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Big game highlights big need for University Stadium improvements, investment
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Saturday afternoon at University Stadium was, in almost every way, what so many sports fans across New Mexico had been longing for.
The game itself — a 38-20 rivalry win by the University of New Mexico over in-state rival New Mexico State — was maybe secondary to the event.
A uniquely New Mexican gathering of 37,440 Aggies and Lobos came together with family, friends and fellow football fans to celebrate, tailgate and, quite frankly, do the sorts of things that happen in so many other college communities across the country each Saturday.
It proved the Rio Grande Rivalry can sell out the largest stadium in New Mexico, a boon for a state most assumed big-time college football had left behind.
“It was bigger than football,” said UNM’s first-year Athletic Director Fernando Lovo.
Added first-year Lobo football coach Jason Eck, “I think that was a great day for the whole state of New Mexico.” With the win, the Lobos improved to 3-1 and are halfway to bowl eligibility.
But with all the good the game brought, it also highlighted some facility concerns — ones the athletics administration are aware of and actively trying to address.
Alarmingly crowded concourses made some fans who reached out to the Journal or posted on social media nervous about their safety or the ability of emergency personnel to maneuver to different areas of the stadium. There were also severe stadium ingress delays (the line into the stadium didn’t clear until the nine minute mark of the second quarter) that highlighted both infrastructure limitations at the six-decade old stadium.
“I was in the student section and we saw how crowded (the concourse) was so we didn’t even try to go (to concessions or the bathroom) during the game,” said Angel Valdez, a senior elementary education major at New Mexico State University who drove up for the game.
Valdez and friends started “pregaming” in the tailgate lots at 8 a.m.
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“It was a great environment to be in. It was nice being with all those people, but it was just too much in that one area (near the NMSU student section).”
The section she referenced was on the northeast side of University Stadium — an area that drew plenty of attention on social media with posted videos showing thousands of fans seemingly stuck in one place on the concourse.
Lovo noted there were no medical or law-enforcement reports out of the ordinary for Saturday’s game day, adding that the police presence was more than doubled in and out of the stadium.
He’s also well aware of the concerns of fans and the need for significant stadium upgrades and modernization.
“Our gates were built over 20 years ago and designed in such a way that the addition of metal detectors or extra ticket scanners is essentially impossible because of the lack of space,” Lovo told the Journal. “The concourses were designed more than 60 years ago under a completely different building code. And all of our concessions, restrooms and merchandise areas are concentrated in the north end zone.
“That combination means that when we host a crowd of 35,000-plus, everyone from the south end of the stadium has to migrate north for basic amenities. It creates bottlenecks and significant challenges with foot traffic — challenges driven by the way the stadium was originally designed and the limitations of its current infrastructure.”
UNM plans to unveil in the coming week details of a feasibility study related to the stadium and south campus development, part of a process to illustrate to state lawmakers the need for such improvements for the good of the state.
“Of course these issues are fixable,” Lovo said, “however some of them relate directly to outdated infrastructure and will require significant investment and an overhaul of antiquated gates, concourses, plumbing, electrical systems and more.”
State Sen. Antonio “Moe” Maestas, D-Albuquerque, who has long been a supporter of athletics-related requests, was at Saturday’s game and feels it may have been a good sign of things to come. He thinks just fixing University Stadium may not be enough.
“We need to follow the Colorado State and San Diego State models and invest in a brand-new, first-class stadium that has all the modern amenities,” Maestas said.
Both of those schools built new college football stadiums in the past decade and now are leaving the Mountain West conference — of which UNM is a member — to join the rebuilt Pac-12 conference. That league did not invite UNM to join due to concerns of a lack of investment in football.
Maestas was one of more than a dozen prominent lawmakers at Saturday’s game with the ability in some capacity to help secure capital to assist in stadium improvements — not only at UNM but also NMSU, where Aggie Memorial Stadium is nearly as old with similar issues.
Lovo isn’t waiting to start planning for the future.
“We had more than 10 architects on site this weekend observing these deficiencies during an event of this magnitude, and they even set up a table to solicit direct feedback from our fans to help inform the design,” Lovo said.
UNM football has four home games remaining — Oct. 18 vs. Nevada; Oct. 25 vs. Utah State; Nov. 15 vs. Colorado State; and Nov. 28 vs. San Diego State.
