The always wait until next year NMSU football program

Afternoon football at NMSU without many fans early or at all

© 2015 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.   As I have done for most of fifty years I have New Mexico State University Football Season Tickets. Over the years there has been a complete lack of Aggie success. NMSU has not gone to a post-season Bowl since Eisenhower was president.

            This has not been due to individual players or coaches, nor has luck played a part. But there have been questionable leadership decisions that are keeping the Aggie football program from being competitive.

            Today’s collegiate teams require a large fan base. NMSU has had no success filling the stadium. Each new coach strides into Las Cruces a conquering lion and slinks out of town a slaughtered lamb. It is the administration that chases the fans and dooms the coaches.

            The faithful season ticket holders are a small loyal group. Otherwise the stadium seats are empty except if local high school teams are playing and then the stadium fills up.

            The question each year: will this Aggie football team finally be successful? Then in October the faithful are forced to say, “Just wait until next year.”

            That said, I have enjoyed moments in many of the seasons, and have gone decades repeating “wait until next year.” I have liked many Aggie players, coaches and some college administrators.

            The exception was the late 1980s, when I looked like a dog chewing hot pitch as I left the stadium. During that stretch the Aggies had four wins and 40 losses.

            I believe that the reason for the lack of success is that for four decades NMSU has been selling losses. Playing powerhouse teams for money when NMSU has no real chance of winning began as a temporary tactic to cover a budget shortfall but continues even now. Some teams try it a few years and give up. Not the Aggies.

            On September 5th the Aggies take on the Florida Gators for money, rather than competition. Then October 10th they take on Ole Miss again for money not competition. NMSU doesn't have any chance to win.

            NMSU's money-game record is horrible. And it isn't just the seventy or now eighty or a hundred sold losses that hurt. The Aggies play powerhouse teams that are much bigger. Aggie players are often hurt thereby causing the team to lose games later in the season that could have been won.

            The rest of the 2015 NMSU Football schedule looks playable. Some of the games can be won if the team doesn't get devastated playing the much bigger teams for money.

            I'll be there cheering but I am angry that the team gets beat up and has two losses outside of their own making. Football programs are judged by their win/loss records with no asterisk for money games. There is never a time when the NMSU football program should sell a loss.

            Selling football losses to support high salaries castrates the program. All NMSU has gotten over the decades is the need to sell even more losses. I have complained in my columns about this for thirty years. I am told every time that I just don't understand. Yep, I don't, even though I have a Ph.D. in Educational Administration.

            NMSU’s primary goal should be to fill the stadium for every home game. How do you do that? By playing teams NMSU can beat. And becoming Bowl Eligible. This isn't Rocket Science.

            Every year I am painfully aware of the near-empty stadium toward the end of each season and sometimes from the get-go. Each successive athletics department has reasons why filling the stadium cannot be done. Year after year, decade after decade comes a long litany of people who do not fill the stadium for every game.

            Collegiate Football is part of the institutional identity. Those who say NMSU can do without football are not viewing students, town residents and alumni as consumers. The university must have a viable football program. The Aggies must concentrate on playing teams they can beat and break the Bowl Game curse.

            NMSU needs to develop an effective process of moving from mediocre to good to great. Teams like Boise State have done that. Start smart and small. Build the program not by selling losses. Every great team fills their stadium.

 Email: drswickard@comcast.net 

The always wait until next year NMSU football program

The movement to ban all air conditioning

Passenger side air conditioning in 1953 for my aunt and uncle

© 2015 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.  For most of our country's history what we wanted was fine if we worked for it and did not cheat anyone. But now we are talking about changing the debate to: you should only have what you absolutely need, not that other stuff you want.

            Take money. the Socialists among us talk constantly about the fact that people don't need as much money as they have. This is especially so for those who have money left over at the end of the month. Shouting about income inequality there is a move to take from the rich and give to the poor until everyone, regardless of how hard they work, has the same as everyone else.

            But there is something worse. Money is one thing, air conditioning is another. A headline caught my attention: New York University Professor Wants Government To Stop Us From Using Air-Conditioning. Gosh! And the professor thinks he has a good reason to get the government to take all of our A/C units away from us.

            Sociology professor Eric Klinenberg wrote an op-ed in Time magazine entitled, Air-Conditioning Will Be The End Of Us. He is concerned American's power use for air-conditioning will increase the effect of Global Warming and of course Global Warming is just about to extinguish the human race.

