UNM, NMSU students working together create trophy for Rio Grande Rivalry men's basketball game

It’s carefully crafted from a northern New Mexico sycamore tree into the shape of New Mexico, with a turquoise river running down the middle and stars representing the homes of the UNM Lobos in Albuquerque and NMSU Aggies in Las Cruces.

The back will house annual updates via cattle branding (a tip of the cowboy hat to the ag roots of NMSU), similar to how the Stanley Cup is updated each year with the names of NHL champions.

The still nameless trophy that was the brainchild of three students — two from UNM, one from NMSU — will be presented this weekend for the first time to the winner of Saturday’s Rio Grande Rivalry men’s basketball game between the Lobos and Aggies in the Pit.

The hope being both that bestowing the traveling trophy to the winner of the men’s basketball rivalry becomes an annual tradition and also that a gesture from students from each school working together might be a good starting point to calm the vitriol that has surrounded the rivalry for several years.

Neither side wants the passion for the rivalry to diminish, but, frankly, if the kids in the room can work together, maybe the adults can, too.

“It’s just it’s taken off to a level I haven’t seen in a long time, or ever really,” said Carlos Tenorio II, the leader of UNM’s Howl Raisers student support section who is one of the three students behind funding and creating this trophy. “But at the end of the day, we’re all New Mexicans, right? Some of us are ‘Everyone’s a Lobo!’ and some of us say ‘Guns up!’ But we’re all New Mexicans at the end of the day, so we felt like this is a gesture of goodwill between the students.”

The men’s basketball rivalry between the two state schools began in 1904. UNM, which won that first game 21-9, leads the all-time series 125-103.

Tenorio, though born and raised in Albuquerque, is a long-suffering Bay Area sports fan thanks to having family from the area. This past season, Major League Baseball rivals the Oakland A’s and San Francisco Giants played their last game with both teams in the Bay Area (the A’s are moving to Sacramento until their future stadium in Las Vegas can be built).

“They played for the ‘Bridge’ for the last time this past season. It’s the trophy they play for between the two teams made out of a piece of the Old Bay Bridge,” Tenorio said.

“This year, when the Giants won again, I was bummed, but it also got me to thinking, why don’t we have something like that here at UNM?”

He and fellow UNM student Quentin Morrison got to talking, Morrison got to sketching, and the idea for the trophy for one of the state’s most beloved, albeit it heated, rivalries was born.

They reached out to Joseph Settle, a journalism major at NMSU, who was on board.

“It was important due to the fact that one, the rivalry is extremely old and doesn’t have a trophy, which I found odd,” Settle told the Journal in a text exchange on Friday. “But more importantly, there has been a lot of hate in the rivalry recently ... just a lot of negativity. By creating this trophy, our hope is to bring something positive to the rivalry for a change.”

Tenorio said they are open to suggestions for the name of the trophy, which he said was created with the specific intent to have New Mexico representation throughout — the piece of wood used, the branding idea and even the crafting of it done by Albuquerque area woodworker Andy Hageman, who also announces New Mexico United games on the 101.7 FM radio broadcast. Tenorio is the current president of the Curse, the fan group for United.

“I love sport and everyone I know in New Mexico loves this rivalry,” Tenorio said. “We just thought this could be a really good tradition to start, and we hope it sticks.”