Wright: (A)literally and figuratively, Lobo football’s a tough sell

Louie Lane looms large and sounds swell. But will it, can it, pave the way for a Badger-like bonanza for UNM at the turnstiles?

Oct. 13, 1973, was a beautiful football Saturday in Madison, Wisconsin. The day would not be so beautiful, though, for the Wisconsin Badgers.

That afternoon, in a powerful yet merciful display, coach Woody Hayes’ unbeaten Ohio State Buckeyes throttled the Badgers 24-0 at Camp Randall Stadium.

Wisconsin football, 1-4 after that defeat, dropped that much deeper into the doldrums that had overtaken the once-proud program; the Badgers hadn’t had a winning season since 1963.

And yet, that day at Camp Randall, 74,413 people came to the game.

Certainly, some of those had come to see the Buckeyes and their brilliant sophomore halfback Archie Griffin. Precious few came expecting to witness a Wisconsin victory. But they came.

And, well, no, I wasn’t at Camp Randall that day — or any other day — and I had to look up the above history. I don’t remember that game at all.

What I do remember is then-Albuquerque Journal sports editor LeRoy Bearman speaking at a UNM journalism class, circa 1973, and being asked what it would take to make Lobo football a consistent winner — something it hadn’t been since the early ’60s — and get more people to come to the games.

To my surprise, Bearman didn’t talk about recruiting, coaching, or X’s and O’s. What UNM really needed to do for starters, said Bearman — an Alabama native — was to make Lobo football a see-and-be-seen social event that, at least to some extent, transcended the numbers on the scoreboard.

He cited Wisconsin, a team losing on the field yet still winning at the gate, as a prime example.

Win, and will they come?

Bearman certainly wasn’t discounting the importance of winning on the field then, nor is first-year UNM Athletic Director Fernando Lovo doing so now. College football is not minor-league baseball, never will be, nor does anyone want it to be. Winning beats losing, unless you’re the Albuquerque Isotopes — last in the Pacific Coast League’s East Division, first in PCL attendance, first in your hearts.

Lovo, though, is trying to do what Bearman was advocating for a half-century ago. He’s hardly the first UNM athletic director to attempt it, but he’s doing so on a scale that I don’t believe we’ve seen before.

Louie Lane may have played fullback for the Chicago Bears in the ’40s — I’m researching that — but it’s also a new concessions and entertainment area, inspired by the University of Texas’ Bevo Boulevard, to be located just outside University Stadium on the northeast corner on football game days.

There’ll be food trucks, a beer garden, a kids’ recreation area, free water refills, big-screen TVs for viewing other games. (No, you can’t just keep watching the other games after the Lobo game starts).

Lovo is bringing back the Lobo Walk, giving fans a chance to cheer the players and coaches up close and personally as they wend their way to the locker room.

There’s no report as to whether the Lobo Walk will be led by an actual lobo, as was the case for a time during the Bob Davie years (2012-19). The wolf-dog hybrid in question was well-behaved and not descended, apparently, from the canine who tried to take a chunk out of Terance Mathis when the star Lobo wide receiver tumbled out of bounds on a pass play in 1987.

Once in the stadium, Lovo said, food and drink will be far easier to get than in the past; he talked at Tuesday’s news conference about “100 new points of sale.”

Exactly what that means wasn’t made completely clear, but Lovo is hoping you’ll come to find out.

And, oh yes. There’s a football game.

The fickle fans of yesteryear

A healthy crowd is expected for Saturday afternoon’s home opener against Idaho State. Fans were encouraged by the Lobos’ showing in last week’s 34-17 not-a-blowout loss at Michigan, in first-year coach Jason Eck’s debut, and Idaho State is a Football Championship Subdivision team UNM should handle.

If UNM doesn’t …

There have always been those who believe UNM football’s attendance downturn began with a 17-6 opening-game loss to FCS school Portland State in 2006.

The average attendance the previous five years, during which coach Rocky Long’s Lobos had gone 34-27 overall and 20-10 at home, was about 33,000. (Attendance figures for those years were called into question by Athletic Director Paul Krebs, who succeeded Rudy Davalos in 2006.)

Long’s Lobos rallied in ’06 to win six games and play in the inaugural New Mexico Bowl. They went 9-4 and won the New Mexico Bowl in ’07. Yet, attendance numbers lagged.

When Long resigned/was fired after a 4-8 season in 2008, he cited “the damn fans,” not as the reason he was leaving, but as a target of his ire and disappointment.

Repeatedly, he’d entreated fans not to wait for the Lobos to win to come to the games. Invest, he’d said, and help us get there.

Starting with the 2006 season, UNM has never again averaged as many as 30,000 per game. Between 2018-22, UNM barely topped in a full season the total Wisconsin drew for that one game against Ohio State in 1973.

One can say, with reason, that it’s UNM’s performance on the field that has kept the fans away. But after the Lobos’ monumental upset of Boise State on the Broncos’ blue turf in 2015, Davie and Krebs passionately urged fans to come out in support of the team for its home game against Colorado State the following Saturday.

A crowd of only 21,643 showed up on a picture-perfect November afternoon to watch the Lobos lose to the Rams, 28-21.

During the 2015-16 seasons, during which UNM went 16-10, the Lobos went to two New Mexico Bowls and won one of them, the average home attendance was about 22,000.

I have no idea what incentive Wisconsin gave fans to come out and support a losing team in 1973. Was there a Badger Boulevard? Maybe just being a tiny part of Big Ten football was all it took.

And, certainly, I’m not here to pour free refills of cold water on Louie Lane. Anything and everything Lovo and his staff can do to help Eck and his team get fans’ fannies in the University Stadium stands, I’d be in favor of.

I’m just saying there’s a ton of inertia that Lovo and Eck must overcome — literally as well as alliterally.