A New Kind of Homecoming All Over College Football

“Everyone, in the back of their minds, has been excited and to have energy from the crowd,” said Erickson, the receiver who, after a redshirt year, an injury and the upended 2020 season, finally played in his first home game on Thursday. But, he added in an interview early this week, “It would be a distraction if we were all thinking about how many people were going to be there.”

Their supporters seemingly had no such concerns.

“If we had had to come in at 5, I would have been here,” Sanchez said. “Everybody is so happy to be back.”

Gonzales, in an interview after the game, said he had arrived Thursday morning and counted the RVs — he spotted 12 — that were already parked.

“That hasn’t happened around here in a long time, and that’s really cool,” said Gonzales, though he was plainly more thrilled about snapping an even longer streak: the 712-day run since New Mexico had won in Albuquerque.

At the start of the week, Erickson had wavered between acknowledging the advantages of playing at home and the perils of getting caught up in the hype.

On Thursday night, after the crowd seeped out and savored a Lobos victory that had been more fraught than they would have preferred, he offered something of a reassessment.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/03/sports/ncaafootball/college-football-home-games-new-mexico.html