Aggregator Special Report: The Origin and Media Coverage of the Pavia Video Story
Who leaked it to KOB? Who actually got the video? Why did KOB sit on it for several days? Who Caused the Bowl Game Issues? Why did no local reporters bother to do this research I will share today?
Few Quick Notes:
This long column contains some adult language. 90% of it is language that was done by others as a result of the NM State - UNM rivalry (and of course who can forget Coach Kill) - If that bothers you, I recommend not reading this. It’s not a lot, but it’s there and needed to tell the story in true fashion. I will even edit it for you if you want. Just email me.
Because of the vitriolic nature of the UNM - NM State rivalry and how people react to things they will never read, I will not be actively shilling this article, though it is my best work ever, in my opinion. I realize in order to break the cycle of vitriol that has been plaguing the UNM-NMSU rivalry for years, I have to be demure about this, even though I am so proud of my efforts in writing this.
I will NOT be taking any media requests as a result of my writing. I will have a statement you can use below. It’s not that I don’t want to show out for my work, it is just that I have a lot of issues with how the local media in EP and ABQ cover it, and again, I don’t want to be fuel for it. But this story had to be done.
Plus, my favorite part. Ever since I left banking and became a writer, my writing is something I consider a blessing and part of dealing with a blessing is giving back. Recently, I donated a couple hundred dollars worth of food to a local pantry. I do this occasionally any time I get a book royalty check or some subscribers.
I worked at a bank and saw poverty. It is not fun and it is hard to handle. I made a promise to help where and when I could. With my writing, I usually give 10% towards giving back, which is standard.
If anyone becomes a yearly paid subscriber to AGGregator as a result of this column, which I can check on the stats, I will donate 33% of all net proceeds of every subscription to Roadrunner Food Bank in Albuquerque, the largest food bank in the stateEVEN if you don’t want to subscribe to me, give to them anyway! They need it. New Mexicans need it!
I made it a point to ask a Lobo fan in ABQ where is the best place to help in LOBO country and that is what he told me. I promise you I will do it, because this article is not about me or the Lobos or Aggies. It is about New Mexico, and I want to help New Mexicans!I am a freelance writer and every dollar earned helps me, but again, I cannot in good faith not want to help out others, especially because of how deep in the weeds I will be getting today.
Support independent journalism, investigative work, and research. We need it more than ever.
As I am growing here with my AGGregator column, I keep coming back to why I started it. I started reporting on NM State Athletics simply because:
There was absolutely no good, solid reporting on anything good involving NM State football and basketball by any local reporters. Las Cruces Sun-News is DOA, The Bulletin, while awesome is a weekly, and El Paso TV media are not able to be here as often as a beat reporter SHOULD be. I think most of the reporting in El Paso isn’t great with the exception of Rachel Phillips.
I think she is the best in El Paso, and when her time comes to an end in our DMA (That’s TV Speak for “market”), We will miss her. I don’t get why she’s not sports director, and I would be stunned if she’s not a sports director SOMEWHERE soon.It felt like when there needed to be good old-fashioned reporting to accurately see the full story, particularly from the NM State Perspective, it never happened. What happened with Mike Peake was done through the story from Action 7 News, KOAT in December 2022. News conveniently breaks at just the perfect time to get the most eyeballs and it was almost always bad.
While there is a lot of negative stuff to talk about regarding recent NM State history, both including the rivalry with UNM and not, it never felt like New Mexico State ever had a platform to discuss their side of things. It always felt like NM State had to be on the defensive. Always.
…And I get that. With what happened in ABQ in November 2022 and all the things that came from the incessant ABQ-Based reporting of the story, which led to El Paso News Stations getting the leftovers, and beating the story into the ground. I understand why stories have to be reported, and I understand that sometimes they are NOT pretty. In fact, they were frustrating, and I have written about it extensively which I will share one day.
I have a TON of reporters follow me on Twitter from my consumer advocacy project, “The Notorious Banker," and I have been a source, both named and unnamed in a lot of stories about banking in the last five years. I am proud of my work, and would put my researching up with anyone out there.
One of my followers who I have talked to many times, was a news anchor in a major metro area. She told me that it is IMPORTANT for anchors and reporters at the stations they are at to be “champions of their community.”
I believe that. How can you not want to be the beacon for celebrating what is good with a local team if they do well, or celebrate a young kid going to some Judo world championship in Tulsa, OK or something? Ok, I made that up, but you get what I mean. You want local news to be local, and you want local perspective. Yes, you have to cover bad stuff too, but I never get a sense that NM State is covered like that. It’s usually covered through the eyes of adversity.
If the ABQ newscasts are Lobo-centric, they definitely should be. How about El Paso? Yes, they should focus on UTEP. But the market is El Paso-Las Cruces, so it is important for them to be “champions” in Las Cruces too.
Everything pertaining to New Mexico State University in the last 16 months has not had the local touch. You have the Albuquerque DMA, which of course if where the UNM Lobos are from, and the El Paso DMA, which is where the UTEP Miners are from.
Now I will give Rachel Phillips, Colin Deaver, and Sam Guzman credit.
THEY COME TO LAS CRUCES OFTEN. They have to deal with the crappy construction, and they have to deal with having to rush back to their studios in W. El Paso before the late newscast all the time. That is not a fun part of the job, and I commend them for it.
Since we are a part of their DMA, it is imperative to cover this big school in Cruces.
So whenever a story like Peake or Hazing breaks, I found it interesting that because of how ABQ News Stations covered NM State, seemingly painting the school in a negative light any chance they get. It took 10 wins and a bowl game to talk positively about NM State consistently, and even then at the end of the bowl game, we were back to the same old BS.
FYI: I am not here to talk about hazing or Mike Peake today. There’ll be another day for that soon, and I will be honest. I will do my research, and I will tell it the way a true reporter should. It will also not be on this column. I will write a book or have some other avenue.
I am here to talk about Diego Pavia, the Quarterback of the New Mexico State Aggies, who led the school to a 10-5 season, and an appearance in the New Mexico Bowl where they lost to Fresno State. As of December 23rd, Pavia is in the transfer portal due to the sudden resignation of Jerry Kill after the bowl game.
As I left University Stadium after the tough loss, I of course, saw a lot of UNM fan discourse about how bad NM State was, and of course the incident regarding Diego Pavia where in September, he allegedly urinated on the UNM Practice Field earlier in the year. This was at an unknown date, but it was assumed it was prior to the Aggies win at UNM on September 16th, 2023.
There were Lobos fans STILL talking about that during the bowl game.
Then of course there was the people mocking the loss just because as Lobos fans, they simply cannot root for another New Mexico team.
FWIW, I was a Lobo fan first before I ever followed the Aggies, and if UNM went to the Final 4, I would go. If they ever made the CFP, I would go. It would be important to New Mexico history as a state, in my opinion. I grew up 65 miles from The Pit. I know how much UNM means to a lot of people where I am from.
Just thought you should know MY New Mexico credentials before we continue.
Back to Pavia.
While Pavia gave his reasons why he did it in interviews in November, which as a human being who has been told similar things like Diego alluded to being told by certain coaches, I understood why he did it, but of course he should not have done it. Coach Kill said as much, and others have said as much regarding it.
