Football adds San Diego State to schedule

By Zack Ponce

The San Diego State University athletics department posted a release on Thursday to their website that the Aztecs will play a home-and-home series with New Mexico State.

San Diego State will travel to Las Cruces to face the Aggies on Sept. 28, 2013.  New Mexico State will then return the favor and face the Aztecs in San Diego on Sept. 24, 2016.  SDSU leads the all-time series against NMSU 8-1-1.

The announcement by the San Diego State athletics department now means NMSU has finalized contracts to play eight football games for the upcoming 2013 season.

New Mexico State now has road games scheduled at Texas (Aug. 31), UCLA (Sept. 21), New Mexico (Oct. 5), and Idaho (Nov. 2). 

The Aggies have finalized home games against Minnesota (Sept. 7), San Diego State (Sept. 28), Rice (Nov. 19), and Idaho (Nov. 30).

New Mexico State still needs to schedule one more game to reach the minimum of nine scheduled football games that is required to remain eligible to compete at the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) level.  Ideally the Aggies would like to reach a total of 12 games, which would require two more home and road match-ups.

New Mexico State will travel to San Marcos, Texas this Saturday, Dec. 1 to play the Texas State Bobcats, marking the final game the Aggies will play as a member of the Western Athletic Conference.

The WAC will stop sponsoring football at the end of the season, and is desperately trying to keep the conference solvent in the non-football sports.  Currently the 2013-14 WAC membership will consist of New Mexico State, Seattle, Cal State Bakersfield, Utah Valley, and Grand Canyon.  The Aggies will be the only 2012 football-playing member left standing in the WAC next year if they don’t also bolt for another conference.

On Monday, Nov. 26, Denver announced that it would leave the WAC to join the Summit League for the 2013-14 season.  The WAC also accepted Grand Canyon into the league on the same day.

Grand Canyon is currently a Division II university located in Phoenix, Ariz.  The Lopes are a for-profit university – similar to Devry University and the University of Phoenix – and will be the first for-profit university to ever compete at the Division I level of collegiate athletics.