Rocky Long praises Max Hall

Before I get to Rocky Long of New Mexico, just a note from a neighbor who attends Utah State.

Last Friday, this young man in his 30s, who I’ve known his whole life, sat in Romney Stadium with his father. Both are huge BYU fans but the son is a little conflicted because he’s now an Aggie. He rooted for BYU during the game but when the Aggies scored two quick touchdowns, he started getting excited for USU. “If we had scored that third touchdown, we would have raced down on the field after the game,” he said.

Are you sure?

“There is no doubt in my mind, we would have mobbed the field,” he said.

Why, I asked.

“After what we’ve been through here, scoring that third touchdown would have been a big deal, heck yeah, we would have gone down.”

Now on to Rocky Long, the head coach at New Mexico. He was asked this week if he prepares any different for facing a Top 10 team like BYU.

“This is strange to some people, but as a coach and hopefully as a team, we approach every game exactly the same way,” said Long. “It doesn’t matter if they’re ranked in the top ten or if they’re not ranked in the top ten, we approach the game exactly the same. We do everything we can as coaches and everything we can as players to prepare and give us a chance to win the game.

“Sometimes the media will make more of who we’re playing than we will. It’s a big mistake when you downgrade an opponent or you make them better than they are. You’ve got to treat every game exactly the same. I read a quote from [a Utah newspaper] that I guess Utah State scored when they were down by 27 or 30 and they were hooting and hollering. Our team won’t do that. Our team is not going to hoot or holler unless it’s the score that wins the game. We’re not our there for moral victories, we’re not out there for statistics, we’re out there to win the game.”

Ouch. Long pretty well nailed it.

On BYU QB Max Hall, Long said, “He’s very good. We played a quarterback (earlier this season) that I thought was as hot throwing the ball as Max Hall is on film. The quarterback at Tulsa (David Johnson) was just as hot as Max Hall is. You saw what he did. But [Hall] is probably one of the top ten quarterbacks in the country. He’s the best quarterback in our league by far. He’s got a lot of good players around him too, which helps to make a quarterback a lot better.”