Meanwhile, local El Paso news dwelled on the story for the better part of two weeks, and during moments during the historic NM State run, reporters were openly being frustrated about not being able to talk to Diego, who was in the midst of an imposed media blackout from Head Coach Jerry Kill.
Kill in his post-game press conference at the bowl game referenced that, along with inferring that Pavia scrubbed toilets as part of his “punishment.”
My friend Mario Muniz speculated correctly two months ago, which I also agreed with and affirmed his point.
When I commented on Mario’s point, who comments? Andy Morgan, former Sports Director of KTSM, and current evening anchor. It should be mentioned he also worked at KOB in ABQ for a time, so he is familiar with ABQ just as much as Las Cruces. Morgan also does occasional sideline gigs at Aggies games. He’s a pro’s pro in my eyes, and I watch his newscast nightly.
That being said, he didn’t need to barge into the comments defending why
I was in PR for a bit before I did banking and now writing. I know how these things go. Andy Morgan talked to me like an adult, but not as someone who has knowledge of his industry.
I stopped commenting and instead threw him a compliment on KTSM’s coverage of the UTEP/NMSU game at the Sun Bowl. I DVR’d it and was amazed about how big they made the game feel. I meant every word I said in the compliment because it was good…TOO good, and KTSM does those live remotes the best in this area.
But his point about “one question off the top” was naive at best, because even the one question off the top becomes the only thing the people focus on at the end of the day because that was all the media focused on.
When Pavia arrived at the NM Bowl with his team Wednesday December 13rd, he was greeted with mariachis, which aside from a team from Cruces (or a team from Fresno mind you) would be unique, but both communities are familiar with them. Pavia stops for a couple interviews. Some with El Paso reporters, and then he finds his way to Jared Chester of KRQE, the sister station of KTSM in El Paso where the second question he asks Diego, a full 3 months after the story came out was…
It was the question. Now, without prompting, I will say a good journalist asks the question, whether or not it has been answered before. I have no problem with it, but don’t pretend that’s just part of what you wanted. That’s the bite you hope gets the most traction.
Colin Deaver and KTSM had a story November 29th where Diego talked about it to him. It was good.
Again, KTSM and KRQE are sister stations, have aired stories and shared resources many times before. From the Nexstar POV it had been asked and answered.
There was no need for Jared Chester to ask it, because his colleague in the local market asked it.
And I am totally fine with Deaver interviewing Pavia and asking the question before the CUSA title game…why?
Because his friend, Rachel Phillips, who works at the other station, scooped him and everyone else by having Diego sit down for an interview before that.
BTW this was the best one yet. When searching for it on Youtube, I stumbled upon Rachel’s Youtube page with updated reels, which tells me a next stop is looming for her, and my goodness, she deserves it, and KVIA will be worse off for her going.
For the record, Rachel has a whole NM State scandal section on her Youtube. I am fine with that, because it needs to be noted that her coverage on that was the best in my eyes, and as a personal observation, I noticed KVIA turned to her and not sports director Adrian Ochoa when having to talk about the graphic stuff.
That was obviously a decision that made me question whether or not Ochoa had the stomach to cover it as he made a pivot from news anchor to sports a few years prior. It was weird and super odd, but Rachel made it work. Ochoa NEVER talked about the graphic details only Phillips. There’s no one in this market who has her skills.
So… Back to Pavia
While some people would say, “how is not talking to the media a punishment?” it can be inferred that the charismatic, charming, big man on campus QB in Pavia would lose by not being able to show he was the leader in front of the camera.
His re-emergence after several months was likely one part mandated by the level of success that NM State had, playing in back-to-back national games, and one part taking advantage of the good juju that NM State had at the time.
THE BOWL GAME INCIDENT
The only reason I am writing about all this s*** now is because of how former coach Kill popped off after the game. He accused UNM AD Eddie Nunez of seemingly try to make it hard for the Aggies to practice at the Bowl Game, for which they arrived there on Wednesday afternoon for a Saturday game.
It was alleged that the Aggies were told that they would be practicing at Milne Stadium instead of the climate-controlled UNM indoor practice facility that Pavia allegedly urinated in. (Fun fact I learned in the course of this. The facility does not have bathrooms in it.)
It was reported that Jeff Siembieda, former sports director of Channel 7, KOAT for many years, current talk-radio host, and chair of the New Mexico Bowl had to intervene to ensure that NM State had full use of the facilities as was discussed in the contract.
Siembieda, who has been in the media game for a very long time, and is the head of probably the single most important football game in New Mexico because of the revenue generated, is cognizant of the optics of something like one of the bowl teams unable to use facilities can look like. He’s a bright guy, for sure. No doubt about it.
Jerry Kill called for the punishment of Eddie Nunez for what he was “trying to do”, calling his actions, “Chickenshit.”
Kill also mentioned, “I don’t need this shit. I can go have Margaritas on the beach in Mexico.”
The Video:
Social media was abuzz with Lobos fan calling Kill an “alcoholic”, a “crazy old man,” and everything under the sun.
How can someone so damn beloved be THAT hated by anyone, regardless of whose side they are on?
I did feel that he believed the issues to be there, and they very well could have been there by people who claimed to be running things but had no authority to make a unilateral decision like that with contracts and whatnot tied to it. Who knows? We may never know..
A couple of days after that, stories came out from Geoff Grammer, Colin Deaver and others reporting that conversations between Nunez and Kill and Nunez and Mario Moccia were had to discuss what had allegedly happened the week before, and through all the conversations had, it was reported that everything “Was a big misunderstanding.”
Congrats to Angie on the 28lb weight loss, btw.
It was…weird how everything was so hunky-dory after two days of INSANE Lobos fans and equally crazy Aggies fans went at each other on social media, making it just as toxic as before.
I was driving home from Socorro after the bowl game and I turned off my phone. I couldn’t do it anymore. I was done with this s***. I just want this vitriolic rivalry to end, meaning play the games, stop with the little kid drama.
The thing that bugged me the most was on Monday Jeff Siembieda mentioned that he had cops at the practice field when the NM State Aggies were there, but NOT when Fresno State was there.
Then the New Mexico Bowl published the lamest non-statement statement ever.
“The Isleta New Mexico Bowl works with both participating institutions to ensure equal access to training and practice facilities .The University of New Mexico has been gracious hosts of this game for the past 18 years and this year’s game was no exception. Understanding the nature of the both in-state and in-conference rivalries there is always a sense of ensuring that all parties respect each other’s property, which in this case was upheld by both institutions.”
Ugh. It gives me big bank nightmares seeing such a blase statement that says nothing at all. I will repeat this statement shortly.
As a person who writes about NMSU, I am not mad about having cops at the facility for us, but in the eyes of decent event planning, in the eyes of making sure any illusion of inequality is not there, you hire the cops to be a Fresno State’s practice as well.
Who’s to say there won’t be angry Lobo fans looking to start stuff with their conference rival? “Oh, that couldn’t happen…”
Yeah, tell that to every person who dropped the ball security-wise in the event of a tragedy. For example, my local grocery store started hiring a security guard to deter homeless from loitering. They aren’t there all the time. I figured it out in two seconds. So if I wanted to rob the store, or if I wanted to loiter there, all I needed was some half-assed research, and I cracked the code. Homeless folks figured it out too.
The illusion of “security” was shattered the second cops for Fresno wasn’t there.
