--Record cold temperatures for the usually warm New Mexico State University campus in Las Cruces, N.M., forced the cancellation of the football team's Football Signing Day Celebration on Feb. 2.
Maybe it was just as well. According to recruiting services Scout.com and Rivals.com, the Aggies' class ranked dead last in the eight-team Western Athletic Conference.
--NMSU has a road-heavy non-conference schedule awaiting it in the fall. With a road game at Hawaii in WAC play, the Aggies are allowed a 13th game in 2011, giving the program six non-conference games now that the gutted WAC is down to just seven opponents to play.
NMSU's 2011 non-conference schedule looks like this: vs. Ohio (Sept. 3), at Minnesota (Sept. 10), vs. UTEP (Sept. 17), at New Mexico (Oct. 1), at Georgia (Nov. 5) and at BYU (Nov. 19).
There are unique NMSU storylines in several of the games.
The Ohio game features three former NMSU assistant coaches from the head coach Tony Samuel era (before the 2005 season) -- Ross Els, Gerry Gdowski and Kevin Lightner. The Minnesota game gives NMSU offensive coordinator Mike Dunbar a chance to go up against the school he last coached at as an assistant head coach/offensive coordinator. The UNM and UTEP games are rivalries that sell out the stadiums they're played in most years, and the BYU game gives head coach DeWayne Walker a chance to coach against the school he was an assistant for in 1994.
SPRING SNAPSHOT
Practice priorities: Will it be Matt Christian? Will it be Andrew Manley? The NMSU quarterback position battle will be key in spring, but so too will be seeing whether anyone steps up to help what became a laughingstock defense last year. Head coach DeWayne Walker is a defensive guru who won't stand for that again, so expect numerous position battles this spring. Few of the returning players simply did enough last year to keep their coach's confidence heading into spring.
QUOTE TO NOTE
"In our conference we have to score points, so we had to take more playmakers on the offensive side of the ball." -- NMSU head coach DeWayne Walker on National Signing Day Feb. 2.
