UNM Athletic Director Lovo on Coach Eck Return for 2026: ‘We’re Not Planning on Ever Taking a Step Back’ for Lobo Football
It might be too soon to label Fernando Lovo as a football coaching search whisperer, but he was definitely looking in the correct stables for his first hire as athletic director.
That hire, first-year coach Jason Eck, has New Mexico playing for a share of the Mountain West regular-season title on Friday and a potential berth in next week’s Mountain West Championship game.
Not bad for a new coach coming to a program with the fewest returning players in all of the Football Bowl Subdivision.
That Black Friday game, however, potentially could have both immediate positive returns and negative consequences for the future of the program.
A win against league-leading San Diego State could vault the Lobos to the conference title game, where they could win their first outright conference crown since 1963. If UNM wins the MW championship game, then it would have a chance at an 11-win season for the first time in program history with a victory in the bowl game to be determined.
Success shines more national attention on Eck, whose name is already linked to big-name school coaching openings. Rumors linking him to other jobs are certain to increase with holiday season victories.
That concern is growing among Lobo football supporters because they just witnessed a first-year coach abandoning the program around this time last year when Bronco Mendenhall left UNM to coach Utah State.
The home run Lovo hit with the hiring of Eck is still traveling. It may not land until the Lobos record arguably the best season in school history.
The Pit Press asked Lovo how confident he is that Eck will return as coach in 2026.
“I hate to put a number to it," Lovo said. “I will tell you this, my response to that question is our conversations (Lovo and Eck) have been really, really positive in terms of, ‘OK, great, this is what we did this year, but look at what we can do moving forward?’ If I had to put a number on something, I’d say 10 on us believing and having the same vision, myself and coach Eck, as to what this place can be from a football perspective, and so when I feel that strongly about that, and am as confident about that, to me that’s the biggest thing.”
As much credit Eck deserves for the Lobo football’s rebirth, UNM also has benefited from Lovo’s football background, with previous jobs at college football powers Texas, Ohio State and Houston, as well as his NFL Chief of Staff gig with the Jacksonville Jaguars.
The program is thriving in part because the school finally hired a football whispering AD.
Eck this week echoed his comments about the school and the community when the media previously asked him about other job openings in late October.
“I haven’t had one single conversation with anybody from another school,” he said. “I’ve been focused on this job. There’s time for that when the season’s over, and we love it here. I told you; it’d take something pretty special to (leave UNM). I don’t like to put words out there that can be used against me at a later date and things. I would never say I’m going to retire here and things like that, but it hasn’t been very hard (to block out any coaching rumors), and there’s nothing that’s taken my focus off of doing our best for this team.”
Eck is finishing his first year of a five-year, $6.25 million contract. His contract stipulates that he must repay UNM $4 million if he leaves after this season, but in the age of paying players and skyrocketing college football budgets, a Power Four school wouldn’t have to dig deep to pay Eck’s buyout.
New Mexico paid $525,000 to buy out Eck’s contract last year at Idaho.
The coach is making $1.15 million this year in base salary. He’s already earned a $25,000 bonus for earning a bowl berth. Eck could receive up to $25,000 for UNM’s ticket sales increase over last year (he gets $25,000 and the football program gets $25,000 if the Lobos have a 50% increase in sales over last year, and they lead the nation right now with a 51% increase over last year. There is a stipulation that the increase would have to exclude the UNM-New Mexico State rivalry game effect, so it is unclear what the percentage is without it, depending on Friday’s attendance).
Eck will earn another $25,000 if the Lobos qualify for the MW title game, another $50,000 if they win it and another $25,000 if he earns MW Coach of the Year honors.
If he hits all those incentives, his salary for 2025 would be $1.3 million. The average salary for a football coach at a Power Four program is a little more than $6 million (according to Google AI).
Lovo said he believes Eck is committed to building a winning program at New Mexico, but if Eck gets that “pretty special offer,” the program can survive.
“We obviously hope that doesn’t happen, but the narrative of Lobo football is really positive out there and a lot of that is attributed to Jason and the success he’s been able to bring and the belief he’s been able to instill,” Lovo said. “But across the board, players and coaches and just the overall optics of New Mexico football out there, they’re overwhelmingly positive and that makes me feel really good.”
While Lovo declined to speculate on the chances of Eck’s return in 2026, he was more definitive about the state of Lobo football in 2026.
“Very confident, for a few reasons,” Lovo said. “One, because we’ve now shown that we can do this, that we’ve got the tools necessary to compete at a high level. To me, we’re not planning on ever taking a step back so we’re going to continue to enhance what we’ve done well this year and make it better, and if there are areas we need to improve, we’re going to improve those. I’m very bullish on the future of Lobo football.”
A Year Two of the Eck era would be huge for the school to continue to make improvement on and off the field.
But if a big-name school does manage to pry Eck away, don’t think that Lovo won’t accept the challenge of scouring the stables for another undiscovered coaching diamond.