This was from the ABQ Journal and Geoff Grammer’s piece:
On Sunday, Nuñez, NMSU Athletic Director Mario Moccia and the New Mexico Bowl all agreed on many, though not all, of the facts surrounding the issues, including that NMSU and Fresno State got full use of all the same UNM facilities in preparation for the bowl game and that the Aggies’ use of all those facilities was not in question when they arrived in Albuquerque last week.
“At no time, did I or anyone at (UNM) deny the use of our facilities to either team before bowl game or during,” Nuñez told the Journal on Sunday. “I expressed my concerns in advance with the (New Mexico Bowl Director) Jeff Siembieda about New Mexico State using our indoor because of the previous incident, but the ultimate decision was at the direction of the bowl executives and the responsibility would be solely on the New Mexico Bowl.”
ESPN, which owns the New Mexico Bowl, and bowl officials on Saturday night issued a statement that backed that up, stating: “The Isleta New Mexico Bowl works with both participating institutions to ensure equal access to training and practice facilities. The University of New Mexico has been gracious hosts of this game for the past 18 years and this year’s game was no exception.
“Understanding the nature of both in-state and in-conference rivalries, there is always a sense of ensuring that all parties respect each other’s property, which in this case was upheld by both institutions.”
Sunday, the New Mexico Bowl confirmed to the Journal, “The Bowl had deputies and bowl staff at practice to ensure a respectful use of the facility.”
The few times I played football, I have spit on the field, mainly because I was overweight, exhausted and was a natural act. Were cops going to make a judgment call as to was a spit intentional or a natural act of catching your breath? I just don’t get that part of it, and the lack of equal security to me was the biggest issue, even if despite the knocks we all have about ABQ and crime, we didn’t need it. Either both get it or none get it. Simple as that
I don’t think Nunez did anything here except plant seeds in Siembieda’s head about his “concerns,” which could then manifest in how people BS talk with one another and I think Siembieda, who has a job to be the figurehead of this bowl game at social events probably joked around a little too much about it, which helped manifest the “problems” later on even if it was just a miscommunication.
You also got to understand the Siembieda is a talk radio host. It is easy fodder for days on end when the story just happens to be something that happened which you were a part of. You are feeding one job from the same trough as your other job at that point.
You are working for the “BOWL GAME”… Drama happens, and what do you know? You got days worth of talk radio content on your talk show? It’s like a human centipede situation. (I won’t add a photo for context. If you watched the movie, you get my analogy)
There’s an ethical line there, especially if Siembieda knew that NM State was likely going to be bowl bound that he knew that Nunez would feel some type of way about it, which makes for fun social banter, but at the same time, talk radio hat off, bowl game executive hat on. You have to correctly navigate that as the head of the bowl game.
You want the biggest event in New Mexico to go well so it looks good on you right? So why would this even be a thing you didn’t talk about in October when NM State was a possibility for your game? Why would you not start wading through the potential thorny stuff? You got to get ahead of it. Poor management there.
I don’t know how the bowl structure works. I know ESPN owns the game, so I assume they have a say in who runs it? I would say Siembieda based on the inconsistent treatment of Fresno State and NM State with the cops thing, coupled with the fact ESPN put out a statement in direct contradiction on what he said, has to go as Bowl executive. Simple as that. ESPN said both teams had cops, Siembieda said NM State was the only ones. Inconsistent.
I always said I loved his TV work back in the day, and in 1998, he was the voice that informed me of my beloved Harry Caray passing away in my teenage bedroom on a 13 inch tv one spring evening.
But again, as ESPN who owns the bowl said in their statement “Understanding the nature of both in-state and in-conference rivalries, there is always a sense of ensuring that all parties respect each other’s property, which in this case was upheld by both institutions.”
Meaning? My point about Fresno State. Siembieda claiming they were there for NMSU and not Fresno constitutes inconsistency with that line. That is a lie.
I do want to say, I loved my experience at the NM Bowl despite the loss. I will be back because it was neat.
But when I get inconsistencies like that from the bowl head, one can only surmise that ESPN who are the college football gods can easily take away this bowl and/or take away Siembieda from that spot because of that statement.
Who is going to own the inconsistency? I think that is as BIG an issue as anything. But take heed to this. I believe while Eddie Nunez was emboldened by all the chatter in his social circle, I don’t THINK the Aggies were ever going to be denied. I think is was all NM little kid drama he said, she said BS.
(For the record, I sat amongst 90 percent Fresno State fans during the game, and they were amazing, funny, great people who were rooting really loud.)
I believed that it was a misunderstanding.
I have to believe that otherwise I am not taking Moccia and Kill at their word with the little chat that they had. I do think Eddie Nunez has “feelings” about it, as so many do, but as a person in power at a major university, you cannot be seen impacting the school in any way with any wild demands/proclamations/possible contract breaches in the name of sport.
Big businesses don’t work like that. I know. I worked for one. I have dealt with record companies and other media orgs in the past that tells me that. When you have a person that skirts the rules in the name of a rivalry like a 17 year old kid, then maybe you don’t have a high-paying job at that point. So reluctantly, I will defend Nunez there on that point.
Nunez is way too savvy for that. But I do believe seeds were planted where jokes were made and this arose out of those (more on that later)
I do. As much flak as Eddie Nunez, the UNM AD gets from Aggies fans (such as trying to intervene the Lobo logo stomping at a basketball game, the whole tickets/NMSU band nonsense, which I will say was BS and was something that could have been a non-story and only made both schools look ridiculous) I am no longer going to participate in the vitriol. AD is a hard job, and you make people hate you sometimes. But as you will see later, I actually have some positive things to say.
Look at Mario Moccia’s tenure recently. Imagine doing as great a job as he has done DESPITE all the loudmouths from every angle, including NM State fans calling for his head. I couldn’t do it. My ego bruises so much, my whole body would be purple and red. Regardless of what you think, he is a resilient man to be able to work as hard as he can every day.
I did a Tiktok video outlining Eddie Nunez’s other “incidents” at his previous school that got me hundreds of thousands of views. That video was spurred by the NMSU Band thing. Then I realized I don’t want to be that guy any more. I don’t want to be the Duraflame log…
I want to root for NM State as a fan, support any other NM team secondarily (I’ve written multiple times about my late Grandpa’s love of the Lobos and how I strived to have a UNM themed funeral for him in July) and not be the poop-stirrer that everyone wants to be.
That’s not me. I want to be happy. So, Mr. Nunez, I regret the Tiktok video. As a person who strives to bring this state and schools together in some ways, I don’t want to be a part of the problem. I apologize to Mario Moccia in the same breath for the video because it just elongated the issues at hand.
Here’s what I feel:
The problem with managing a large event, dozens of people on email threads/slack channels/teams…whatever, is that lines inevitably get crossed. I worked at a bank with 220,000 employees. Sometimes things are heard wrong, interpreted wrong, etc. It happens. Big events have issues because there’s so many people involved, many of them volunteers who aren’t full time workers.
While I took the reports at their word, and of course that Kill and Moccia had these discussions to clear up any confusion and misconceptions, it only piqued my interest more as to how everything happened in September. So let’s talk about the origins of it.
But I want to say this column is more about when the video came out and not the aftermath.
