Monday, October 8, 2007

Should Mumme go?

I'm not saying that Mumme doesn't deserve heat. His record at NMSU is just plain horrible and the team doesn't look like they are showing major improvement under his watch. One would have thought so, but the last two weeks have been a downer for anyone who follows the team.

I just think that Boston will bring him back unless the team totally goes in the toilet the rest of the way. If that's the case, it will put the AD in a situation where he will have to get rid of him. He (Boston) seems to like Mumme and the direction of the team. Nothing will change that opinion more than a 58-0 thumping on a national stage.

As for Widenhofer, I would not say his coaching has been top notch. The results speak completely otherwise. But he has a track record that dates back. Great players make great coaches. And if you don't have talent, it's hard to look good. It's just a simple fact. He's going to battle with no firepower.

The loss was totally horrible and something everyone wants to forget. In reality, it's one terrible week in a long season. The team will be ultimately judged on how they bounce back. They have to, have to, beat La. Tech. They just have to win. The more losses pile up, the more the pressure will mount and heads will roll.

They weren't supposed to beat Boise, but the way they lost was the worst possible way. They are not even close to a top-tier team in the conference. But they have to beat La. Tech this weekend. If they don't, things will just keep getting worse and worse.

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hope this team gets a sudden case of amnesia, forgets the past three games and takes care of business.

I'm ready to say, "Yes, Mumme should go." However, I'm gonna wait until after LaTech and Idaho games before I put the nail in the coffin.
If we do poorly against two lower tier WAC teams, he should get canned!

I'm curious to hear what Mumme has to say during his radio show this afternoon!

Anonymous said...

I don't know about you all but, I got calls from friends around the country, asking me what happened to NMSU and to offer pity.

I had a friend in Vegas drop $100 because he thought Boise couldn't cover the 25 point spread.
Boy was he wrong and was he hot!

Mumme's record is terrible (7-23, 2-15 WAC).
If we lose to both Louisiana Tech and Idaho (2-9 combined), he should get the axe!
I can't see how Dr. Boston can justify Mumme's existance.

Keep us in the race for a bowl game and you get a temporary stay of execution!

Anonymous said...

How can Mumme be considered an "offensive genius" if he has been out scored 75-20 in two games or 110-20 in 10 quarters of play! One of those teams was 1AA, Ark PB!!

Is this Air Raid thingy, majig gonna take off or, will it stay in the hanger?

If we lose this week, we need to put a "For Sale" sign on his front lawn!
He's wearing out his Welcome mat in the City of the Crosses.

Anonymous said...

I believe this program is worse under Mumme than it was under Samuel. Samuel's teams would run it up the gut, do some option, and throw the ball every now and then. The main thing is, they controlled the clock.

Samuel appeared to grasp the concept that when you have underskilled athletes, you have to put your team in a position to win. That means, to a certain extent, minimizing the risks of the offense. When you throw every down, you are likely to mess up against good defenses, thus putting your own defense in a bad position. NMSU has skilled players at some positions, but they are not a very skilled team. They are absolutely awful at recovering from mistakes, as evidenced by the UNM, Auburn and Boise St games. For teams like Florida, LSU, etc., they have the skill to make mistakes and recover. We do not have the talent to maintain a high risk, high reward offense because when things go wrong, we are toast.

Again, Samuel appeared to realize that, and did whatever he could to minimize mistakes and control the ball. I never remember Buck or Dombrowski throwing the ball away or Barnes or Keith fumbling all the time. The offense was consistent, yet sometimes stagnant. But we were in every conference game, period.

Mumme puts together this high flying offense that has made way too many mistakes this year. Our defense, being bad as usual, cannot save the team from these mistakes, and the result over the past 3 years has been 3-23 against D-1 teams, and two of those teams were as good, if not worse than 1-AA teams.

With that said, I am not a fan of firing a coach mid-season when everybody is pissed off. I think we look at the team at the end of the season, evaluate their progress, and then make a decision. A bowl game is not absolutely, but the Aggies do need 3 conference wins, lest there is no improvement from last year's disaster.

Anonymous said...

I guess we all bought the local hype. The media and coaches had them picked 6th and we all thought that they would go to a bowl. Has anyone seen the rivals.com top 120 poll, a weekly poll on every d1 school. We come in at 101 this week, meanwhile UNM is at 61, UTEP at 70, Auburn at 20, Hawai'i at 23, and Boise St at 33.
Now I know we won't compete with the likes of Auburn, Boise or Hawai'i, but when your two rivals who are your "measuring sticks" are 40 and 31 spots ahead of you, there is a problem, especially when you beat one of them.

