Yea it was the beginning of the end. Think it was a bar shooting if I remember correctly.
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UNM and their part in the threat of the NCAA investigation/probation made it very hard for Jackie to get HS recruits the last couple of years. I think we signed about 22 "AA" JC players from all over the county. Two years later only 2 were starters. I subscribed to Dawg's Bite back in those day ( weekly paper mailed to State fans who subscribed). That 1st year there was a quote after one of our losses from a starting DB from a Kansas JC or somewhere. He said that he knew we were in trouble for that game as he was tying his cleats before the game and didn't know the names of many of his team mates. Jackie's last 3 years were tough and UNM helped along with a corrupt NCAA.
That investigation didn't help, but I have to think that part of the reason for going really heavy with JUCO's was because we had a lot of success with them between 96-2000. When we started to have a lot of success with them I think other schools started to follow and it shut down our gold mine.