How The Leaked Video Was First Reported
If you remember how the Diego urinating video was reported, it was a Sunday night after the NM State Aggies lost a late-night affair the night before to Hawai’i in Manoa 20-17. That same day, the UNM Lobos, fresh off the loss to NM State the week before and a “guarantee” by head coach Danny Gonzales that UNM would get to a bowl, would beat UMass (a team who beat NM State) 34-31 in overtime in Amherst.
It was a game that the Lobos almost blew, but they were able to persevere in the extra session. Lobos fans, take solace that NM State lost to a team you beat at their house.
The Raiders were playing the Steelers in a pointless (to me) Sunday Night Game in Vegas. I am half paying attention, because I was footballed out at that moment. Sitting on my couch, waiting for this music videos show that comes out Sunday Nights to come out. I love watching 80s music videos for some reason.
It is almost 10pm. I get a Snapchat push vibration. I barely use Snapchat any more. I have very few friends I want to keep up with. My friend Dorella is one of them. She lives in the ABQ area, and when her message comes through, she asks me what is going on with the NM State QB. After our loss to Hawai’i where he didn’t play well, but not worthy of that kind of message on a Sunday night, I ask her “what do you mean?”
She says, and I’m paraphrasing. “KOB said NM State QB was pissing on the UNM Field.”
I think my face probably looked like a man who has been in a coma for 30 years looks at today’s society.
“What?!?!”
I get a “Hold up…”
Several minutes later I get a sideways video of KOB Nightbeat after the game.
This is that story in full.
I know I have to be the first one to post this in the Las Cruces/El Paso area, because it was NOT on the internet at all. It was only there for the news watchers, a demographic that skews old, educated, and upper-middle class who will all be clutching their pearls at the story.
“Holy (bleeping bleep)” is what I said, as I try to censor myself on here for all you folks.
I have to be the one to post this. Not for the cred, but to make sure that the story isn’t initially dictated by how KTSM, KVIA or KOB from afar would want to dictate it with man on the street interviews and reporting/commentary that blurs the lines of an actual newscast. I post it, Dorella’s sideways video and all.
I was the first as you can see here.. before the 10pm news in El Paso. Again, in the heat of the moment, I wrote what was on the tweet and I regret the easy Nunez joke. I was just so mad at KOB for fomenting (poking the bear as I said) this rivalry even more, much less 8 days after the game happened.
A real breaking news report would have had it before the game itself, which would mean I guess they had the video before. I don’t THINK they had it before.. (although I will tell you why they had it much earlier than this Sunday report) because I think even KOB would not want to be the ones to foment brawls in the stands and put people in danger. They cannot be THAT stupid.
I posted about it 33 minutes before they did and it was their story.
And, I scooped Colin Deaver in this area by a full hour. He had comments from NM State purportedly at 11pm Sunday so he likely knew about it and sat on it until KOB did their thing. They are both NBC affiliates, but in this glorious corporate world we live in, KTSM and KRQE (CBS in ABQ) are more “siblings” than KOB/KTSM.
Stunned I got more views from him. One thing he does know is how to harness social media views from stories he reports.
Anyway, I stopped looking at the discourse for an hour or so, because my wife was going to bed and I wanted to talk to her before sleep. We talked about this and how we know it is going to blow up unlike anything we have seen. We know it because we know what local media does because we are big consumers of their product.
The UNM fans were already rabid as hell. It was getting bad. While I was a part of the discussions, and defending myself from arrows, I had no dog in the fight. I didn’t care how it happened. I can hear my friend Gabe, a rabid Lobo fan on Twitter, “Could I go piss in your living room?”
I like the dude a lot, but it is a false equivalency. Neither thing is acceptable, but a practice facility that you yourself would never be allowed in under any circumstances is something that you can’t qualify as “our practice facility.” You are not on the team. You are however the homeowner in the theoretical peeing in the living room.
I knew it would hit the fan. I also knew that it was a matter of time before other stations tried to talk about it.
I wasn’t doing AGGregator yet. I was more of just a Twitter “fan” occasionally commenting on stuff with some insight, and I definitely talked a lot about the media circus surrounding other NM State stuff that was going on, as it hijacked my local news for months.
But I knew because of what I established before on social media, I would likely be more the person that gets more traction because of my past doing other media things regarding banking and consumer advocacy.
Andres Valle, a KOAT weatherperson and morning reporter in Albuquerque followed me off the initial video hubbub online. A New Mexico State alumni and former KVIA personality, Andres followed me, which I promptly followed back. I should have followed him before, because I think he can be really successful in his field.
I knew he would DM me. I deal with reporters ALL the time with my bank work. He did just that.
The reason he asked ME about it, because as a good reporter, he knows that it is possible I had the video, which I didn’t. Why did it matter? Because KOAT did NOT want to credit KOB for the video, a move that would be made even more difficult to talk about without it by KOB watermarking the video like they were TMZ or something.
I get why they did that, but I mean, it’s only an exclusive because someone decided to leak it to you!
This is what KOAT had to use because they couldn’t run the video with the KOB watermark. Because I couldn’t get Andres the video or knew someone that had it, they ran a still photo of Diego with B-Roll (tv term) of the indoor facility with the Lobos in it.
Would I have given Andres the video if I had it? Yes. It’s not my content, someone else already shared it, and I understood from a media perspective why it was important for them to look for it from another source. I know they would have ran with it more and made it that much more vitriolic, but like I said, it was already out there, and I get why a competitor did NOT want to credit another station with it.
FWIW, KTSM ran the video with the KOB watermark, as did ABC affiliate KVIA here in El Paso, which to me was WILD WILD WILD.
Journalistically, you want to show what everyone is talking about, but news orgs. are big about making themselves look good as opposed to deferring to a competitor for “Getting it first” when they likely didn’t do anything to obtain it rather than exist and have a contact that gave it to them.
KRQE: Same boat. They were late to the game so they ran footage of Pavia at Spring practice in lieu of crediting their competitor with the video.
We talked for a bit about the state of news coverage at KVIA and Andres agreed with my point about lack or resources and being overworked as a reporter in EP, something a lot of them feel I am sure. I won’t share screens of that though. It is private.
But I knew it was onto something, and because I was active on Twitter, I became kind of someone who was associated with the story, though I didn’t want to. Which led to my Diego Pavia support tweet.
I made this photo into a work of art for my office. I just loved the photo and superimposed a background of White Sands on it.
I “stood” with Diego Pavia, not because of what he did, because I don’t condone that from anyone.
Ask my male friends… I was always the stick in the mud. But at 40 years old, I was old enough to be Diego’s dad or really older brother, and I decided while he can do some stupid s***, I can still want him to succeed, get a degree, win games, whatever. Life’s too short to be so bitter.
OMG, you would have thought with some Lobos fans I was supporting Mussolini or something.
I received 3 death threats. I was called a pedophile. I was called “The Notorious Bitch,” and I was thoroughly lampooned just for support of a kid about to go through a moment.
It was hard, I’m not going to lie. It wasn’t the first time someone threatened to kill me, but it was definitely the lamest reason. I take those things with a grain of salt, but of course will be monitoring my email and phone after I post this. I was going to post those things, but I won’t, because honestly, this stuff messed with my mental health for one day, and I am sure this investigative work will do so again. But I have to do it BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE WILL!
The problem with society now is that it can be all or nothing. You have to throw baby and bathwater out otherwise you are just as bad as them. Do you think Jerry Kill wanted to kick him out? Nope. Because that’s too easy. An adult is there to teach lessons, and I am sure Diego Pavia learned some lessons from a take no s*** man in Jerry Kill, and he’s probably better off for it!
