of the 2020 College Football Preview.  In the magazine’s breakdown of the top 50 running backs nationally, there are 48 players listed among the Power 5 schools.  Clemson, Texas, Auburn, Alabama, Notre Dame, Ole Miss, Penn State.  Name a huge school, name a hugely successful school and they have someone in the Athlon top-50 running backs for the 2020 recruiting season.  And then, right there at number 50, sticking out (for now) like a sore thumb:

Nathaniel Jones, St. John Bosco (Bellflower, CA) – New Mexico.

For the Lobos to bring in a top-50 recruit in any position is a coup.  Athlon ranks him as the Mountain West’s highest rated offensive recruit.  He is the Mountain West’s No. 2 signee overall.  No doubt that Gonzales built a staff predicated on not just connecting with Albuquerque and the university, but with today’s student-athletes.

The fact that his former head coach and mentor Rocky Long is his defensive coordinator certainly helps bring some gravitas to a defense that will no doubt improve in 2020 after finishing last nationally in 2019, but this is a team that has veteran leadership with over 30 seniors, a total that doesn’t include fifth-year junior Tevaka Tuioti of fifth-year junior Daevon Vigilant.

If there was ever a group to look at a preseason poll and go “21 last place votes out of 21? We’ll show them …”, it’s this group.  You’ve got a senior in law school who spends time advocating for children in front of Congressional members (Teton Saltes), you’ve got guys who have gotten injured and could have given up, and instead are the heart and soul of the team (Tuoiti, Vigilant, Kentrail Moran come to mind).  You have newer players who showed in just one season that they are game-changers (Jordan Kress, Jerrick Reed II) and then you have a sophomore who will enter his third year with the program, with his degree in hand.  Cedric Patterson III is almost assuredly one of just a handful of third-year sophomores to be working on a Master’s.  He might have a Ph.D. at his current rate.

So UNM was picked to finish last.  It’s more fuel for the fire that’s been burning throughout the Lobo Football program, one keen on moving on from the recent past and setting a new future.  It brings to made the great Roberto Clemente, an MLB Hall of Famer for the Pittsburgh Pirates who died in a plane crash in the 1972 off-season bringing relief aid to Nicaragua after collecting his 3,000th hit.  He might be a baseball player, but he also said it best, and it applies here.  “Why does everyone talk about the past?  All that counts is tomorrow’s game.”

There’s no game tomorrow, but there is a next game, and it’s August 29 at Dreamstyle Stadium against Idaho State, and that’s the first one for a new era of Lobo Football, preseason poll be damned.