Sports venues around the nation have long been given nicknames by fans. There’s “The Pit” in Albuquerque, home for the University of New Mexico basketball team. The Albuquerque Isotopes baseball team has played for years in “The Lab.” In Las Cruces, we have “The Field of Dreams” for our joint-use high school football stadium. And of course, there are the “Big House” and “The Horseshoe” for Big 10 football rivals Michigan and Ohio State.
At New Mexico State University, our football stadium has been known only as “Aggie Memorial Stadium.”
However, recent events have made me think we should rename the facility as “The Menagerie,” “The Farm” or maybe “The Zoo.”
At last Saturday’s football game, won by the Aggies with a last-minute field goal, not all the drama was on the field. It seems that at some point during the game, a skunk wandered into the bleachers and paraded amongst the fans.
A season ticket holder named Laura Justus captured the video below of the wandering skunk, which was posted on a Tweet by Athletic Director Mario Moccia, who proclaimed the critter as the Aggie “Rally Skunk.”
It was interesting that the animal from the Mephitidae family trotted right underneath a woman’s legs during the game. Neither the skunk nor the woman seemed to be overly excited about the intrusion.
It brings to mind other animal related events at the stadium.
A few years ago, construction at the stadium had to be halted when workers discovered a colony of burrowing owls inside a grassy area. The birds were captured and relocated to a more appropriate living space.
For a while, we had a horse carrying Pistol Pete rumble into the stadium at the start of each game. I’m not sure why that tradition was discontinued, but it was probably because it was too dangerous for the horse running on the artificial turf. Or it might have been that a young woman was once knocked to the ground when the horse rushed by her as the animal and Pistol Pete entered the stadium.
And then of course, there have been the Border Collie “Wonder Dogs” who retrieve the kicking tee after each Aggie kickoff at the stadium. The first dog was named “Smoki,” the next was “Striking and the current pooch is “Wave.”
Wave had a little more attention during the final game of this season when a member of the opposing football team seemed to be rushing onto the field to grab the tee before the dog could get to it. Wave, however, persevered and continued his tradition of entertaining the fans by retrieving the tee.
Here’s a link to a story about Wave from the Las Cruces Sun News.
Wave also has his own Facebook page and you can buy t-shirts with his image on it.
I hope Wave, the horse, the owls and now the skunk can work an NIL deal with the Athletic Department — they’ve certainly made going to the stadium more entertaining.
*NIL (Name, Image and Likeness). An NCAA rule which allows student athletes to make some money from use of their name, their image or a likeness of them by businesses.
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