UNM Athletics announces $1.5 million donation from a familiar friend

Larry Chavez snuck into the first game ever played at University Stadium 65 years ago.

“Tickets were probably 50 cents,” he recalls.

Today, Chavez continues to pay back the University of New Mexico.

The former owner of Dreamstyle Remodeling who had a well-publicized, though short-lived, naming rights deal for both University Stadium and the Pit, has pledged to donate $1.5 million to Lobo Athletics this year — bringing Chavez’s total financial contributions to the university to well over $4 million in the past decade.

“It’s important to me because, number one, the university has been good to me,” Chavez told the Journal. “I’ve been a fan since I was a little kid. My first job was selling sodas in the west stands at the stadium. I graduated from UNM with a business degree. I even taught a few courses there. Then my son graduated from there and I have a grandson who is a third-year architecture student at UNM.

“The university has always been important to me and my family and to this community, which is also so important to me.”

UNM formally announced Chavez’s donation on Thursday.

Chavez told the Journal that he’s met the three new high-profile hires made for Lobo athletics in the past 10 months — Athletic Director Fernando Lovo, football coach Jason Eck and men’s basketball coach Eric Olen — and is so impressed individually and collectively that he wanted to “throw my weight” behind them.

The Journal has learned the $1.5 million gift will benefit the Lobo Alliance, the school’s philanthropic initiative aimed at supporting revenue sharing. Specifically, it will be split into three equal parts for Eck (to use for recruitment and retention of Lobo football players), Olen (to use for recruitment and retention of Lobo men’s basketball players) and for Lovo (to use at his discretion for player recruitment and retention efforts).

“We are so incredibly fortunate for Larry’s support of the commitment to excellence we have at UNM Athletics,” Lovo said in the school’s announcement.

“I am so grateful and humbled by the opportunity to work with Larry, as he has been a wonderful partner in our mission to recruit and retain the tremendous talent we have, both on-field and in the classroom, at the University of New Mexico. Larry’s passion for the success of this department is contagious and he truly is a model of what it means to be a Lobo.”

Chavez’s donation is noteworthy beyond just the magnitude of it. He holds a unique place in the history of Lobo Athletics as one of only two naming rights holders of the Lobos’ football stadium and the iconic Pit.

His deal with UNM for those naming rights started as a bit of a save-the-day moment — a 10-year, $10 million pledge announced in 2017 that essentially saved the school from a failed WisePies Arena gift agreement that netted about $800,000 of what was supposed to be a $5 million naming rights contract.

But, by the time COVID wiped out college athletics in 2020, gone too was the Dreamstyle deal that was originally signed with Learfield Sports, who by that time was no longer the multimedia rights holder for UNM Athletics. Chavez at one point proposed a new deal that was direct with UNM — a deal UNM didn’t even consider until they had resolution on the first agreement.

Chavez ultimately paid the university about $2.5 million for that deal — $1.5 million before the end of the deal and another $1 million after it ended in a dispute about how much was owed and where the money was ultimately going.

But Chavez was steadfast, even in that deal’s dissolution, that his issues weren’t with UNM Athletics or with supporting UNM.

“We do want to support UNM,” Chavez told the Journal at the time. “That’s the intent. We were not happy with the way the money was used up front ... but we hope we can get a new deal in place and continue our relationship with UNM. We want to help UNM.”

The Journal has submitted a records request for Chavez’s new gift agreement.

While details of the one-year payment plan have not been released, the Journal has confirmed with one source familiar with the deal that there is no naming rights component and that “a significant” portion of the deal has already been paid.

That’s in addition to a six-figure donation Chavez made earlier this year to the 505 Sports Venture Fund, which prior to July 1 was spearheading player compensation at UNM before NCAA rules shifted that model to allow for the school to pay players through revenue sharing.

Chavez sold Dreamstyle Remodeling in 2022. While he remained on as CEO for a short time, he now has no direct affiliation with the company.

That’s not to say he isn’t still working. He’s got his hands in several undertakings, including hot tub and fire place sales, putting greens and turf and even owns a small restaurant in the Northeast Heights.

“I’m still full time-plus. I’m trying to keep my wife happy by cutting it back to semi-retired, but I’m still pretty active,” Chavez said.

As he did in 2017 with the naming rights deal, Chavez credited a close trust and relationship he has built through the years with Deputy Athletic Director and Lobo Club Executive Director Jalen Dominguez for getting the current deal done. He added he is hopeful his donation encourages others to support the program.

“The opportunity to work with Larry on making his vision a reality has reaffirmed what is truly special about being a member of the UNM community,” Dominguez said in UNM’s announcement. “Larry has been a long-time supporter of this institution’s success, and this latest commitment is an excellent opportunity to ‘prime the pump’ of our newly launched Lobo Alliance initiative. We are excited to see how Larry’s spirit of philanthropy inspires the Lobo community in this new era of intercollegiate athletics.”