Dec. 14—ALBUQUERQUE — It may not have been the splashy hire some Lobo fans were hoping for, but it’s certainly one they’ll come to appreciate.
That was the message delivered by University of New Mexico athletic director Fern Lovo after Saturday’s announcement that he’d named Jason Eck as the school’s new football coach.
It came just nine days after the sudden and unexpected exit of Bronco Mendenhall, the one-year wonder who bolted for conference rival Utah State after a single season.
Eck, 47, agreed to a five-year contract. Lovo did not disclose the financial terms of the deal, but multiple sources close to the process indicated it’s for less than the $6 million Mendenhall would have made over the course of his five-year agreement.
Eck’s buyout with Idaho is $525,000. His annual salary was just under $200,000, roughly one-fifth of what he’s expected to make at New Mexico.
Lovo said he was immediately drawn to Eck’s energy, a personality trait that helped him stand out during a hurried and secretive hiring process that was helped along by Parker Executive Search, an independent firm based in Atlanta.
“One of the things you will hear from me often, he is a program builder. He’s not a team builder, he’s a program builder,” Lovo said.
Conventional wisdom suggests Lovo would use his connections from the University of Texas, Ohio State, Florida and Houston to help land a prospective candidate. He has spent more than a decade working closely with the football programs at all four schools.
Eck didn’t have direct ties to any of them, but Lovo said his name kept surfacing as he networked his sources for candidates.
“Just having spent 12 years in college football, there were things that I took from my time that were very helpful in this search and across the board,” Lovo said. “Obviously it was helpful and certainly something that I relied upon in this search.”
The move to hire an FCS coach with just three years’ experience is a drastic shift from the move that brought Mendenhall to UNM one year ago.
Mendenhall had 17 years as a head coach under his belt, building a proven track record that landed him a contract that made him the highest-paid football coach in school history.
Eck has been Idaho’s head coach since 2022, leading the Vandals to a 26-13 record and a top-three finish in the Big Sky Conference all three seasons. His team went 10-4 this season, losing in the Football Championship Subdivision national quarterfinals on Friday night to Montana State.
He informed his team he was leaving for UNM not long after the game, and by Saturday morning the Lobos’ various social media accounts were spreading the news of his hire.
Eck took the Vandals to the FCS postseason each year. His team turned heads by pushing top-ranked Oregon down to the wire in the season opener on Aug. 31. The Ducks, seeded No. 1 in the College Football Playoff as the only undefeated team at the sport’s highest level, needed a late touchdown to secure a 24-14 win at Autzen Stadium.
Idaho went on the road the following week to beat Wyoming, a team that handed UNM a loss in Albuquerque in November.
“I am truly humbled to be selected as the head coach of the New Mexico Lobos,” Eck said in a statement. “I know that the university community, students, alumni, Lobo Nation and greater Albuquerque and New Mexico communities are eager for success and I cannot wait to give that to them. We will have tremendous coaches and support staff and develop our student-athletes into elite athletes, UNM graduates and people.”
Idaho had posted just two winning seasons in the 22 years prior to Eck’s arrival. The program existed on the fringes of what had been NCAA Division I-A between 1996 and 2017, bouncing around from the Big West to the Sun Belt, the WAC and one final run in the Sun Belt.
The program moved down to the FCS in 2018 after the Sun Belt removed it from the conference. The prospect of becoming a major-college independent forced the school’s hand to drop into the FCS and join the Big Sky alongside perennial powers like Montana State, UC Davis and Montana.
The Vandals stumbled through four losing seasons before Eck was brought in. The team’s win total has increased every year since 2020; the 10 wins this season being the second-most in school history and just the second time the team has ever reached double-digit victories.
His arrival on UNM’s campus caps a wild and often eventful introduction to Lovo’s initial days as the athletic director. Hired Dec. 1, he was greeted with Mendenhall’s departure just 24 hours after his introductory news conference.
“To say this is how I envisioned my first 13 days going on the job, I wouldn’t,” Lovo said, adding, “I took a breath today; it was good.”
Eck will have his hands full trying to maintain the momentum built by Mendenhall in his lone season at UNM. The Lobos went 5-7 last season, winning three road games and finishing tied for fifth in the Mountain West after being picked 11th of 12 teams in a preseason poll.
The Lobos went into the final game of the season needing a win over Hawaii to secure the team’s first bowl berth since 2016.
As of Saturday, no fewer than 30 players from Mendenhall’s roster had entered the transfer portal with a number of them having already signed or committed to new schools. Players like all-Mountain West quarterback Devon Dampier (Utah), receiver Luke Wysong (Arizona) and offensive lineman McKenzie Agnello (Houston) have already joined power-four teams.
Another 15 to 20 players, or more, are expected to hit the open market in the coming weeks.
Eck’s background is rooted in Big Ten country. Born in La Crosse, Wis., he was an offensive lineman for four years at Wisconsin. He then started his coaching career as a graduate assistant with the Badgers in 1999.
He has had stops as an assistant at Colorado, Idaho, Winona State, Ball State, Hampton, Minnesota State, Montana State and South Dakota State before finally getting his first try as a head coach when he was hired back by Idaho in December 2021.
An introductory news conference for Eck has been scheduled for Wednesday morning in The Pit.