All that said, I think it's to soon after the debacle in Boise to say with a clear head whether or not Mumme should go, but with only 1 win this season that counts, they better turn it around quickly or heads will roll.
http://collegefootball.rivals.com/content.asp?SID=1144&CID=723775

Anonymous said...

Well, Pat Forde of ESPN did a mid-season review of all the conferences in his Forde Yard Dash article and rated NMSU as the most disappointing team of the WAC so far.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=forde_pat&id=3055285&sportCat=ncf

Unknown said...

People sure have short memories. Turnovers were the constant bane of the Aggies during Coach Samuels reign. Sure we were competitive during conference play, but the Sun Belt, and the Big West were terrible conferences. If I remember correctly, our sun belt champion and bowl representitive North Texas had a losing record and was demolished by Colorado State. We have come leaps and bounds since then.

The Aggies from Samuels day only posted one winning season against the likes Middle Tennesse and Louisiana Monroe. We also were lucky to meet the minimum 4 home games, and 10,000(At the time) minimum attendance numbers. With a record of 34-57 over 8 years, he averaged 4.45 wins a season.
Hal Mumme is hardly doing worse. He is currently 14th on the all time wins list for NMSU football coaches.

I know hope springs eternal in Aggie land, but we have a lot of history to overcome. The only reason anyone is upset from these last two losses, is because Mumme has raised the bar at NMSU. Two big losses to good teams wouldn't have raised an eyebrow during Samuels tenure (2001: K State 64 NMSU 0)

Anonymous said...

The coach can't block, run, catch, throw or block. I saw almost no blocking by the O line for quarterback or running back--the senior tight end could't catch a ball if it was handed to him--the defense looked like they had concrete shoes on--I can only imagine what it must feel like to try to coach a bunch of Div.II players against Div. I teams.

Anonymous said...

Raise the bar?
How many WAC championships? How many winning seasons? ZERO!

The worst Aggie FB teams were during the Mike Knoll (1986-89) era.
He had a 4-40 record. Only one of those wins was against a 1AA school.

Thru 30 games Mike Knoll was 4-26.
Mumme is 7-23 thru 30 games. Four of those wins are 1AA. Do the math!

We are living the worst FB era in NMSU history part II.

And don't give this #14 winingest coach crap. Only the six coaches have winning records!

Anonymous said...

There are enough good players on the NMSU football team to be competitive. But players need coaching and a strategy to win. NMSU must stop converting good defensive players to offense. T. Glynn is a good example. His speed is needed in the defensive backfield. Our DB's get beat like burnt toast!

Anonymous said...

Anon3:52 -- Sir/Madam you are an idiot. When was the last time any Aggie football team do any of the things you mentioned? There is talks of going to a bowl this season. We still have hope for that. Something we have seldom hoped for in the past 40 YEARS! What would getting rid of Hal accomplish? We'd be back to square one. If we get rid of Hal now we may as well just abort our football program. But what will that do for NMSU athletics as a whole? We'd lose our WAC membership, and our basketball program would then feel the burn.

Unknown said...

Aggie fans everywhere...wake up! Our football program, led by Hal Mumme and his coaching staff are awful and are clearly spiraling out of control. Why? Coaching. Hal Mumme and the "Air Raid" crew defend their ineptitude with excuses (where’s the personal accountability?). Current excuse...we've got lots of injuries. What a cop-out. Other common excuses...we just can't recruit the same high-quality talent as the rest of the league/country. Again...complete nonsense. Case in point...the service academies. Air Force, Navy, and Army year-in, year-out field teams of quote-unquote "underdogs." These kids are smaller and slower (on average) than just about every D-1 team they play against, yet they’re always competitive. The NMSU Aggies are far more talented, having academy-equivalent "talent" down at the 2nd and 3rd string positions. So what’s different? The service academies are disciplined, focused, team-oriented units. That's why they succeed year in and year out...even against the odds. So the reason for our football ineptitude has NOTHING to do with "injuries", "depth", "size", or "speed." It has EVERYTHING to do with coaching (or in our case the lack thereof). During the BSU drubbing on October 7th, 2007, I actually stayed tuned till the end, hoping to see some semblance of "team" or “unity” that would reveal itself...these are concepts and principles expected to be demonstrated and conveyed convincingly by the head coach (Hal Mumme) and his staff...there was NONE! NMSU will certainly continue playing football games the rest of the season, unfortunately we’ll never see them field a TEAM of players, dedicated to playing the game as they should, being led by a coach that has no clue or concept of how to go about creating a competitive, disciplined, committed, hard-working team. We should feel sorry for these guys, our football program, and our university...what a joke.

