Davie rebuilds career, Lobos by doing Air Force one better

It used to be in the Western Athletic Conference or Mountain West that once you played the Air Force Academy you could pretty much put the option offense in the rear view mirror until the next season.

But Bob Davie has changed that and a lot of other assumptions.

So, the sigh of relief the University of Hawaii experienced in getting past Air Force now gives way to the task of taking on New Mexico, the most productive running team in the entire country.

What the Falcons turned loose in the early 1980s Davie and the Lobos have expanded upon to the point that they currently lead the nation in yards per carry (6.87) and rushing yards per game (374.1) while averaging 40 points a game (18th in the NCAA).

Not only have the Lobos (4-3) taken a page out of the Falcons’ book, New Mexico has hit them over the head with it, winning three of the past four meetings, a cause for concern, some people at the academy concede privately.

In spending eight years at Notre Dame, five as head coach after three as defensive coordinator, Davie came to appreciate how the service academies could confound the big boys with a well-run option offense.

“That offense was an equalizer to a degree, it offset some limitations they had,” Davie said.

When Davie lost his job at Notre Dame after a 35-25 run, the notion of an option offense stayed with him. It was reinforced by what he saw as an ESPN and ABC commentator and developed into his coaching comeback game plan.

“I knew that if I got back into coaching it would be in a rebuilding kind of a program,” Davie said. “So I researched it hard while I was out of coaching.”

Good thing, too, because the New Mexico program he took over was more a dumpster fire than a fixer-upper. By many accounts the Lobos were the worst Division I program in the country, going 3-37 in a 40-game span between 2008 and 2011.

In addition to coming off three consecutive 1-11 seasons when Davie stepped in, the Lobos were light on scholarships due to three years of NCAA sanctions for academic fraud.

Throw in the fact that New Mexico ranked second only to Delaware among states for the fewest college football players produced and Davie had his work cut out for him.

“We had to have something to just try and bring some competitiveness,” Davie said.

Like Bob Wagner with the spread that he imported here in the 1980s and June Jones with the record-setting run-and-shoot, Davie realized “You have to do something different” when you can’t out-recruit your opponents for a traditional offense.

Davie sought to do Air Force one better, taking the triple option to a wider level, running it out of the pistol formation. “We decided to do it out of the shotgun with the hopes that it can be a little more multiple, formation-wise,” Davie said. “It is not what you typically think is a true triple option.”

Last season, Davie’s fourth in the Land of Enchantment, came the breakthrough, the school’s first winning season in eight years and a bowl game.

Having found the Lobos’ niche, Davie vows, “As long as I’m at New Mexico, this is what we’re going to run.”

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.