Rick Wright, the writer at the ABQ Journal who I thought retired a decade ago, who I used to love reading as a kid with my dad, for no reason, threw me under the bus as well.
Side note: ABQ Journal reporters and writers spend way too much time on Twitter talking and fighting with people who don’t matter. Grammer does it. Former Editor of the Las Cruces Sun-News Lucas Peerman does it when someone makes fun of their work.
Random Idiot: “Who reads the paper?”
Journal guy: “Actually thousands of readers enjoy our fine reporting!”
Don’t believe me?
It’s a really insecure person thing to do. These people are not doing their industry a favor by trying to “Son” a heckler. That’s a potential reader down the road. Now you pissed him off more (that dude is an idiot that he is fighting with FWIW) and now he will only possibly tell more people not to read, because you can’t just ignore commenting on someone who commented on the damn ABQJOURNAL twitter account, and not even YOUR Twitter account. My god.
I had over 200,000 customer interaction in my time at Bank of America (yes, BofA keeps track, because they are psychos) and I trained dozens of tellers, bankers, and relationship managers how to do effective customer service. Trying to condescendingly belittle them because they don’t agree with you would not fly in customer service, which you are a part of my friend. Your job is to attract readers not push away the ones that aren’t there yet.
Be proud of your work, but don’t be an idiot about it.
Ignore the haters, guys! Get to work. Talking smack to people without profile pics or a job on Twitter is literally the biggest waste of time you could do and while I want to support “local journalism” wink wink (shout out to Jeff for the lesson on why that’s not true) you being the kid who tells teacher she didn’t assign homework just isn’t it for me and the thousands who now read this.
I didn’t get most of my hate from Lobo fans until Rick Wright tagged me in a post.
Nothing to do with the original tweet but he made it about me and then Lobo nation pounced. Why? Because I have a differing opinion than you? My goodness. Get the metamucil, please.
Even Lobogabe, who I now call a friend, and would give a ride to the store if he needed it (how I judge a friend) threw my ass under the bus.
It was a rough time, and aside from a random chat about it here or there, I stopped talking about it. We were about to go on a winning streak and I wanted to talk about a possible once in a lifetime season at NM State (I hope not) and not this all the time. I am an adult.
Then I decided I love talking sports so much and the local news wasn’t writing about it, I would take on that role, and so far I have been super successful. I am trying HARD to be down the line fair, while of course wanting NM State to succeed. I am not a beat reporter, I am not a newspaper reporter. I am a writer and pundit if you will. I say my opinions, but I also give you straight coverage as needed of NM State (maybe UNM down the road as well if I want to have a career)
But it all kinda was backburnered until we started talking about the Bowl Game, just before the CUSA title game. I figured Pavia would finally have to talk and he did, and they were well done by Rachel Phillips and Colin Deaver. It told the story of the Aggies and Pavia BUT had to include that as part of this crazy year. No fault in that.
Unlike the coverage in September when they were 2-3 and just lost to Hawai’i, a bad team.
This KVIA story from September featured man on the street interviews with people who you know what they were going to say before they opened their mouths, and as you see on the video I am sharing of THE DIEGO PAVIA URINATING INCIDENT, THE FIRST STILL IS OF MIKE PEAKE’S FIGHT!!!!
Those two incidents are in different sports, different time periods, and yes, while both are rivalry “stokers” they have literally nothing to do with one another.
The reporter, Leiloba Seitshiro was a NM based reporter at the time of this story. As of January 2024, she is no longer employed at KVIA, and as part of a bigger project I am working on, after the departure of Tom Scott, a stalwart in that newsroom last year, Seitshiro was in the “New Mexico Mobile Newsroom” and had many stories I found dubious for my personal taste, including a story about a local coffee shop in Cruces being “forced” out of their shop by a landlord “after the pandemic” which I reported as the tenants simply not paying rent.
It was one of my first investigative pieces and she got it TOTALLY wrong. Those people are out of business now after allegedly trying to grift more money for their business.
It felt like a rudderless boat at KVIA with the constant harping on stories over and over again for clicks. Ever see their El Paso City Council Gas Card Story? My goodness, Youtube it.
My wife and I memorized this phrase from departed anchor Erik Elken.
”The Ongoing Controversy over the potential misuse of city of El Paso Taxpayer-funded gasoline cards.” He literally said that every day until he left.
It was the 2023 version of “2 all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun”
Colin Deaver, who I will tell you now, I am not really a fan of, did some reporting on this incident of course, and has made a successful career off the backs of Aggie scandals. Which is fine. Everyone has their big break somehow. I have no problem with that. But he interjects himself in Twitter comments if someone has something factually incorrect about the cases, which he is the self-anointed gatekeeper of.
While I can tell you that is his right to report the crap things that have happened at NM State, and I would support his right as a journalist to do so, It’s just too much at times and yes, to be openly critical of NM State, THERE SHOULD NOT BE ANY SCANDALS TO REPORT.
I feel while he is good. He takes it too far, and hard news sometimes is blurred by liberties as “the zany sports guy” having to insert humor in stuff that he portrays as “hard news”
When I heard the “trickling” joke, I rolled my eyes, and KTSM instantly lost a little cred from me. Seeing Natassia Paloma’s face tells me, “Hey, look what I am going to do on the bumper to this story!”
Report it but don’t joke about it and then expect me to take your hard news reporting seriously. You aren’t John Oliver or Gutfeld! I just can’t. It’s either the worst thing in the world as you portrayed it, or you want to have fun with it like you did here. It can’t be both.
I personally think Colin Deaver would be a kick-ass main anchor, and I have told my wife this many times. He did some news coverage when Biden was in El Paso last year, and it just worked. I could totally see him doing that, but there comes a point in time in your life when you are old and if you want to make this a career, being the one who would rather use social media to get likes and those little jokes in instead of striving for more for yourself, I simply can’t take you serious.
Take what I said as a compliment, please, Colin. Sports guy in the 95th DMA is cool, but you can be so much more. You know this.
Anyway, I just got so tired of it, and I decided to not talk about it until I definitively had more things in my cache to understand and make an educated opinion.
So, I waited for news organizations to do a deep dive on the video origin story.
ABQ Journal? Nada.
Las Cruces Sun-News? Did they even pay their internet bill? Nothing
KVIA? Nothing
KTSM? Nothing
Even KRQE/KOAT/KOB, ABQ Stations who crave every bit of NM State drama? Nothing.
What the hell?
All these people? Worthless that they couldn’t spend two seconds trying to figure out how the originating incident happened which led to a 3 month poop-storm!
Can’t wait for them to read this and then tweet out their excuses and/or critiques of my hard work. I have spent weeks on this. (If you support me, I ask for your support if that does happen.)
Any one of these entities could easily do a little bit of reporting, have a BIG-ASS story, get millions of views and millions of kudos, and what happens in this media landscape? You make money. You get better jobs because of your investigative reporting. That’s how it works.
I never in a million years thought I would have to do the investigative work the same way I had to write recaps and news about NM State. I am not this person. I didn’t want to be, but someone had to do it and I volunteered, and now I have a small business.
