The key to building and maintaining a successful program is recruiting good players and the UNM football team hopes this year's newcomers will help fill in some more pieces of the puzzle.
The Lobos are coming off their first winning season in four years after compiling a 6-5 record in the fall. They continue to build next year's team with the signing of 17 players to national letters of intent on Wednesday, college football's national signing day. UNM signed nine student-athletes from the junior college level and eight from high school, including two from New Mexico.
Fourth-year head coach Rocky Long said he and his staff receiveds a much stronger response from junior college players this year than ever before and it should help the depth on the team.
"We went out after junior college guys to hit specific areas of concern for depth factor," he said. "Obviously, we think they can compete for a starting job, but we thought we were a little inexperienced behind the starting 11 on defense."
The shortage on defense is no longer a factor considering eight of the nine junior college players are on the defensive side of the ball and 11 overall.
Long said the main reason he recruited so many junior college players was to fill the experience factor on his team.
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"Instead of letting a good football player go someplace else we took a few more junior college players than we originally planned to," he said. "If you have a good football player that's willing to come you don't tell him to leave because you want to go get a high school kid if he is a good football player. So obviously our freshman class is a little smaller than maybe we would have liked at the start of (the season)."
But the Lobos have the luxury of fewer high school signings considering they had such a big crop last year, signing 16 high school students. He added that last year's freshman class is the best he has recruited at UNM.
All 16 freshmen red-shirted, which Long usually does for incoming freshmen, and he says this year will be no different. He said all eight will probably red-shirt the upcoming season to get adapted to the speed of college football.
Although Long filled some needs, he said he does not rate how good a recruiting class is until he sees it practice and play in games. But he said that UNM is recruiting better players because they are noticing that the Lobo program is getting better.
"The first two classes we recruited here were very average when you take them from top to bottom," Long said. "There were some great players in those classes, but very average overall. The last two years have been much better than the first two years."
He added that UNM is recruiting against some of the top schools in the nation from such high profile conferences such as the Pacific 10, Southeastern Conference and the Big 12.
Long said he is glad that this year's recruiting process is over and added a little humor.
"The recruits, we tell them how good they are while we are recruiting them and then they get here, and I give them their first meeting and they wonder where that guy went that was recruiting them," he said. "Now that they are on our team, I don't have to be nice to them anymore; they've got to be nice to me."
Some of the new recruits will get a chance to prove themselves to Long and his staff today for the first day of spring practice. Seven of the nine junior college recruits are enrolled at UNM and will participate in the practices.
Similar to last year, the Lobos are one of the earliest teams in the nation to start spring practice.
UNM straps on the pads four days a week until March 4, but the highlight is the annual Cherry-Silver game March 2.
Long said the early start is an advantage because it doesn't break up the off-season conditioning program and he will get to evaluate more players for certain positions.
He added that the players and staff concentrate more on individual skills.
"We try to develop players; in the spring you go a lot against each other," he said. "It's not so much game-planning as it is during the fall. In the spring you play a lot more full speed football against one another so it is your offense against your defense. The biggest goal in spring ball is to develop players and find out who are your guys that are going to play for you next year."
Notes: Twelve members of the UNM football team were selected to the Academic All-Mountain West Conference team.
To be eligible for selection, student-athletes must have completed at least one academic term at the member institution while maintaining a cumulative grade point average of 3.0 or better and be a starter or significant contributor.
The UNM football team has added Everett Todd to the staff as an assistant coach, and he will coach the cornerbacks. Todd, 41, replaces Curtis Modkins, who accepted an assistant coaching position at Georgia Institute of Technology, better known as Georgia Tech. Todd spent the past four seasons as head coach and defensive coordinator at Blinn College in Brenham, Texas, where he compiled a 22-17 record.
