The Jerry Kill era is over at New Mexico State.
According tomultiple reports, Kill is stepping down and wide receivers coach Tony Sanchez will be the team's next head coach.
Kill has been New Mexico State’s coach for the past two seasons as the program had two of its best seasons in years. The Aggies went 7-6 in 2022 and won the Quick Lane Bowl for just the second bowl win in program history. This season, New Mexico State went 10-5 and won 10 games for the first time since 1960.
The Aggies lost the New Mexico Bowl to Fresno State on Dec. 16.
After that game, Kill unleashed a postgame rant about the University of New Mexico's handling of pre-bowl preparations. Kill said that New Mexico had been reluctant to let New Mexico State use its indoor facility ahead of the bowl game because of an incident earlier in the year when NMSU QB Diego Pavia allegedly urinated on the New Mexico logo at the facility.
New Mexico State was Kill’s first head coaching job since he stepped down at Minnesota midway through the 2015 season because of health reasons. Kill had multiple seizures on the sideline while at Minnesota.
Minnesota was 29-29 in Kill’s four-plus seasons in charge. He came to the Gophers after a successful spell at Northern Illinois. The Huskies went 11-3 in 2010 as Kill was hired as Minnesota’s coach at the end of the regular season.
Before joining NMSU, Kill was an assistant at TCU and was the team’s interim head coach for the final four games of the season after Gary Patterson’s departure.
Sanchez was an offensive assistant with Kill at TCU in 2021 and came to New Mexico State ahead of the 2022 season. Before he was at TCU, Sanchez was the head coach at UNLV from 2015-19 after a six-year stint as a high school football coach in Las Vegas. UNLV was 20-40 in Sanchez’s tenure.