NMSU head coach Jerry Kill steps down after two years

LAS CRUCES, New Mexico (KVIA) -- New Mexico State head coach Jerry Kill is stepping down indefinitely after two years and wide receivers coach Tony Sanchez will takeover.

Pete Thamel was the first to report the news and ABC-7 has since confirmed.

ABC-7 learned on Monday that Athletic Director Mario Moccia had raised enough money and would offer Kill a new contract this week. That contract was given to Kill on Tuesday and worth an unprecedented $1.1 million for his remaining four years, which would have been a $450,000 pay increase from his initial base salary next year.

On Thursday Kill turned down the offer. He told ABC-7 on Saturday the decision had absolutely nothing to do with money and that he was choosing family over football and he will never be a college head football coach again.

"It's been tough but I also have two daughters that I didn't get to spend a lot of time with when I was coaching all this time, I have a granddaughter that I see five times a year and it's all during football and after we lost the bowl game she came up to me and said 'I love you Papa, come home with me' and that kind of stuck with me for a while and I put some thought into it," Kill said. "I'm going to be 63 years old and you know I'm giving up a head coaching job. Everyone wants to make things about health. It's not at all that, it's not that, there's just no more gas in the gas tank."

He went onto say the new college football landscape with NIL and the transfer portal has made things harder for coaches especially at a place like NMSU.

"I certainly went back at coach you know 82 different times and 82 different ways but you know he had made up his mind that from a head coaching standpoint that this was going to be it for him," Moccia said. "I can't thank Jerry Kill enough for all that 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 you know all the support I had throughout the Country," Kill said.

Kill led the team to its most successful consecutive seasons in over 60 years. The Aggies went to back-to-back bowl games for the first time since 1959-60 (they won the Quick Lane Bowl, he led them to their first ever win over an SEC team in program history and their first 10-win season since 1960. Overall the Aggies went 17-11 with Kill at the helm.

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 he still wants to be involved with the sport and with NMSU and hopes to act in analyst role. Moccia told ABC-7 there will always be an open door to Kill.

It's pretty safe to say new head coach Tony Sanchez will have the same policy. As the news of Kill's departure broke, simultaneously we learned that current wide receivers coach Tony Sanchez will take over the program.

Moccia said he thought it was too late to conduct a national search for a new head coach and instead looked internally.

"We certainly believe we found the right guy and a former Aggie in Tony Sanchez," Moccia said. "We are not going to regress, we're going to do everything we can to keep the program where it is and or increase. That maybe a bold statement, but we worked too damn hard to get here, we sure ain't going to sit back and cry in our beer, okay. We're going to do anything we can from every alum, every staff member, everybody that I can control, we will make sure we try to keep this on the right track."

Sanchez was the head coach at UNLV from 2015-2019 where he had a 20-40 overall record. He spent two years at New Mexico State as a player from 1994-95, in 1996 he became an assistant coach with the Aggies. From 1998 - 2014 he coached at high schools, including Organ Mountain, Irvin, California 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 that is going work his butt off and you know he's capable of doing all the stuff I did. He's got that you know, he's not sixty-three let's put it that way, or sixty-two." 

Moccia told ABC-7 they are still finalizing the details of Sanchez's contract but they expect it to be similar money to Kill's expected base salary which was set to be $650,000 next year.

Kill may have laid the platform for Sanchez but there's no question he will have a lot of work to do in the coming days, weeks and months.

Only hours after the coaching change, NMSU quarterback Diego Pavia entered the transfer portal.

Sanchez now also needs to find a wide receivers coach to fill his spot, a new co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach after Melvin Rice on Saturday followed NMSU offensive coordinator Tim Beck to Vanderbilt and defensive backs coach Cliff Odom joined Mississippi State as the special teams coordinator.