How can news organizations that harped on this story for three months, amidst a poop-storm in September, a reigniting in November, and the Kill presser and subsequent “it’s all a misunderstanding” in December not want to figure out how to get to the bottom of this? Are these people real reporters or are they memorex? (Shout out to the 40+ crowd who get that reference)
So I decided I am going to get to the bottom of it for one reason only: Not to hate UNM, Not to find fault in NM State, but to put this stupid silly part of the rivalry behind us. Diego Pavia is likely gone. Jerry Kill IS gone. The coach on the other team is gone.
In order to move on, let’s revisit the past to understand it and then go on with our lives.
With friends who work in state government, and others who have worked at a university back home in the ABQ area, I am familiar with IPRA.
When I think of “the public” doing IPRA requests, I think of some old old old old cantankerous old man who frequents city council meetings, refers to elected officials as “you people” and rails against what is wrong with this damn country all the time. He is high-strung, a pain in the ass to talk to, likely constipated, and very ornery.
My bank where I was a manager at was literally nothing but old people like that, so it’s no stereotype. That being said, I loved talking to those old people.
But dear god, I don’t want to be one. I don’t think I am. I am closer to “media” than “crotchety old man”.
I am NOT doing this for NM State. I did this of my own volition because the local media in two markets did do nothing. If anything, I am doing it for the state of New Mexico, and because of the team on the other end, if I can clear anyone on the Lobos side of “being in on it” I will do just that.
It’s the honorable thing to do, because at the end of the day, I am a “State of New Mexico” fan and want a rivalry, but a peaceful one that only manifests itself on the field.
I am a man of my word, and I know that may not be ENOUGH for some of you, but I am going to show you some things that I feel that are actually somewhat positive on the UNM side of things. But.. there are things I am still criticizing and looking for.
So because of this great country and great state we live in, I used my right as a public citizen/quasi-media member to request TEXT MESSAGES, EMAILS, DOCUMENTS…Anything regarding the release of the Diego Pavia video from UNM’s side of things. I wanted to see who knew what, when, and why.
When was the video released?
How did the media request information about it?
What were the higher-ups talking about as it was happening?
With the help of someone who knows how to write up these things, I submitted several requests with the office at UNM for any information that contained information of Diego Pavia, the video, the NM Bowl, or any “banning” of NM State from the facility, or any conversation regarding that.
Cue some uneducated people saying, “YOU CAN’T DO THAT! THOSE ARE PRIVATE DOCUMENTS!”
Yes, you can. No they are not. Ever hear the phrase, “Don’t post what you don’t want your mom to see?” Well, when you are an institution that uses emails, teams, phones, text messages, everything is documented.
Big companies do it too. This is a true story. I once got a write up for hitting the F11 key at the bank too many times in one day. F11 was a way of updating the time on the software on the screen, but according to my old company, it was actually counting as a “transaction” every time I did that, making it look like we were fudging our traffic on certain days. I got yelled at for hitting a button, and all I thought was “they track how many times I hit a damn button?”
But yes, everything is documented. I put in my requests, which is my right.
Again, it wasn’t meant as a gotcha. I just wanted to know more than I know we were being told by the media because they were literally useless at their jobs here. They could have reported the “how it happened” instead of the collateral damage by the report from KOB.
Through an IPRA request filed by me, James Baca, I have a text message exchange between Eddie Nunez and Danny Gonzales where Nunez messages Gonzales during the NFL game that 4 (KOB) will be running the Pavia story after the game.
Now, of course UNM is going to get the heads up, because any good reporter would ask them for comment before the story came out, right? So Nunez tells Gonzales about it. No biggie.
I will get back to this screenshot in a bit.
The comment that UNM used to respond to KOB’s request for comment was workshopped at 3pm-ish on Wednesday the 20th
That is UNM Assistant AD David Williams emailing the statement to Frank Mercogliano. If you ever did PR, you know it is important to say the right words in these statements. Simple and too the point. Don’t be James Baca about it (I mean look at how much I have written)
Here’s Mercogliano writing Tommy Lopez of KOB a few minutes after he got that statement from Williams.
So mind you, this is 4 days from it airing. The fact that KOB just didn’t say “screw it” and air it on 5pm Wednesday is telling because that means, they weren’t worried that a competitor scooped them/has the same tape, which in my opinion (an opinion I am entitled to have) indicates it leaked internally from UNM.
Here’s the scary thing about that. What if someone leaked the video of Diego the night before the game to KOB? Would there even been a game or would they have done what some high schools do and play in an empty stadium? If that were to happen, I would think the leaking of the video would have fomented insane amounts of vitriol.
Again, I am not here defending Pavia. Maybe NM State was too light. Who cares now? He’s not here at the moment.. but Someone leaked the video to KOB who could have very easily had it pregame if it had been in circulation that long. We just don’t know and I won’t speculate, but they would be idiots if so…
Back to the Nunez text to Gonzales:
I am going to pay Nunez a BIG compliment here. What?!?!?!?
Yes, it is true. Don’t get mad. But I originally started writing about workplace advocacy and consumer advocacy. I had some terrible bosses in the banking industry, and very rarely did they contact me to motivate me and to guide me. They managed nothing.
Say what you will about Nunez, but his (I’m paraphrasing) “Don’t talk about Diego. That’s NMSU’s problem. Focus on our opponent.” is textbook good management of a person. He’s trying to keep his employees eye on the prize and away from distraction. I have no problem commending him. He also mentions that Jeff Siembieda is going to ask him about it, which Gonzales isn’t stupid, he knows that might happen… Because he is on Siembieda’s show regularly as coach.
Kill was on there too FYI
Another thing: Nunez is a fan. He watches games like you and me. Here he is talking to Rich Waltz of CBS Sports Network DURING THE GAME in regards to a joke he had about Liberty RB Aaron Bedgood to Waltz.
We’re all stupid sports fans at heart, and certainly for Nunez to work in his role, I mean.. you got to love sports, right? So he is watching the NM State game like all of us. He had a funny about Aaron Bedgood, which to be frank, I didn’t think of either, so good job by him. Bedgood was working at State Farm before he played at Liberty
Plus the conversation about Diego Pavia’s injury which none of us knew was a true thought of concern, with Walz reiterating how tough Diego was. See? We are all not made of stone.
Eddie Nunez loves the games like us.
So when the video aired, of course, other news organizations were scrambling for information. Here’s Andres Valle of KOAT doing a great and thorough job at trying to get information from UNM Assistant AD Mercogliano.
LOL at Mercogliano’s one sentence answers. I bet he texts “K” a lot on his phone.
Here’s a message from Mercogliano to Williams mentioning “Yeah, we sent him the same one sentence we sent KOB”
This message also alerted me to the fact Nunez has 2 email addresses at UNM. More on that at the end.
A message to Sean Reider of the Journal basically is just letting Sean know of the cookie-cutter statement UNM is using for this conversation.
Chris McKee, a little late to the game, because unlike KTSM not caring about airing a watermarked video from NBC affiliate KOB, KRQE, a Nexstar sibling of KTSM likely didn’t want to air it with the watermark, so it is possible they were late on the story because of something like that. Not really sure why, because they are a seasoned bunch at KRQE.
For the record Chris McKee of KRQE follows me on Twitter. We only had one interaction, and that was because of an awesome story from Gabrielle Burkhart regarding a Las Cruces homeowner who was scammed. He and Gabrielle did a deep dive online about this story after which I loved a lot.
