LAS CRUCES, N.M. (KVIA) — New Mexico State head coach Jerry Kill is stepping down indefinitely after two years and wide receivers coach Tony Sanchez will take over.
Pete Thamel was the first to report the news, and ABC-7 has since confirmed it.
ABC-7 learned Monday that athletic director Mario Moccia had raised enough money and would offer Kill a new contract this week. That contract was handed to Kill on Tuesday and is worth an unprecedented $1.1 million over his remaining four years, which would have represented a raise of $450,000 over his original base salary next year.
On Thursday, Kill declined the offer. He told ABC-7 on Saturday that the decision had absolutely nothing to do with money and that he chose family over football and will never be a college football head coach again.
“It was hard, but I also have two daughters who I didn’t get to spend much time with during my coaching days. I have a granddaughter that I see five times a year, all during football and after.” When she lost the bowl game, she came up to me and said, 'I love you, Dad, come home with me ', and that stuck with me for a while and I thought about it,” Kill said. “I will be 63 years old and you know I will be leaving my job as head coach. Everyone wants to do something for their health. That's not the case at all, that's not the case, there's just no more gas in the tank.”
He went on to say that the new college football landscape with NIL and the transfer portal has made the job more difficult for coaches, especially at a place like NMSU.
“I definitely went back to coaching 82 different times and 82 different ways, but you know from a head coaching standpoint he had decided that this was going to be the right thing for him,” Moccia said. “I can't thank Jerry Kill enough for everything he has done for us. He left it all out on the field. I really don't think he had anything left in the tank. I wish his tenure was longer.”
“The hardest thing for me is Las Cruces, the people and the support I had across the country,” Kill said.
Kill led the team to their most successful consecutive seasons in over 60 years. The Aggies appeared in back-to-back bowl games for the first time since 1959-60 (they won the Quick Lane Bowl, leading them to their first win over an SEC team in program history and their first 10-win season since then). 1960. Overall, the Aggies were 17-11 with Kill on top.
Sources told ABC-7 that Kill held a meeting with players and coaches this afternoon to inform them of the news.
The greatest coach in recent Aggie history told ABC-7 that he wants to remain involved in the sport and with NMSU and hopes to serve as an analyst. Moccia told ABC-7 that there will always be an open door to kill.
It's pretty safe to say that new head coach Tony Sanchez will adopt the same policy. When news of Kill's departure broke, we also learned that current wide receivers coach Tony Sanchez would be taking over the program.
Moccia said he felt it was too late to conduct a national search for a new head coach and instead looked inward.
“We firmly believe we have found the right man and a former Aggie in Tony Sanchez,” Moccia said. “We will not go backwards, we will do everything we can to keep the program where it is and/or grow it. That might be a bold statement, but we worked too damn hard to get here, we're definitely not going to make it.” We're going to sit back and cry in our beer, okay. We're going to do everything we can, from every alum, every staff member, everyone that I can control, we're going to make sure we try to keep this on the right track.”
Sanchez was the head coach at UNLV from 2015 to 2019, where he had an overall record of 20-40. He spent two years as a player at New Mexico State from 1994 to 1995 and became an assistant coach with the Aggies in 1996. From 1998 to 2014, he coached at high schools including Organ Mountain, Irvin, Calif. and Bishop Gorman, where he won six straight championships.
“He’s got a lot of energy, a lot of juice,” Kill said. “He's a guy who's going to work his ass off and you know he's capable of all the things I've done. He has that, you know, he’s not sixty-three, let’s say, or sixty-two.”
Moccia told ABC-7 they are still working out the details of Sanchez's contract, but they expect it to be a similar salary to Kill's expected base salary, which has been set at $650,000 next year.
Kill may have laid the foundation for Sanchez, but there's no question he still has a lot of work to do in the days, weeks and months ahead.
Just a few hours after the coaching change, NMSU quarterback Diego Pavia entered the transfer portal.
Sanchez also must now find a wide receivers coach to fill his spot, a new co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach after Melvin Rice followed NMSU offensive coordinator Tim Beck to Vanderbilt on Saturday and defensive backs coach Cliff Odom moved to Mississippi State as special teams coordinator.