Wright: If Eck keeps winning, game on

He’ll be here all week, folks.

And the week after that and the week after that.

But, beyond? Historically, when University of New Mexico football coaches succeed at a high level, they leave — though rarely after just one season.

But didn’t that just happen, like 11 months ago? Yeah, it did.

When first-year coach Jason Eck isn’t entertaining the troops with riffs on cavemen hunting elk — truly funny stuff, in response to a question about complacency — he’s winning football games at a near-record pace at UNM.

A Lobos head coach hasn’t had as many as six wins in their first nine games since Marv Levy went 7-2 entering the final game of the 1958 season. (The Lobos lost the season finale to Cotton Bowl-bound Air Force, 45-7.)

Predictably, Eck’s name is going to come up with regard to other head-coaching job opportunities, of which there are plenty.

With every game he wins, interest will grow. His first-year buyout is a healthy one, $4 million, but that’s not game over if a Power Four program really wants him.

To his credit, when asked about job prospects elsewhere, Eck hasn’t shut down.

He could have said, as others have, “I’m the head coach at the University of New Mexico. Next question.” He could have resorted to the Belichickian, “We’re just getting ready for UNLV/Colorado State.” He could have even gone with the ever-unpopular, “You don’t mess with happy.”

What he has said, more than once, is that he and his family love it here; that he’s eager to see what he can build at UNM; and that it would take a hugely attractive offer to pry him away after just one year.

Certainly, the prospect of losing Eck is a concern for UNM administration, as well as for the growing Eck-for-mayor movement (just kidding, I think) among the fan base. Nine Power Four conference head coaching jobs are vacant as of this writing.

If you’re looking for a comfort factor, there’s this: the Group of Five coaching ranks are teeming with attractive candidates for advancement. Former Power Four coaches (James Franklin springs to mind) are out there as well, not to mention a handful of genius offensive coordinators.

The carousel might not stop for Eck, after all. If it does, based what he sees there and what he knows and feels here, he might not jump on.

As noted, however, the history is the history.

Levy, hired away by California after two winning seasons. Joe Morrison, gone to South Carolina after his one winning season. Dennis Franchione, 6-5 in ‘96, 9-4 in ‘97, TCU in ‘98.

Lobo coaches who don’t leave after winning seasons sometimes live to regret it.

Rudy Feldman had an offer from Baylor after going 13-6-2 at UNM in 1971-72. He turned Baylor down, and UNM fired him two years later after 3-8 and 4-7 seasons.

In 1934, going way back, first-year Lobos coach Gwinn Henry guided UNM to an 8-1 record. Henry, scion of one of Albuquerque’s most accomplished and revered sports families, coached two more seasons (6-4 and 2-7) before taking the athletic director’s job at Kansas.

Dudley DeGroot went 7-2 with UNM in 1952 (not his first year) but got crossways with school administration and was fired.

With the exception of Rocky Long, a former Lobo quarterback who returned to his alma mater as head coach in 1998 and stayed for 11 years, UNM football has not been seen as a destination — only a rung on the ladder.

When Bronco Mendenhall left New Mexico last December after just one season, he became the first UNM football coach in modern times to do so. You have to go back to 1919 (John McGough, who went 3-0-2 in his only season coaching the University Boys) for another one-and-done.

McGough was replaced in 1920 by Roy Johnson, who coached UNM football for the next decade and was athletic director — the face of the program — for years afterward.

In 1904, Walter McEwan coached the Lobos to a 1-0 record, with an 11-0 victory over Menaul High School. He was gone the next year, replaced by Martin Angel; newspaper archives do not explain why.

McGough and McEwan share the distinction, one likely never to be equaled, as the only UNM football coaches never to have lost a game.

In comically holding forth at Tuesday’s UNM fall sports luncheon about cavemen and elk, Eck made a serious point: You don’t get to 6-3, and beyond, by being complacent.

Nor is complacency a word in UNM Athletic Director Fernando Lovo’s vocabulary. He struck gold with Eck, and his hire of Eric Olen as men’s basketball coach is looking good.

Should the best lead to the worst — Eck leaving after one season — it’s hunting season all over again.