I was pissed that Las Cruces being so far from ABQ that no El Paso stations did this story to help this lady. Seeing as there was a bank element to it, I could have helped this lady as well
Watch it. It’s really good. You are going to be at my blog for like 2 hours ha.
So, reporters attempting to report. That’s the name of the game. But of course the reporters were responding to the video coming out, and almost never to how it surfaced?
I don’t know, but I have my thoughts of how it ended up at KOB four days after the game and 4 days until they finally aired it.
We all joked about the incident as it happened. Diego urinated on the Lobos field.
NMSU Fans: Hahahahahahaha. They deserve it.
UNM Fans: Hahahahahaha. Peeing on grass like the dogs they are
Plus Every old person making pee jokes on Facebook
Everyone is a comedian now, including the people who claim to be reporters. For the record, I like Geoff Grammer’s basketball coverage a lot. The jokes? Not so much. It’s off-putting at times.
Would Nunez joke about it too? I don’t see why he wouldn’t. We all have things that piss us off at work that we maybe laugh about after a drink or two. No, I am not insinuating the man drinks, but I am just saying. Nunez can’t be wound up so tight.
I received this text exchange as part of my FOI request.
I had no clue who Derek was. D.I.? Then I saw “Pass to Kanoa that the call was perfect and awesome”
I know of only one Kanoa that calls games.
Kanoa Leahey who calls games for University of Hawai’i football. I really enjoy their broadcasts, FYI.
So I had to figure out who Derek was that messaged Nunez.
I came to the conclusion it was
Derek Inouchi, a media relations guy for Hawai’i.
It was a contemporary in your industry talking with you and Nunez was tasking him with sharing pleasantries to Kanoa. Cool. No problem with that.
This exchange happens after Nunez fired Gonzales as UNM Head Coach.
Here’s that part:
“Yeah it sucks”
One more compliment for Nunez… What?!?!?!?
Yes, I am going to make sure to give credit where credit is due. It is NEVER fun to fire someone. It is NEVER fun to take someone’s livelihood away, even if it means saving your ass. I am sure Mario Moccia feels this way too. We can all be hard-asses, but we are not all Mr. Spacely blindly firing Jetson as often as possible with no recourse.
I am sure it sucks for him. No doubt. It’s a lot of work to hire someone new, and it is not fun to have to get rid of people. So he could have easily went low there with a friend, but he didn’t.
A week later, Derek from Hawai’i went low as New Mexico State was picked to play in the New Mexico Bowl.
I love people over the age of 20 using emoji. To send that message about “Hey, let me guess… Pavia is banned from the campus because of the you know what!” implies an all-too real feeling that this is talked about ad nauseum.
I don’t like this text message from Derek to Nunez for this reason. It tells me that the Pavia incident was something talked about often. Rarely do people who you know from work but don’t actually WORK with you just barge in on something that might have been your pain in the ass unless they feel comfortable to make that comment.
I mean, he has Nunez’s phone number and they messaged before. But for a Hawai’i employee to possibly (I don’t know) use a U of H device to talk to Nunez on a UNM device about an NMSU player… It’s a little skeevy, not going to lie.
Jokes like this are in my personal opinion what was going on the whole time NM State was in the bowl radar for the NM Bowl. I think a compilation of remarks, jokes, quips about “Will Diego be allowed in the building?” was the result of the issues in December, both real and miscommunicated.
Again, I am not condoning Pavia’s actions.
I am just stating that his actions should have NOTHING to do with the bowl game stuff, and if it was that much of a problem, then NM State should not have been invited to the game if you wanted to avoid controversy. People wouldn’t have liked it, but it would have made more sense.
I will say I believe Nunez had an issue deep down. I am sure any one would, but I will say he can’t be that dumb to be a wild card about something that has contracts with it like use of a facility that was afforded to every single team before and after..
That doesn’t mean he can’t joke and make comments and cause this discourse that made someone not him even broach the subject of “Hey, you guys have to practice outside because of Diego.”
Derek Inouchi of Hawai’i was out of bounds with that comment.
Now, finally let’s talk about the Gonzales to Nunez exchange I received.
I have no animus for Eddie Nunez beyond a couple things in the past.
But in the spirit of making a S**t-ton of money for both schools who hold a place in my heart, even though I attended 0 classes at either (I am an ENMU alum), I want this to end. It is not healthy stuff. It’s insane in a way you could never write a movie about.
One of my ten-year goals is to write a screenplay for a movie/tv show and no company would make this movie about the Aggies/Lobos rivalry because it is too over the top. Yes, Auburn/Alabama is bigger, but nothing gets more personal than something like this one.
I want to like Eddie Nunez the same way I like Mario Moccia and I like anyone who makes a lot of money doing what they love. It is an important goal to have, because a lot of us hate what we do and hate the pay too.
I do believe that Eddie Nunez wants to represent UNM the best he can, and I wish them well with Bronco Mendenhall as their new coach. I will be watching the basketball team as well, and if they somehow make the final 4, I will be going to Phoenix for it. I promise that. I support New Mexico as a state in any way possible.
Danny Gonzales? Eh, I don’t really know him, but I wish him well. Winning is hard in this state. Don’t I know it from all the years of futility from NM State football? I think after the NM State game when he guaranteed the bowl appearance, he was already done. It was a bold promise that only could fail, because it was a long haul to 6 wins.
I think he is young enough to be savvy to know how to motivate young kids in unique ways.
What do I mean?
I believe the video was used as “bulletin board material” prior to the NM State game, and I believe that had UNM won, we may have never seen the video.
I feel that whomever leaked the video to KOB did it as a means of “getting back” at them after the Aggies won in ABQ.
I think whoever did it (I don’t know who) was vindictive and if they had it before the game, the way social media works, could have instigated fights and violence, and that is unacceptable Here’s the exchange between Gonzales and Nunez.
LOL.
I get LOL is a crutch for a lot of us, no matter the age. We use LOL when we flirt. We use LOL when we really mean something but want to place insurance like we are playing blackjack to give us an out to make sure we show others we are kidding.
But to LOL in the moment where you get the information that there was a NM State kid who urinated on the field and as the CEO of Lobo Sports, I would say you would be in your right mind to be pissed off beyond belief. I get that. I want LOBO Fans to feel that way about their AD. That doesn’t give Lobo fans the right like minions and call me a “pedophile” because they don’t like my POV for example.
I want NM State fans to feel that way about their leaders. I want them to lead and get to the bottom of things.
But LOL? In the heat of the moment when you just found out your team is being punk’d by someone leaking this video to piss them off? What are we doing here?
I can’t take you being upset seriously front-facing if you LOL’d the person who got it in the moment. I can’t. As much as I complimented Nunez in the other stuff, I can’t do it here. I can’t.
But I do support his case for being mad. Even though he doesn’t run the NM Bowl, I do believe the discourse caused in September by how KOB aired it, off of the obvious leak of the video to them actually did more harm than good in UNM NMSU relations. It really did.
This is not a rivalry. This is the movie Grumpy Old Men
Eddie Nunez is Walter Matthau,
Mario Moccia and NMSU are Jack Lemmon
If you watched the movie, you get what I mean, moron.
Putz!
But let’s look at the last screen I have
Nunez asks the question I have. How’d they have the player phone numbers… and yours?