Anonymous said...

I never understand you people. A month ago after the UTEP game you were all praising MUmme and the team. Now you are all bashing him.

Classic case of what have you done for me lately. Like the idiots complaining in sound off I say if you don't like NMSU football go back to El Paso.

Unknown said...

Stop reacting for a moment and please put on your "thinking cap." If coaching a well disciplined, focused team, you wouldn't end up with a 58-0 drubbing before a national audience (there are plenty of stellar examples I could use over the last 2 years, but this is the most recent)...by making excuses for Hal Mumme, folks are simply validating his ineptitude with regards to LEADERSHIP. Are you getting it yet? Leadership is the key. Not more talent, less injuries, greater depth, or whatever other reason you've got. You'd probably be a great addition to the Aggie football staff since you're apparently on the same waive-length as Mumme...deferring responsibility and making excuses.

Anonymous said...

The game against BSU made me ill to watch it. If Coach Mumme can't turn this trend around, he should suffer the consequences at season end. Every top college team should have two top flight QBs who can run the team and a third QB for emergencies. We apparently only have one, who is injured, this is not acceptable. The defense is poor(not as bad as the last two years, but still poor). Generally defense wins games, so we have to put some emphasis here in the future along with the offense. Mumme should be hatching up some scheme to make us competitive the rest of the way. It occurs to me that players used to play two ways, offense and defense. So for the rest of the season, if you just do not have 22 top players, lets play some, like Glynn, in critical situations, on defense. I am sure there are others who could do it as well. If the coaches can not come up with something radical like this(and I am sure the coaches will have better ideas), then we will be in for a very long and frustrationg season for everyone. From a fan's perspective, I have season's tickets, and I am tired of having to watch poor football for my money.

Anonymous said...

Ira/Shelia, you speak from where the sun don't shine. You have no idea. This is a real team. Quit spouting out all this negativity. Talent, depth, ect. account for a solid program just as much as leadership. We are heading in the right direction. If we play the rest of the season like we played in Boise, then you may have a point. I highly doubt that, and I'm not ready to bail yet.

I really can't stand some of you so-called fans. GRR

Unknown said...

First off, allow me to quote you..."Talent, depth, ect. account for a solid program just as much as leadership." You actually subscribe to this? That’s a fairly trite, shallow, inexperienced perspective. I can only assume (unless you choose to clarify) this is coming from someone who isn’t particularly familiar with leading others. Do you have some base of experience from which you speak? Virtually everyone with a history of leading successful groups will quickly re-orient your mistaken statement...leadership is not a casual ingredient for success, it is the KEY component. Are you familiar with the quote: “I am more afraid of an army of 100 sheep led by a lion than an army of 100 lions led by a sheep” (this would be in reference to your talent/depth statement)? Or how about one from the football legend Vince Lombardi (in keeping with a football theme): “Leadership is based on a spiritual quality; the power to inspire, the power to inspire others to follow.” Newsflash...the Aggies aren’t following Mumme (or his staff) here. 58-0, a grand total of 89 offensive yards, uninspired play through 4 quarters, and an all-time 2-15 WAC coaching record are simply a few examples. Bottom line: leadership is pretty important. Currently we have a bunch of uninspired individuals taking the field. Allow me to quote you once again..."We are heading in the right direction." ??? Seriously? Frankly, I’m not tracking here; not sure what it is you're referring to. My gut tells me you’re not an investment advisor (am I right?). Well my friend, I wish you good luck, ‘cause that’s all you’ve got to go on at this point. BTW...how much are we paying Mumme every year to “lead” our team? Your perspectives are certainly interesting. Feel free to actually respond to my questions (you can start with my 1st blog addressing the success at the “underdog” service academies if you like). I’d love to be enlightened (me and the rest of us so-called naysayers that is).

Anonymous said...

ira & Shelia said it all, and I totally agree!