Less than a month apart, two of the most underperforming college football programs in the country made major football hires late in 2021.

On Nov. 29, New Mexico State hired Jerry Kill.

Exactly two weeks to the day later Temple hired Stan Drayton.

Temple was bad in 2021 but New Mexico State was much worse.

The Owls finished 3-9 but the Aggies were 2-10. In that 3-9 season, the Owls beat a ranked team, Memphis, while the Aggies best win was over a FCS team, South Carolina State.

Both needed a new coach and the New Mexico State brass thought hiring a proven program-builder was a better way to go than hiring an unproven running backs’ coach.

What happened since?

New Mexico State gets $1.8 million check from Auburn & then delivers a 31-10 beatdown to the Tigers, who were 26-point favorites. Unreal job by Jerry Kill. Aggies will play for CUSA title in 2 weeks vs. Liberty

— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) November 18, 2023

Temple went 3-9 in Drayton’s first season and, after a 34-24 loss to a bad UAB team on Saturday, will undoubtedly go 3-9 for the third-straight season. Kill had the Aggies 7-6 his first year and, since an August loss this year, New Mexico State is 9-2 including a 31-10 win over SEC power Auburn on Saturday night.

Did Kill say before the game with Auburn that “they recruit better than us and someday we hope to recruit like them” like Drayton did after the Miami loss? No. He hired a 33-year-old wunderkind DC who actually had a history of stopping modern offenses instead of a 60-year-old “close friend” retread who couldn’t stop a nosebleed. He devised a game plan to have his lesser talent beat Auburn’s better talent.

That’s what great coaches do.

Oh what might have been for Temple if only Arthur Johnson was “director of football operations” at the last school Kill was at (TCU) instead of another Texas school.

Worse, Temple could have had the Kill switch to turn off the losing easily. Kill signed for $550,000 at New Mexico State. Drayton signed for nearly four times as much at Temple. You don’t think he would have taken the Temple job in a heartbeat over New Mexico State?

Hell, he still probably would.

Money talks, bullshit walks.

Kill was familiar with Temple and the recruiting area from the time he was an assistant at Rutgers while Temple was winning an AAC championship.

In an unremarkable opening press conference, the best promise Drayton made Temple fans was that he would “chase greatness.”

Kill said this at his introductory press conference: “I just like taking on challenges. It’s like building a house, and I like to do things. I like that. I like being the underdog. I like having a chip on my shoulder, and you get in with the players that have the same thing. …I like the process. I love the process.”

For Kill, the “process” hasn’t included the NIL but has included the transfer portal: “We just don’t have the big donors or the big money (for the NIL) but we do offer kids an opportunity for guys stuck behind P5 starters on those teams and FCS guys who have performed at a high level but want a bigger stage. That’s all we can offer at this point and it’s a formula that works for us.”

Meanwhile, Temple’s recruiting philosophy is stuck back in 1987 when you could build a team of high school recruits, redshirt them for a year, have them back up for another and then have them ready to play by the third.

Guess what? Nobody has the time for that anymore because if you don’t win by Year Three, you are out on your ass.

Two teams that reached a fork in the road a week apart in December of 2021: Temple and New Mexico State.

Jerry Kill for coach of the year

— Mike Gibson (@papreps) December 26, 2022

The Aggies could have picked an unproven running backs coach and probably would be looking at a third-straight 2-10 season.

Temple did and is staring at a third-straight 3-9 season. Kill was and is a proven program-builder. The best you could say about Drayton back then was that he was a huge roll of the dice at a time Temple couldn’t afford to gamble.

New Mexico State made a solid investment at a time when the Owls were spending their last chip at the crap table.

The Aggies made the correct call. One school’s blessing is another school’s curse.

Monday: Memphis Preview

Late Friday Night: TU-Memphis Analysis