Ok, maybe Diego or a couple of people maybe have a couple of UNM players phone numbers. People are friends. People go to 7 on 7 camps together..stuff like that. I get that. It could happen. But the wild card to me is Danny Gonzales got the video as well on his phone.
I am not 17 years old, nor am I having an affair or doing drug deals, but what app can you send to a phone number that comes back as a “bunch of numbers” as the returning phone number? Who has such a detailed mailing list of phone numbers of a team they are not a part of AND it so happens to make it to ONLY one TV station in ABQ?
That’s the million dollar question that we will never know. But I would love to know aside from Gonzales, what players and possibly what coaches got the video as well. I think that would be the most telling.
Again, for the millionth time I want to say I do not condone Diego Pavia’s actions one bit. That doesn’t mean I don’t have questions.
I have wasted wayyyyyy too much of your time already. But let me end with this.
I am a former bank manager. Part of my responsibilities is asking questions. People hate it, but it’s part of the job. I ask questions to sell you products. When you have fraud, I ask questions on how it happened to prevent it in the future. If you bring me a sketchy-ass check that looks like it will be returned, I am going to ask questions.
This is why I have respect for the media when they do their stuff right. Asking questions is hard.
Years of fraud compliance training always taught me to go beyond what I know to see what I see on a deeper perspective. When something is too convenient, my stupid brain turns on.
Nothing about how the video got released made sense to me as it happened. Months later, seeing the reporters from other outlets scramble to cover it, it was quite clear it was a direct leak from someone more than likely at UNM to make NM State look bad. And it did. It will for a while too. Mission accomplished. .
KOB during the Peake investigation was very bombastic with their coverage, as well as the hazing scandal. I get it. It is big news.. But they were a little different than the others. It felt more reality TV-ish, and I don’t like it one bit.
KOB is owned by Hubbard Broadcasting, which also owns the Reelz channel.
Celebrity Autopsies, the LIVE PD Doppelganger, On Patrol Live, COPS, Jail, and other true crime stuff litters their channel.
Don’t get me wrong, I watch all that s*** LOL.
I love it. But I don’t love it with local news. The editorial direction of KOB has changed a lot in the last 30 years when Tom Joles and Carla Aragon roamed the anchor desk. They were professionals and they were AWESOME. I watched them with my grandpa daily.
Now we got main anchor Tessa Mentus making Diego “leak” jokes on Twitter and then pretending to be oblivious to why it is not above board.
What would Edward R. Murrow think? Cronkite, the man whose name bears the freaking j-school that a lot of these reporters went to at Arizona State? I am a millennial, weaned by the internet since the 1990s and this is cringe for the news industry. It is.
This version of KOB is nothing more than the National Enquirer looking to pop a rating. The airing of the Story on September 24th after the Sunday night football game were not just MEN were watching but… FREAKIN MEN . The ones who eat, drink, and burp football and rivalries and have loud disdain for teams they hate. Couple that with the two teams playing that night, Steelers and Raiders, with two of the toughest fanbases out there.
Add in the mix of people watching at bars, restaurants, and amongst friends, even though you didn’t foment a violent event at a football game by not airing it before the rivalry game, you stoked a violent, acerbic, harassing part of the rivalry by holding the video until this time.
Yes, the ratings are bigger after SNF, but in this social media world, a great story would go viral on a Wednesday, the very Wednesday Tommy Lopez of KOB asked for comment on the video they may or may not have gotten from a UNM source.
It is irresponsible journalism at a minimum, and being complicit in causing harassment among their viewers at worse. It sucks and it is wrong. I ask Michelle Donaldson, the GM of KOB to look in the mirror and take a look at what the coverage has become in the last few years.
I am not asking for the source, I am not stupid. A good journalist never reveals that, but I am asking for this to be a come to Jesus moment. You are “making” the news instead of reporting it by being a part of the machine that is being used to denigrate New Mexico State University.
Did KOB, KRQE, KOAT and the ABQ Journal in ABQ, NOT EVEN BOTHER to investigate what really happened for fear of losing access to UNM athletics in any way if they probe too hard? There’s so many unanswered questions here, and no one asked them.
I do want to say all my IPRA Requests were not fulfilled all the way. I did not get what I asked for. I got absolutely zero correspondence regarding the Aggies bowl game appearance, which ironically enough would have been some of the last correspondence in the UNM Athletics office before winter break, so it should have been front and center.
I also saw approximately ZERO emails from El Paso and Las Cruces media outlets in the request from UNM. Now, they very well all could have called and not emailed. I get that, but what are the odds not one email was passed? I believe I wasn’t given it. Simple as that.
I got almost zero correspondence regarding fired coach Danny Gonzales. I got a giant stat sheet and that was it, and I got zero correspondence from UNM to NMSU regarding the incident. Don’t get me wrong, what I got was good, but there is so much more to locate. I want to put this rivalry to rest in its current form, and I intend on using brain power not child-like actions for that.
I have one outstanding IPRA request remaining, and if it is not fulfilled to my satisfaction, I will be consulting New Mexico Foundation for Open Government to help me complete my tasks.
It is not something I want to do, but damn it, no reporters in ABQ, Las Cruces or El Paso wanted to do it, So James Baca, one man is going to do it for you all. I will try to save journalism while get to the bottom of why things are the way they are.
It is unacceptable to have such vitriol and I want UNM to succeed and thrive as much as NMSU to succeed and thrive. I am from Socorro, I went to school in Portales, I live in Cruces. I am ABQ savvy. I am a NEW MEXICAN and I want answers for my state.
To Eddie Nunez, who wrote me an email, which after 13 years of working at a bank, told me to talk to him the phone. Whenever someone did that to me at work, it always was a pre-cursor to being chewed out on the phone. He wanted my number which I’m sure he had from my request. I put my real one on there.
I will respond to you at both of your email address and I will be as nice and courteous as you were to me. I thank you for the email, which was sincere, and I don’t think the phone call would have been. LOL.
Still trying to figure out if him wanting to talk about my open records request is above board LOL. I want to believe it is, because I left this research with a little bit better opinion of Mr. Nunez, though I believe we don’t know everything yet. Someone once mentioned to me Nunez is a “convenient villain” for NM State. I could see that, but I don’t want villians. I am not f-ing Batman.
I will give you a personal explanation, Mr. Nunez as to why I am doing this. Note: Not because I write about NM State. I would give it all up now if I could get all the answers. I wish you and your school the best and look forward to our next set of games.
Plus, I will IPRA my emails to you and you to me and I will make sure they are accessible to everybody.
This has to end. IF 12,000 WORDS researched by me over the course of a month is NOT enough to prove to you that I am better than any writers for any newspaper in this state or El Paso for that matter, if I am not more insightful than those who claim to have all the answers like the TV talking heads who claim to cover your local sports teams, then I will just work harder and get you 20,000 words.
They say an average book is 60,000 words. I am already 1/5th of the way there with this.
Good luck to the Lobos, NM State, New Mexico as a whole and most importantly, Good luck to us without thorough journalism in this area.
James Baca - AGGregator
PS. Along with my donation to Roadrunner Food Bank, I will make a donation to UNM Athletics in some form as well. It will not be a lot, in fact, it won’t be something to even get me junk mail asking to donate more, but it will be something to show my true seeking of the truth. I give you my word.
Statement to the media that may be inquiring
Tired yet? I am. I am done with this. I’ll be back to talk about something fun soon.