            He is not alone. Several people I have spoken with agree A/C is not needed by most people, it is only wanted. Count me as wanting A/C in the New Mexico summers. Do I need it? No, but this is America where I should be able to live as I desire, not as the Socialists desire me to live.

            I have lived in the heat quite a bit of my life, some of the time with just shade and cool water as my only relief from hot days. During the summers of my youth I lived on my grandfather's ranch and there was no A/C. He said, "If you work in the sunlight, the shade will be cool enough."

            Back then all of our vehicles had the open window air-conditioning: roll two windows down and drive. When I came to college in 1968 I did not have a car so I walked to campus, about a mile each way. I did so in the heat, cold and gloom of night. There wasn't rain and snow because this was New Mexico.

            Even when I got my first car all it had was windows to lower the temperature. The truth is that most of us did not have what is now considered a necessity, air-conditioning. I have lived in houses without A/C and we just sweltered in the heat but survived.

            So the Socialists among us are right, A/C use in this nation is because we Americans want it. Socialists think they can end this danger to the planet. The problem will be when the government decides that not enough of us are voluntarily casting off this want and they mandate the end of citizen owned air-conditioning. How will Americans take losing something they really want?

            I owned a weekly newspaper when President Jimmy Carter was trying to push Americans to be hotter in the Summer, colder in the Winter. My shop was visited by an inspector who marveled that it was 60 degrees in the building so we were good Carter people.

            Actually I didn't own the building and it had no insulation so 60 was as warm as I could get it. Then the inspector looked for our piece of paper that was supposed to be on the wall saying we supported people being cold in the Winter.

            I deadpanned, "We burnt it." He was aghast and started filling out a replacement certificate. When he handed it to me, I said to my print shop foreman, "Dame fuego" - give me fire - so Pete threw me his lighter. I lit the certificate as the government worker sputtered inarticulately. He never came back.

            When the government takes all of our A/C units away from us, I wonder if we sheep will continue to vote as we have in the past. Or will there be a tidal wave of sweat sending different leaders into office? Yep.

 Email: drswickard@comcast.net 

The movement to ban all air conditioning

Swickard: Getting swats at school

Back row middle left - Kindergarten graduation, what a relief!

© 2015 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.  This last week has been the start of another public school year. I remember well my very first day in public school. Quickly I was put in the corner for misbehavior. I thought I was sent to school because they needed help running the joint. Not so.

            They were alarmed that I said, "Hey!" often to get their attention. "Wait your turn, Michael," I was told. Within minutes I found that liquid doesn't flow up a rope. The people at school didn't want help. Shuckins. The Ayatollah Kindergarten decided drastic measures were needed. She called my parents.

            They were relaxing at home and were chagrined that they needed to come discipline me. I was glad to see them. I explained that the place needed help running and that was what I was doing. I noticed my parents were trying not to smile. They tried "The Kindergarten knows better than you" but I wasn't having it.

            Weekends were better since I didn't have to deal with short-tempered school teachers. The worse part of it was I was in an experiment where kids had to go to Kindergarten two years. It was a two tough years of me putting up with those Michael-aversive people.

            They thought the purpose of kindergarten was to give them a job and to reign in boisterous boys. Every morning of those two years my teachers took their bossy pills and thought I should do what they commanded. I thought them wrong and we fought to a draw.

            Then there were those public school years afterwards. Along the way school leaders decided my brains were in the seat of my pants and to get my attention they should give me swats. I do have to say I never got an educational swat after high school.

            It seems to me that the public schools spent untold hours swatting me and it had no real effect upon me ever. I always vowed to make no sign that they had hit me. So I refused to be intimidated by the swat paddle which upset the sadistic teachers.

            Mostly what they were able to do was cause me to view school as a gang of thugs beating up small children. While the swats have stopped in today's public schools, the thuggish behavior continues with teachers being intentional mean to small children. It is considered rigor but we know what evil lurks in some hearts.

            I did get swatted the last week of public school a few days before graduation. Two friends and I were making noise in the hallway as we left the school. A teacher came out of her room to quiet us. We blew raspberries and the assistant principal grabbed us. He said, "Three swats or you do not walk at graduation."

