Tony Sanchez is in his first season as head coach at his alma mater, and Saturday night his New Mexico State Aggies will venture to Kyle Field to take on No. 15 Texas A&M. Before the non-conference game, Sanchez joined TexAgs Live to talk about his NMSU squad.

Key notes from the interview with Tony Sanchez

• It’s a great opportunity. Fiscally speaking, you play these games to help your athletic department and such, but at the same time it’s a great opportunity to compete against some of the best. Texas A&M is having a great year. That program is currently running. They are fighting to reach the play-offs and extend this special season. We’re excited. It has been a tough season for us. Last year we went to Auburn and won, but we lost 38 guys in the transfer portal. We currently have 17 guys from that team starting on other teams.
• We’re a different team and we’re not playing an Auburn team that’s trying to find itself. We’re going in with a new group of guys to play against a soaped-up A&M team. Ultimately, you’re not going to tiptoe into this business. It’s still football. You have to go in there. You have to play it right, alignment, command and technique. Play with fanatical commitment. Execute at a high level and see what happens.
• The transfer portal is one of those deals that is difficult to talk about because you don’t want to whine. We’re not going to do that. It is what it is, and that is the landscape. I’ve been here and been part of that process for the last two years. We looked at the team we built and then looked at what happened when coach Jerry Kill was debating whether or not he wanted to stay. The first signing day came and went, and just before Christmas he decided to make the move. At that point our boys were all gone. There was no one here, so it wasn’t like we could meet our boys. Slowly but surely, boys started entering the portal. I understand, but you wish you had that early signing period to combat it a little bit. We lost some guys in the spring and brought some in, but then a whole new window opened up. We lost all three running backs. We lost Eli Stowers to Vanderbilt. It was like, “Here we go.” You had to regroup again. It’s been an interesting offseason. That said, I have a great group of kids. They break their tails and work hard. We’ve got some talented guys here, but it’s gone from something we built to an absolute rebuild overnight. We keep our heads down, and everything will be fine.
• Honestly, I don’t know how “cool” it is to see Diego Pavia and Stowers at Vanderbilt. They could play for us. Again, it’s one of those deals where, as an individual, it’s great to see guys have success. They’re good guys. I enjoyed my time with them. It’s a double-edged sword. You know what they are capable of, so you wonder too. Imagine that whole team – we have a guy who is a starting defensive lineman at Syracuse, a guy at Missouri, the two leading tacklers at Arizona State, the starting middle linebacker and safety. There are a lot of guys doing a lot of good things. You wonder if that team will stay together when you’re one of the best non-Power 4 teams in the country? You wonder. It is what it is, and that’s all hypothetical. Those guys are doing what we knew they could do. They’ve done it for the past few years. Our focus is really not on them and what they achieve. Our focus is on our guys and building this program.
• I played at New Mexico State in 1994 and 1995. My first year as a coach here was in 1996, and then I went on a trip. Looking back, it was 120,000 people, and I think people today like their kids to be in a college town. Las Cruces is not too big. It’s not too small. We have beautiful weather. We practiced on Wednesday in temperatures of 71 degrees. We have a beautiful stadium with 30,000 seats. We have a great crowd. Sometimes you see teams playing Saturday games in front of sparse crowds, but we always get between 15,000 and 25,000 people at the games.
• It is a good city with a good atmosphere and we have shown in recent years what you can do here. You can win here. We did it. We have proven that. Our athletic director put a lot of money into the program that they had never done before. We are building a brand new locker room facility. We just installed a new field and a new scoreboard. There are a lot of good things happening here right now, so again, it’s a great place to live. It is a safe place and a great place to get a degree. There is a lot of organic food to sell here.
• I had a good run at Bishop Gorman (NV) and got to go to UNLV and learned a lot there to make that place a little better. We have built a number of facilities. Suddenly you’re gone. I was sitting there, and then the pandemic happened. I just sat there for a whole year. I took a lot of walks, bought some cookbooks and learned to cook. I rejuvenated myself and that was really good. I had the opportunity to go to TCU to become an analyst, and that was just amazing. Gary Patterson is a phenomenal, intelligent man. Kill was an analyst there, and Tim Beck was there. We all shared an office, so our time with them was excellent.
• I was having a beer with Kill, and he told me he got a gig in upstate New Mexico. For me it came full circle, because you never thought you would come back here again. It was fun. When we got here, there were no expectations and not much involvement. We were secretly recruiting. It was us who fought with ourselves. We have been able to lay a good foundation here, bring in many good people and have a lot of fun with it. Kill created a really good family atmosphere, and we had a lot of fun doing it. Last year took everything by shocking a lot of people. It was fun to be a part. In those two years you create the possibilities and expectations where expectations are good. For me it’s great. This place has given me so much. I obtained a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree here. Both my children were born in the local hospital. It was great to come back. Coach Beck and I lived on my best friend’s couches for the first month here. It’s nice to know people.
• This year we had four guys play quarterback, and that was probably the hardest part because we lost Pavia. We also lost Blaze Berlowitz, who went to Vanderbilt. We lost Gavin Frakes, who went to Virginia. When I took over, we didn’t have a quarterback on the roster, so that was tough. We brought in a few guys, and one of them got hurt early on. We’ve been there very sporadically, and that’s the hardest part because you have to have a quarterback. Our boys compete and work hard. Santino Marucci was not with us in the spring, so he arrived here in mid-June. He gets his feet wet. Deuce Hogan, who is now absent, was also not with us this spring. That is a position we have fought with.
• Seth McGowan is a great young man. He clearly made some mistakes and we were able to give him a second chance. That didn’t happen without due diligence. We sat him down, talked to him and went deep into the woods about what was going on and why he will be different. It’s really good to see someone with so much talent, who cares so much, committed to change. I can tell you he’s one of the best practice guys I’ve ever seen. He works so hard. He understands the second chance he’s been given, and he won’t let it go to waste. He is a special player.
• Mike Washington is the other running back. He’s a transfer from Buffalo. He is a very good player and had a very good year with six touchdowns. At McGowan, they are the yin-yang. They work a little differently, and Washington is a bigger kid. He weighs 220 pounds at 6-foot-4 and catches the ball out of the backfield.
• A little Texas boy from DeSoto in TJ Pride is a young freshman receiver who has a great career ahead of him. Kordell David is another Texas kid with good behavior. You’re frustrated for him because we couldn’t throw the ball the way we wanted to. He’s a good player.
• Shiyazh Pete, our left tackle, missed the first six weeks of the season. He’s a big guy, just under 6 feet tall, with a high ceiling. He also has a great story because he’s a Native American kid. It’s good to see him.
• Canaan Yarro is a three-year starter coming back and he is our center.
• Defensively, Buddha Peleti is a very good player for us, who got injured early after the second game of the season and missed a handful of games. He’s back at full strength. He’s a really good football player.
• Linebacker Tyler Martinez has really stepped up and done a much better job this year.
• Our kicker, Freddy Joya, was phenomenal this year. He is 13 of 15, and his two misses are 59 and 58 yards. He’s been a really good guy here. He has been a weapon.
• The older you get, and the longer you’ve been around, you start to seek out coaches and follow them, kind of like how we used to follow players when we were younger. I saw Mike Elko a lot when he was at Duke and when he was defensive coordinator at A&M. When A&M made the hire, I thought it was a very good hire, but a little different. You immediately see the culture, the way they run around in defense and the way they hit the ball out. They play really physical football, so you can see that Elko instills that in them. He’s a good coach. He’s doing a great job. Your team reflects you in terms of attitude, and it shows. He has a good, calm and tough attitude and his boys play like that.