Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Minority candidate; Fanoga going to Wyoming

By looking at the list of possibilities for the head football coaching job at NMSU, it appears as if the school is leaning toward hiring a minority candidate.

This is something that I see as a major positive for the program. There are not enough black head coaches in college football, check that, in all of sports actually. The reality is that many are just as qualified, if not more so than there counterparts and are fabulous coaches/recruiters in the college game.

It will also differentiate NMSU from its competitors. If the Aggies do hire a minority, the UNM versus NMSU game next season would get some national pub. Two black head coaches on opposite sidelines? It hasn't happened very much.

We'll see what happens when it's all said and done but, as of now, my gut tells me the Aggies will go in this direction.

....

The loss of Mike Fanoga will be felt, to a degree.

Mike was a pipeline to Hawaii players, something that does have value in today's college game. One could argue that many of NMSU's Polynesian players didn't make much of an impact anyway. La'Auli Fonoti, Sioeli Fakalata and Raymond Manumaleuna all looked like real-deal football players, but were all inconsistent during their NMSU careers.

Regardless, grabbing players from the Central Pacific is a nice luxury and Fanoga did just that. He was always a Hal guy — he coached with Mumme throughout their coaching odyssey. But he will go to Wyoming and bring in some players to that program. The Polynesian players at NMSU always had great respect and admiration for Mike.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've aways said that we need an African American coach that can relate to the players.
70% of the tha players are, African American.
Tony Samuels had pretty good success but NMSU hosed him with empty promises!

Hey were NMSU, Nick Saban isn't coming here just to prove he can turn this thing around.

Too bad about Fanoga but, he was in a togh situation and had to take the first available job vs. waiting to see if the new coach would hire him.
Good luck in Wyoming, I hear it's lovely this time of year ;)

Anonymous said...

I would like to know at the appropriate time will the Sun-News has Boston for an official list of candidates, finalists and if it's not forth coming will you use legal action to get it? This happened the last time. I think it's a good thing for the fans(the ones that pay the bills to know who exactly NMSU either overlooked or who overlooked us. Many people don't know NMSU passed on Dick Tomey last time as well as Charlie Wiess and others.