I spent 5 hours writing the Tony Sanchez - Bishop Gorman thing. I was really proud of it, and because of that hard work, a few of you became paying subscribers. Thank you so much for that. I promise you, you give me the support, and I will give you something to look forward too often.
People ask me if I will cover baseball and softball… We’ll see. It’s not that I don’t like those sports, it is just a big time commitment, and right now, I don’t even have a vehicle. :( My vehicle broke down in June, and with my grandpa dying, budget concerns with how I have been making money this fall, and other factors, I am focused on saving up for a car, and frankly, that’s one of the reasons I started AGGregator. Nothing makes me feel more like a word that rhymes with “chooser” than having to bum rides and borrow my wife’s ride. I will work hard just for that.
But we will see. If I can turn this into full time with sponsorship and more subscribers, just watch me cover everything Aggies! :) I said I’d be the best, and I will prove it.
I will have more Coach Sanchez stuff in the coming weeks. We have a long haul to August, and of course hoops stuff still reigns supreme now. Transfer Portal will be a bigger thing as it closes up next week. But today, I decided to do a mailbag. I have surprisingly gotten a lot of emails and comments. I thank Phil and Pat for being two very passionate writers to me. It means a lot. But others have questions that wanted my opinion, so let’s do a few of them.
If you ever have a question: Comment on any post on substack or email me at thenotoriousbanker@gmail.com. You can ask to use your name or X/Twitter Handle or be anonymous. Whatever you want.
Question 1 is about Diego:
Do you think Diego will come back? Where do you think he could go? Would his legacy be diminished if he went elsewhere?
So, because this happened over Christmas, and I took two days off, this was something I heard about over and over. While some of you took my column to mock two of his first offers (Buffalo and Nevada), I will tell you that his demand is strong, although in my opinion a lot of teams aren’t at the level of a 10-5 NMSU team last year.
UTSA, North Texas, Western Michigan, Western Kentucky, Washington State are some of the other offers he says he got. I have no reason to doubt him, he is a great player. But take it all at face value, my friends. It was Xmas time when he posted those. Yes, coaches work Christmas, but a big part of seeing where to land is actually going to visit these places, and if he hasn’t visited those places before officially, how would he know if he likes it? There’s no way. So again, those offers are there, but in order for him to make a decision, I think any normal person needs to visit.
That being said, the coaches here kind of need to know in order to move on. While I am pro-portal and pro-NIL in so many ways, at the same time, a team cannot be held hostage by indecision. Sanchez is likely recruiting another QB in case Diego leaves. Hell, maybe two of them. Who knows? But being a coach is hard because you are expected to build cohesion and you have one guy on the fence that plays the most important position, and that’s got to be hard.
What are the chances of Diego coming back? I say 30%. I think you can split the 35% between coaches and Diego. I think Diego knows that there will be a fundamental change in how certain things are run (we all know that when we get a new manager at our jobs, stuff changes. It’s just natural) and that he may not like it as much as before, which is a perfectly normal thing to feel and God bless him if he feels that way.
Plus from the coaches side, I think of this lady I worked with named Debbie. She was a nice older lady at the bank. Usually tellers are in their 20s like I was. She was in her 50s. We got along, we talked bowling and other things. She drove a souped up sportscar which was weird but cool. But the whole year we worked together, she kept on telling me who just got there, and other workers “Oh, when so and so used to manage me at the bank in Odessa, she did this better than (our current boss).”
She also once said, “You know 5 years ago, we were allowed to wear certain blouses that I like to wear but now we can’t. Remember how there were less rules.”
My manager fired her one day. I went to work and before I put down my drink and breakfast burrito, I saw her cash drawer empty, and I never worked with her again. She was my customer until the end, although she would STILL talk about how things were better back in the day.
She had a good heart, but she didn’t realize she was a distraction with relying on the past to tell the future. I think a lot of coaches would just want to move on and on and fast away from that mindset. 10 wins is going to be hard next year with 1 or 2 less games possibly, so keep that in mind and don’t go, “Remember when Kill was here…. Diego did this and that and it was all great. What happened?”
Like that analogy? LOL :)
Anyhoo, I don’t know where he would go, but if he does go elsewhere, he needs to go to a team that suits his skills and doesn’t have to adjust to the unique things he brings. Run-first offense where the QB can run as often as a RB, with the ability to have the deep threat. That’s not a lot of offenses these days that ran what we ran, so it’s hard to say. But wherever he goes, don’t freakin’ think I won’t root for him. In New Mexico, we root for our men and women to succeed!
