Last Saturday afternoon, the nation fixated on the Iron Bowl. Fittingly, the most under-the-radar game was Idaho’s visit to Las Cruces to play New Mexico State.
These two schools were kicked to the curb by the Sun Belt and unceremoniously told to get out after 2017. Two events made their dismissal attractive to the Sun Belt. Coastal Carolina was added as a 12th member. Before last year, 12 was the magic number to be able to sponsor a conference championship game. However, the Big 12 lobbied to get the minimum number down to 10. The upshot was that the Sun Belt could jettison these geographically undesirable schools and still have a conference championship game. Voila! Orphans.
Fittingly, the Orphan Bowl featured two back up quarterbacks and ,predictably, a low scoring, 17-10 outcome resulted. A shame, since both New Mexico State’s Tyler Rogers and Idaho’s Matt Linehan were among their school’s best signal callers ever.
We predict disparate futures for the Orphans. The Odyssey has long advocated for Idaho to return to the Big Sky for football. The Big Sky is an excellent football conference and Idaho will actually play some natural, regional rivals. How refreshing!
Regrettably, we see a bleak future for New Mexico State. As Massachusetts and Brigham Young have found out, being independent results in November scheduling hell if your name is not Notre Dame. Unless New Mexico State somehow convinces either the Mountain West or Conference USA to take them in, we would not be surprised to see New Mexico State say goodbye to the highest division of college football in 4-5 years. One can only schedule so many games against UMass and BYU. If New Mexico State continues to play football in the 2020’s, they may also retreat to the Big Sky.
Oh, well, at least Las Cruces will still have one of the best climates in the USA. That’s something. As a consolation prize, we hope the Aggies win this week and become bowl eligible.