COMMENTARY: What will Doug Martin's legacy be?
What will Doug Martin's nine-year tenure at New Mexico State be remembered for in five or 10 years?
Martin’s contract ends in June 2022, and according to reports, the school has already identified his successor prior to the Aggies season finale on Saturday against Massachusetts at Aggie Memorial Stadium.
The head coach at NM State has historically been among the most difficult in college football, and Martin has been the head coach during a difficult transition to independent football, twice, and a pandemic wiped out 2020 season.
More: Doug Martin enters final year of contract following pandemic shortened 2020
At opposite ends of the spectrum for Martin’s nine-year tenure is the high point of the 2017 Arizona Bowl victory, but his 24-74 overall record at the school has proven 2017 to be an outlier.
Martin's 24 percent win percentage will not land him in the top tier of Aggies coaches and there is a large sample size as Saturday will be his 99th game. Martin is fourth all time in coaching wins, but his nine-year tenure is the third longest in school history. Tony Samuel won 34 games in eight seasons and Jim Bradley won 23 games in five seasons.
But Martin will forever be just the second Aggies coach to win a bowl game, which is a significant accomplishment.
The good
Martin took over with a scholarship shortage when he replaced DeWayne Walker in 2013, but by 2017, he proved that the Aggies can play competitive football and reach bowl eligibility every few years.
The 2017 season was the Aggies sixth .500 or better season since 1971.
Martin and his staff built the core of the 2017 roster immediately with standouts such as Larry Rose III and Terrill Hanks starting as true freshmen.
Martin and his staff have not had tremendous luck hitting on junior college players, but they nailed some during those years, most notably quarterback Tyler Rogers and wide receiver Jaleel Scott. When Martin’s offense was clicking, the Aggies were consistently able to move the football and they averaged 29 points per game in 2017.
The final piece was hiring Frank Spaziani as defensive coordinator in 2016.
The Aggies 2017 defense was the team’s best unit toward the end of the season, setting a school record with 43 sacks and finishing No. 74 in total defense.
The Aggies 2017 roster proved that Martin and his staff could develop talent, but college football has changed with the emergence of the transfer portal.
When you look back at the Aggies 2017 roster, Rose was the second most productive running back in Aggies history and Jason Huntley, a backup, was drafted by the Detroit Lions in the fifth round in 2020. Scott was drafted by Baltimore in the fourth round in 2018. Rogers is the second most productive passing quarterback in school history, finishing only behind current assistant Chase Holbrook in most passing records.
Defensive lineman Roy Lopez was a sophomore starter in 2017, who ultimately transferred to Arizona and was drafted in the sixth round by the Houston Texans last year. Hanks received a Senior Bowl invitation and signed as an undrafted free agent with the Miami Dolphins. Defensive end Cedric Wilcots is still playing in the CFL.
Aggies players, for the most part, have stayed out of trouble during Martin's tenure while in Las Cruces and the program's APR scores are no longer a concern.
But as transfers have become more popular in college sports, the days of developing high school talent appears to have ended. The Aggies were late to embrace the transfer portal, but they loaded up junior college players with a handful of FBS and grad transfers, who have had a decent year to be honest, but the wins did not come.
Martin also guided the Aggies through the COVID-19 pandemic and the staff still managed to recruit a solid talent base for the 2021 season.
Not only was the 2020 independent season cancelled as the Aggies did not belong to a conference, but state restrictions made it impossible to practice for more than a calendar year. We saw the rust and results of a complete roster turnover during the spring when the Aggies lost badly to FCS transition team Tarleton State and narrowly beat Dixie State.
Despite the one-win season, Aggies players have not mailed in the season, showing flashes of competitive football in most of their games this season.
The bad
Martin had a three-game win streak against UTEP snapped this season by the Miners’ best team in years. He was 5-11 in rivalry games against New Mexico and UTEP – also typically poor football programs. He was 3-5 against UTEP and 2-6 against the Lobos. Most rivalry games were competitive, but they are also the games that fans typically show up for and care the most about.
The Aggies have lost their last 11 games against FBS opponents and their last 18 road games to FBS opponents.
The Aggies were 5-19 combined in 2018 and 2019, prior to COVID-19, and the head coach rarely took responsibility for the losses on the field publicly.
What Martin has not been shy about voicing publicly is program and institutional shortcomings.
Martin is among the lowest paid FBS football coaches each year at New Mexico State. His salary of $437,000 is the second lowest among the 122 reporting schools according to the USA Today database.
The reality is that despite the facility or funding shortcomings the program will continue to suffer from, Martin had more support than his predecessors. Martin's salary this season is $66,740 more than Walker's final season in 2012 and the assistant salary pool was $862,501 this season compared to $612,663 under Walker.
Outside of a long overdue upgrade to the locker room's air conditioning units that Martin brought to the forefront this season, most of the projects or support he has mentioned are multi million dollar projects, namely a locker room or practice facility.
Those are big ticket items that will take a tremendous fundraising and community effort.
Give credit to Martin if those facilities are addressed in the future, but pointing them out while never taking an active role in solving the issues he voiced in a public manner this year, while losing games in a lame duck season, certainly rubbed some the wrong way and made a one-win season seem even longer.
Martin cancelled his media availability for the week and it's unclear if he will take questions on Saturday.
If Martin were to continue to be silent throughout the final week and following the UMass game, it would be an unfortunate ending to his tenure with the school that has paid him $3.4 million in salary the past nine years while living in Las Cruces, N.M.
This article originally appeared on Las Cruces Sun-News: COMMENTARY: What will Doug Martin's legacy be?