Would his legacy be diminished? No. New Mexicans love New Mexican legends and his 2023 run will go down as one the most fun times to ever have been a NM State fan. His success brought the team to new heights, and frankly made us forget about some difficult stuff this past year. HIS LEGACY WILL REMAIN AND WHEN HE’S OLD AND GREY AND STILL WALKING WITH SWAGGER, HE SHOULD BE IN THE HOF HERE. But that’s just my loud opinion.
Question 2 is about Aggie Hoop Legends
Why do you think Trevelin Queen and Jabari Rice are still in the G-League? The Spurs suck and Rice has not been called up and Queen is lighting up the G-League all season and was an MVP a couple years back. Will they ever make it?
This is an uncomfortable question, because I am not an NBA scout, but I know the NBA basketball I watch, and as much as I love both of them, and want to be proven wrong, I think Trevelin Queen will have a hard time making an NBA roster full-time and Jabari Rice might not make it to the Spurs because of what the future brings for that team because of their lack of success.
The one thing both guys don’t have going for them, and I hate to even say it is Age. They are actually getting to be a little too old. Queen is going to be 27 and Rice just turned 25 today as I write this. I would KILL to be 25 again. It was the best year. I had so much fun, and I met the woman I am currently married to. I make it sound like I am making a coaching change soon. Ha. Nope, I love her and she’s as big an Aggies fan as me.
But as Pascal Siakam, who turns 30 in April will find out in his next contract, people start talking about your age being ancient in your late 20s, and use that against you. Yes, you play well, but I can have a 19 year old play as well as you at a rookie minimum salary and not have to worry about paying him a bundle right away.
Baseball they do that too. Do you want a 16-year old Dominican Shortstop who hit 20 homeruns at his academy or his 18-year old older brother who hit 30 homeruns? Simple. The 16yo, because you can hope he hits a higher level than his brother when HE hits 18, and you invested in a game-changing player, not a really good player right now who may be at his peak already.
Jabari has skills that can help any team, but I think NBA feels, at 25, I have some players on their second (max) contract by the time they are 22. It feels that time is just not his friend, and I hope to god I am wrong.
Queen at 27 has the same volume scoring, dynamic play, and fun to watch game as Zach Lofton before him and Teddy Allen after him. The common denominator for all three is leaving college at an “Advanced” age for the league. It’s funny even writing it, but it is true. Allen has grinded it out in the TBL Minor league, Canada, where he became a superstar to them, and now England. He and Lofton have the right idea in going where you can get your buckets, get your endorphins and make a little bit of money doing what you love.
Queen has gotten his cup of coffee in the NBA but is now in Osceola, FL with the Magic’s G-League Affiliate there. I am surprised he hasn’t gone overseas to play. I think there’d be a market for him in a place like China, where they love their dynamic scorers like him. I am assuming family has a lot to do with it, and in the case of former Lobos coach Steve Alford, who was a star player at Indiana but a fringe NBA player after that, he never wanted to go overseas. He just became a coach. His son, Bryce, who I know Aggies fans love to hate is currently lighting it up in Poland, loving his hoop dreams at 31.
There’s only 450 NBA jobs out there. Exclusive club which is hard to get into. Jabari’s rookie season is still going on, maybe they decide to tank the rest of the way, and he gets some PT with Wembanyama in San Antonio. Who knows? It’s a long season left. I hope the best for all of them though!
Question 3 is about the big game in El Paso tomorrow?
Are you going to the Sun Bowl? If no, why not?
Simple answer: NO.
Long answer is the why not: I just don’t get it. I have lived here for now 16 Sun Bowls. Notre Dame has been here twice and I guess I should say that a team I would love to see in person is Notre Dame with Alabama being a close second. I love tradition. I love the Sun Bowl tradition. I love that they make a big deal about it. New Mexico Bowl does that to a much lesser extent, but something like the 68 Ventures bowl in God-knows-where would not likely have the same bowl committee being omnipresent in front of the cameras hyping it up as much as Sun Bowl does
I enjoy seeing Bernie Olivas talk about it all the time in local media. He makes it feel like a big deal to me, and someone with his passion is what would make me want to go if I ever felt like going. He’s at parades talking about it. He was at Jason Hooten’s introductory press conference. I like people with passion. That is the best part… Hard work and product knowledge is the key to success in any workplace where you deal with customers.
I like that the media is into it as much as they are. Colin Deaver and Rachel Phillips are on top of everything and all events leading up to the game.
I get it. I see it all. I love it.
