The Lobo Football team is supposed to be in the winning business.
But judging by the first seven games, business ain’t a-boomin’.
With the 34-17 loss to UNLV, the Lobos join the ranks of only four other teams who remain winless in Division I football this season.
“Definitely, when you go 0-7, there is disappointment in the team,” linebacker Carmen Messina said. “But like I said before, the most important thing is for us to keep our chin up and keep on playing with our hearts.”
At this point, the no-win club is even more exclusive than the no-loss club in Division I football. Seven teams remain in the hunt to finish their regular season with a perfect 12-0 record, compared with only five teams that have yet to put a tally mark in the win column.
Eastern Michigan, Western Kentucky and the Lobos are all 0-7 this season. Miami Ohio and Rice University have yet to take their bye weeks, so they stand a week ahead — or behind — with eight losses.
Eastern Michigan has gotten the closest to that all elusive first win. In the second game of the season, Northwestern dashed Eastern Michigan’s hopes for its first victory with a last-second field goal, edging the Eagles 27-24.
And on Saturday, Eastern Michigan faced what would be, most likely, the most beatable opponent for any of the five winless teams. The Eagles played conference rival Ball State, which going into the game was also 0-6. Ball State pulled themselves out of the infamous ranks of the no-win club with a 29-27 win.
Eastern Michigan’s two shots and misses at victory can only be rivaled by the Lobos’ narrow loss to NMSU earlier in the season.
The Aggies, 3-5 at this point, snatched their second victory when Lobo kicker James Aho pushed a last-second, game-tying field goal wide right. The Lobos fell 20-17.
The Aggies game was the best shot the Lobos had at a win. It was the first and only time the Lobos went into the game as the frontrunner — a seven-point favorite.
Oddsmakers also believed Saturday’s UNLV game pitted two evenly matched opponents, giving UNM a 2.5-point cushion early in the week and finally ending at even odds come game time.
But the Lobos underperformed once again.
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“I felt the frustration in the second half, because there were definitely a lot of things that we were beating ourselves on,” Messina said.
The Lobos still have five more games to rid themselves of the title of the third team in 90 years to go winless under the command of a first-year head coach at UNM.
Going into their final games, the Lobos face off against the top and bottom of the Mountain West Conference.
The top of the conference is stacked with three teams that went into the weekend ranked in the top 20 in the nation — No. 8 TCU, No. 16 BYU and No. 18 Utah.
By far, their toughest opponent will be No. 8 TCU, which solidified its ranking after its commanding 37-7 win over BYU on Saturday.
At the bottom of the MWC barrel lays San Diego State and Colorado State.
But SDSU has a 37-14 win over NMSU, a mutual opponent of the Lobos. It is also coming off a win against Colorado State.
And at this point, Colorado State sits at the bottom of the MWC with an 0-4 record.
To be fair, the Rams went into conference play facing off against the MWC “Big Three.”
But getting any win at this point — no matter what the ranking — will be a task, said George Barlow, who was UNM’s interim head coach on Saturday.
“It’s going to be tough, but we are going to get back to the grind,” he said. “We are going to try to have the same focus we had last week, have four good days of practice and try to play four good quarters and give ourselves a chance to win.”