            I got four swats instead of three because I said rudely to the poor man, "Knock yourself out Clyde, I don't care what you do because in a couple days I'm outta here." Then I laughed at him again but he had administered ten swats and was sweating profusely. He was all stroked out and had to sit down. We laughed.

            We made lots of racket leaving the school and everyone ignored me. Fast forward eight years and I was teaching at Albuquerque High School when some graduating seniors were making lots of noise in the hallway. I stepped out and said, "Hey, glad you are still around. I enjoyed all of you this year. Wherever you go I will always be your friend."

            One of the noisy kids started to smart off to me but several others hushed him and the group walked over and shook my hand and just said, "Thanks." And I have seen some of those kids over the years. We always smile when we see each other. I never believed in being a jerk to the students. Even if it got me fired I would never swat a student. Not ever.

            Too many adults in the public schools carry big sticks and speak with loud voices. They judge and push the students while students count the hours until they leave school forever. We adults could do better if we were better human beings.

Email: drswickard@comcast.net 

Swickard: Getting swats at school

Swickard: NMSU students becoming more quiet

Michael Swickard on NMSU Student Radio 

© 2015 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. 

"The college that does not feel the need of a medium for the publication of its various doings and saying must be a very quiet sort of place with students who never play pranks and teachers who cannot appreciate a "break" when it is made." In the first New Mexico State University yearbook, 1908

             There has been an announcement that NMSU's student newspaper, the Round-Up, will terminate weekly editions and settle into deep obscurity as some kind of monthly magazine. Perhaps that will still let students get paid but it serves little other purpose in keeping student media on campus.

            A student newspaper is a vibrant alive burr under the saddle of the administration and focus of many conflicting views. It breathes and snorts and fires the imagination. Or, it did in the past.

            Some of us who are former staffers of the media at NMSU are saddened by this action. I was on my high school newspaper and yearbook in Alamogordo as a photographer and when I came to NMSU in the fall of 1968 I continued student photo journalism.

            My father, a photography instructor for the Air Force taught me well all phases of photography. My first year at NMSU I worked with the Round-Up, became the Head Photographer of the yearbook, worked on the student radio station and got in on the ground floor of the television efforts.

            I was even elected to the NMSU Student Senate from the College of Arts and Sciences to protect the budgets of the three media: the newspaper, yearbook and student radio station. Myself and Brad Cates were the two real conservatives in the Senate. Brad was later elected Student Body President.

            In October of 1969 Harvey Jacobs, Journalism and Mass Communications Department Head called me to his office. He almost single-handedly built the NMSU media program and wanted me to do him a favor.

            Justin Weddell, Class of 1908 was the driving force in starting both the student newspaper and the yearbook. He was getting a special honor for Homecoming and would be arriving from Chicago. Someone needed to show him how the campus had changed. As someone who worked with the student newspaper and yearbook, I was given the opportunity to spend the day with Weddell.

            As luck would have it, I respected Harvey Jacobs and it was the very first thing he had ever asked me to do so I was in for the day. Weddell was eighty-two and still in fairly good health. We walked around with him saying, "Our student dorm, The Klondike was over there until one night when it burnt down."

            His Senior Thesis was The Art of the Southwestern Indian which he mentioned. I asked if he had gone to see the pictographs at Three Rivers. He had several times. I smiled and mentioned that my grandmother had taught school in that one-room school in 1908. He did not remember her directly but remembered the school.

            We had a pleasant day and then it was time for him to join other graduates for the Homecoming festivities. He held my hand a few moments and said, "Don't let them kill what the class of 1908 started." I promised to fight for the media. Already, even in 1969, student newspapers and yearbooks were thought to be out of date.

            The Round-Up essentially quitting the news business would not have surprised Justin Weddell since students no longer read newspapers. They skim electronically and stories over fifty words are in danger of being ignored.

            I do not mourn for the Round-Up, I mourn for the learning opportunity that the editors and news producers had in putting out the paper. It came out twice a week in my era and once a week currently. That required writers to be on deadline and editors to manage their time effectively.

            Publishing once a month is like not at all. The NMSU students have gotten quiet as they are surrounded by their electronic world. I am not as old as Justin Weddell was when I spent a day with him. Still, it was forty-six years ago and I'm no Spring Chicken. We are and were Round-Up dinosaurs remembering a better time.

 Email: drswickard@comcast.net 

Swickard: NMSU students becoming more quiet