Tasked with turning things around, new AD puts trust in process
ALBUQUERQUE — Famed Alabama football coach Nick Saban, whose success has become the gold standard in college athletics, had some sage advice for Eddie Nuñez when they worked together at Louisiana State University.
“Coach Saban always said to trust the process,” Nuñez says.
The process will not be easy for Nuñez in his role as athletic director at The University of New Mexico, whose struggling athletic program seems light years from those at places like Alabama and LSU. The Lobos are saddled with serious financial problems, uncertainty in their football program, plus waning interest in key sports that once held the state’s attention.
It’s a difficult challenge. But Nuñez’s résumé shows he has spent a lifetime putting himself in positions where he earns his way in the front door — and showing people he’s capable of being thrown into the deep end and doing just fine on his own.
Nuñez said he is comforted and grounded by a series of lessons he learned growing up in Miami, first playing high school ball for current South Carolina basketball coach Frank Martin, and then a few years later in college while playing for deeply respected Billy Donovan at Florida.
Nuñez parlayed his college athletic career into coaching — first on Donovan’s staff with the Gators and later at Marquette, when current NBA superstar Dwyane Wade was gearing up to lead the Golden Eagles to the Final Four. From there, it was a two-year stint in administration at Vanderbilt, then 14 wildly successful years climbing the ladder at LSU — a school that’s one of the biggest winners and moneymakers in college athletics.
When UNM came calling last year, Nuñez jumped at the chance despite the fact he knew nothing of Albuquerque’s strange fascination with business meetings over breakfast and the city’s manageable traffic patterns to and from campus.
“I’ve had more breakfast meetings in my four months here than I think I’ve ever had in my whole life,” he says.
Adjusting to life this far from what he considers home — South Florida and the coastal states of the Deep South — has been interesting, to say the least. Nuñez left a Southeastern Conference powerhouse that routinely sells out football games in a place nicknamed “Death Valley” to come to a school that struggles to put 20,000 people into a largely empty stadium with tickets as cheap as a night at the movies.
“It’s a different fan base, a different culture,” he says, sitting behind the desk of his surprisingly bland office on UNM’s South Campus.
Aside from some Miami and LSU memorabilia, there’s not much to suggest Nuñez’s past was anything out of the ordinary. Same, too, for the rest of his office.
No pictures hang from the cherry red walls, and only a few framed photos of his family near his computer suggest anything personal about the man.
“I didn’t come here expecting it to be like LSU or anywhere else I’ve been,” Nuñez says. “I came here because I see potential in what we’re trying to do.”
Now the patriarch of an athletic department in need of a strong leader, fundraiser and dependable presence, the 42-year-old Nuñez says there’s a little part of the men he admires most still floating around every day.
“It’s amazing the people I’ve met, the leaders I’ve seen,” he says. “To be around some of those elite athletes at LSU and Florida with their work ethic and what they do with their gifts, to see some of the coaches who have that ability to inspire. I mean, coach Donovan is a great example of leadership. He has to manage egos, manage brands, all that stuff. But he showed me you also have to be normal, and that’s what draws people to him. To be normal when everything around you isn’t — that’s a talent.”
Landing in New Mexico meant leaning on the mentorship of Martin and Donovan, two men he considers father figures. Known for his merciless intensity on the sidelines, Martin took South Carolina to the Final Four last year. Donovan, a master at balancing common sense with dry humor, was a two-time national champion at Florida and is now the head coach of Oklahoma City in the NBA.
“As crazy as those guys were, you just knew that as soon as you stepped on the court you had certain expectations,” Nuñez says. “As soon as it was over, it was about life, it was about the person. Coach Martin, he’d give me a ride home after practice almost every day, and in those 30 minutes, it was his ability to turn the basketball off and focus on the person that really shaped who I am. That’s what I’m trying to do here.”
Eventually, he says, people like Saban will see the talent come out.
For UNM, it may be just a matter of time.