But it’s not for me. As pretty as the Sun Bowl is in our area. As much of a landmark as it is, there are several things as a ticket-buying consumer, I just cannot stand for, and it’s not the Sun Bowl (game) fault, it’s just the facilities shortcomings with I guess UTEP.
There’s zero cell signal, and that matters to someone like me who likes to “second screen” what I am experiencing.
I was at a Wrestling event at the new Raiders stadium two years ago, and there was an internet outage in the building that made all cashless places to eat inoperable, so they were giving away free food to all fans, because they couldn’t sell it. Because the internet was out and my cell signal was spotty, I didn’t know about this horde awaiting me at the snack bar, and was so upset that a $2 billion stadium couldn’t even have 2 bars of cell service.
I was at the Sun Bowl 2x this year (Motley Crue + Aggies Game) and both times, for a period of 5+ hours, I had no internet, no cell service. It is bad. the Motley Crue show was a month after my grandpa died, and I couldn’t even talk to my mom to see how my grandma was doing until midnight… It was just horrible. She was in a bad spot, and I wanted to be able to communicate but STILL go to the show. That place was not as sold out as the game tomorrow.
Plus, as a banker, and because of the cell signal issues, a lot of vendors are cash only, as their cc paying machines don’t work. I don’t mind carrying cash, as well as a lot of people in this area, but people don’t realize that while businesses get charged for you swiping your card, they get charged by their bank to deposit cash, and some big banks don’t even let businesses deposit cash (I can name them all off the top of my head, but I don’t want to bore you)
Instead of helping matters, the sponsor bank of UTEP, GECU, instead has ATMs which charge you a fee plus your bank will charge a fee. Ethically, I can’t do it.
It’s an inconvenience to their partners, and I think it is wrong. I feel so bad for those people. I believe the stats that say people spend more money on their cards than with cash. The vendors lose out because of the cell signal issue!
Plus, the traffic. I avoid EP as much as possible because of the construction and gridlock. I am not a big city guy. I went to the bowl in ABQ because I know that place like the back of my hand, but traffic, construction, uncertainty with parking… Too many things for me to avoid.
Maybe if the Aggies ended up there one day, I will go, but I would rather watch it on TV and enjoy the game that way.
Congrats to the Sun Bowl committee for the awesome matchup this year though!
Question 4 is about transfer portal players
Are bowl games less meaningful if so many players go in the portal beforehand?
Answer: Absolutely, but they are all glorified exhibitions anyway. I want to add that NM State didn’t have many people portal out before the game and a lot of people after the game. Of course, that was because of Kill, but it did mean something to them as well.
But the hypocrisy that people had when we picked the NM Bowl to go to.
“Oh, the players are going to crappy Albuquerque. No one wants to go there. Your car will get stolen. Blah blah blah.”
The last two parts may be true to me, but it was never about the “players” getting to go to a cool bowl destination. It was about you, the fan, right? Don’t think I don’t know that. Why do you care where the players are going on a field trip unless you have a vested interest in going somewhere you never been?
So by that logic, you are seeing NM State or whoever you root for as the “Team and its fans” going to the bowl, not a showcase of our players then, right? If so, then what does it matter who plays? They all have the playbook, they all are familiar to their coaches, so who cares?
While it may not reflect your team that worked hard to get there (example: Caleb Williams the presumed #1 pick didn’t play for USC last night in San Diego) it is about the TEAM getting to the bowl game, and whether a player was hurt or leaves the team, the team plays on and is representing the school in the bowl game.
Plus, I watched a game last night - Texas A&M - OK State which had many people in the portal. TAMU had 17 I believe, and OSU had a dozen. So, if both teams lost a similar percentage of people, is it NOT an equal playing field at that point?
Only the service academies won’t have transfers so every other team can and will be ravaged by the portal. Don’t take it personally when every team is going through it. Take it personally if your coaches aren’t replenishing the team fast enough.
But aside from the CFP, all bowl games are ceremonial in my opinion. Yes, they can lift curses (see our AZ Bowl win) but most games are just extra to me, and I try not to think too much about it.
Ok, I wrote wayyyyy too much anyway. I will be back soon with more. We got a basketball game on Saturday plus Transfer Portal news coming. Talk to you then.
James Baca - AGGregator
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Firstly, thank you for your work providing great content. Secondly, I have a question I hope you can shed light on. What became of Aggie men’s basketball player Damien Bradford. I see he is no longer listed on the roster but I never heard or read of an explanation unless I missed it. Thanks again.
Lets focus on #1 our Mens and Womens BB program...Jason is kicking ass...ya 5 tough losses...hes building a new dynasty...im dammmmm proud hes our coach....FB...let it go IMO