Grammer: Students save the day, create hot new trophy for Rio Grande Rivalry

Jason Eck was good natured about it, but quite serious about what he was saying.

How could a state with only two FBS teams that have played each other more than 100 times not have a traveling trophy?

Things like that are what college football tradition is all about — those silly little symbolic trophies that don’t mean much to the rest of the country, but sure mean something to the people involved in the game.

“We need a trophy for this game, too. I think we’re missing an opportunity,” Eck, UNM’s first-year football coach, told reporters on Tuesday when talking about this weekend’s Rio Grande Rivalry game with New Mexico State. ... Truly a missed opportunity we don’t have a trophy for this game. It’s a shame. Traveling trophies are one of the best things. So, I’ll be very disappointed if we don’t have one for next year. Let’s get that fixed.”

Well, Jason, when the adults in the room can’t get it done, let the kids have a crack at it.

A group of students at both UNM and NMSU have come together to pay for and create “The Roaster” — a 30-pound, table-top chile roaster trophy with wooden stands on each side and Lobo and Aggie branding (literal wood-burning branding coming by week’s end) to serve as the new traveling trophy of a football rivalry between two programs without much tradition. Because in New Mexico, even when the football ain’t always great, the chile damn sure is.

“We gotta find out where it is and then I want to hopefully win this game and go pick it up and carry it all around the stadium,” Eck said when the Journal told him during the press conference the news of the new trophy, which was formally unveiled on social media at 5:05 p.m. Tuesday on the Instagram social media account of “The Howl Raisers”, the name of UNM’s student group.

He’ll need a few big ‘ole linemen to carry this thing.

The same group of student supporters at both schools who created a trophy for the basketball series last December — a wooden plaque Jason Hooten’s Aggies celebrated with in their locker room and posted pictures of after their upset of the Lobos in the Pit this past season — decided it had to carry over into football.

“We saw how much it meant to New Mexico State ... and the feedback that we got about it was super positive, so we decided to expand on it for football,” said Carlos Tenorio II, leader of the Howl Raisers and past president of ‘The Curse’, the supporters section of the New Mexico United soccer team.

It’s the first traveling trophy in the series since 2000 when the mostly forgotten (and not exactly well-known at the time) Maloof trophy of 1993-2000 existed.

“The game means so much to the people of New Mexico and it’s a huge game for both programs,” said Joseph Settle, a senior journalism major at NMSU who has been a part of the creation of both trophies. “They absolutely deserve to be playing for a trophy.”

No arguments from the Lobo players, either.

“Especially that it’s frickin’ chiles? That’s what this state is all about,” said Lobo quarterback Jack Layne.

Band together

In an email not normally a part of pregame coverage of many sports departments around the country ahead of a college football game, the Journal did reach out to the Pride of New Mexico marching band at NMSU to ask the question that surrounded one of the two out-of-game controversies around the last time this rivalry game was played in Albuquerque.

There was that whole No. 1 incident with the quarterback and the practice facility (I’ll leave it at that) and then there was the fact that UNM charged NMSU’s band to occupy seats in University Stadium because NMSU had used up all their normally-allotted courtesy tickets without it even occurring to them they’d have to pay for the band (which hasn’t been the norm in this rivalry, ever).

So, the email sent last Friday: “Will the Pride band be attending next weekend’s NMSU/UNM football game in Albuquerque? And if so, will the band be attending free of charge?”

The answer is yes and yes.

Maloof MIA?

So, about that last trophy...

Yes, there was the Maloof Trophy from 1993-2000 — a traveling trophy named for George Maloof Sr., the Albuquerque businessman whose family had deep business and sports ties in the state, and at both schools.

In 2000, the Lobos beat NMSU 16-13 in Las Cruces and NMSU presented UNM with the trophy after the game. It even had a corporate sponsor — First National Bank then First Security Bank gave each school $1,000 each year.

The following year — a 53-0 Lobos win in November due to the events of 9/11 delaying the game until the end of the season — UNM did no such postgame presentation.

Ahead of the 2002 game, NMSU called to remind UNM to bring the traveling trophy to Las Cruces only to learn Lobos coach Rocky Long decided to end the tradition.

“There is no trophy,” Long told the Journal in 2002. “That ended three games ago. They presented it down there a few years ago (2000). Last year, there was no presentation.”

NMSU said UNM explained a lack of sponsorship played into the decision. Wells Fargo by that time had bought First Security, and there was, in fact, no sponsor.

So, aside from that glorious eight-year run, this series has never really had a traveling trophy.

”That’s outrageous we didn’t have a traveling trophy probably for the last 50-plus years,” said UNM safety David Murphy, the Santa Fe native and Cleveland High graduate.

”It’s about time."