Howl about that? University Stadium sells out for first time in nearly 20 years

Saturday afternoon, the ninth largest city in New Mexico was in Southeast Albuquerque.

Rivalryville, N.M. Population: 37,440.

But this pop-up town of red-clad citizens — some in crimson, many more in cherry — didn’t look like a typical Land of Enchantment locale.

After all, this all seemed to be centered around ... college football?

“I think this is awesome — it’s awesome that this many people came together here in Albuquerque for something like this,” said Albuquerque resident Chris Shultz as he was enjoying a beer during a pregame tailgate with his family — a wife who went to the University of New Mexico and a daughter who is a New Mexico State University student and proudly wore her Aggies T-shirt.

The announced crowd at University Stadium to witness the UNM Lobos beat the NMSU Aggies 38-20 was the first sellout of the stadium in nearly two decades — 2007’s Rio Grande Rivalry was the last full house — and 14th sellout in the stadium’s more than six decades of existence.

“For our players to see a sell-out crowd, to see that energy in the stadium — our players, even when we were driving from the hotel and they just saw the gridlock of all the traffic, you could tell they were getting excited about it,” said first-year UNM football coach Jason Eck.

“... That’s as good of a recruiting tool as you can have, to see a sold-out crowd like that,” he said.

Fans filled nearby tailgating areas by 10 a.m. — four hours before kickoff. The UNM Lobo men’s basketball team — usually the team that’s taking over headlines come fall — was signing autographs at the Louie Lane pregame tailgate party

“This is great. I’ve never been at a football school before,” said Lobos basketball assistant coach Mike Wilder, who played at and coached at UC Irvine before getting hired at UNM this offseason.

Only time will tell if he’s actually at a football school and not just at a school with football.

But there was no doubt that New Mexico was a football state on Saturday.

It even brought out celebrities like local UFC champions Holly Holm and Jon Jones, YouTube sensation IShowSpeed and former NFL quarterback Jeff Garcia.

In the end, the Lobos hoisted “The Roaster” — a 30-pound chile roaster created just this past week by a group of UNM and NMSU students who wanted to give the rivalry an iconic traveling trophy.

“There were a lot empty seats, so it wasn’t totally sold out,” NMSU coach Tony Sanchez, a former Aggies football player himself, said after the loss. “They sold all the tickets, but there were a lot of empty seats.”

He’s not wrong, but the pockets of gray concrete in the east stands were hardly worth quibbling over.

The Lobos drew 17,639 fans to their home opener, Sept. 6, against Idaho State. The 19,801 increase in fans for their next home game was the largest one-game jump in program history.

The unprecedented jump was multifaceted.

First, the Lobos and Aggies each entered the game at 2-1, the first time both teams had winning records entering the Rio Grande Rivalry since 1992.

Second, there was two weeks of build up after the Lobos came off one of the biggest wins in program history, a 35-10 thumping of UCLA in the Rose Bowl on Sept. 12. UNM, after its first Big Ten win, had a bye week.

And, of course, there are the Aggies — thousands of NMSU graduates live in Bernalillo County — who came to the game.

Saturday was the ninth most attended game in University Stadium’s history — a stadium that has had multiple seating reconfigurations and dropped to under 40,000 capacity in 2008.

Yes, there were problems, too. Despite an all-out media blitz over the past week related to UNM opening up new parking lots, offering a free park-and-ride shuttle and all but begging fans to try to get into the stadium early, thousands — yes, thousands — of fans were still lined up outside the north gates as the second quarter started.

“I was so proud today of the team, of course, and my team for all the work they put in for this, and most of all, of the fans,” Lovo said. “None of this happens without them being the driving force. ... Did we have some problems? Yes, and we need to address them, but some of the major issues we had were about infrastructure.”

He said that’s not an excuse that he and his staff will just ignore as being something they can’t control, but did note there are some physical, logistical limitations that other stadiums around the country have addressed years ago.

The bottleneck to enter the stadium is a problem school officials at both UNM and NMSU have been pleading with state lawmakers for years to help alleviate through the allocation of capital outlay funding for renovations at both University Stadium and Aggie Memorial Stadium in Las Cruces.

Lovo and NMSU’s Acting Athletic Director Amber Burdge, along with both football head coaches and school presidents, held a joint mixer Friday night for state, county and city lawmakers from all over New Mexico.

Garnett S. Stokes, the UNM president who earlier this month announced she will be retiring at the end of the academic year after being at the helm since 2018, noted Saturday was a long time coming.

“Yes, I believed — optimistically — that we could get to this. I really did,” Stokes said. “But it wasn’t until last year when I started to have real hope about where this program was going. And then when Bronco (Mendenhall) left, it was like, OK. But then we hired Jason Eck, and I think he’s one of the most community-minded coaches I have ever seen in my career in higher ed.”

Eck hopes Saturday wasn’t the end of the show.

“I really wanted to show them (fans), and I think they got a good show,” Eck said. “They got a heck of a game and saw a great effort in the second half. So hopefully they say, ‘Hey, I’ll come back in a few weeks’ when we play Nevada and then Utah State.”