"Hopefully it'll be a competitive game and we'll show them some Southwest hospitality, and hopefully the Aggies will win," McKinley Boston said this week.
Boston, 67, is a former Gophers defensive tackle who spent five years as athletics director at his alma mater, then three as VP of student development. He's in his ninth year as AD at New Mexico State.
Boston is predicting attendance in the mid-20,000 range for the game, about 5,000 short of capacity at Aggie Memorial Stadium (capacity 30,343). On Friday night and at the game he will entertain friends with Minnesota connections including Leon Trawick and Curt Wilson, both former teammates of Boston with the 1967 Big Ten champion football Gophers.
Boston said September 7 “will be the only Saturday of the year” he’s not cheering for the Gophers.
Sid Hartman: Boston says Aggies will be tough for Gophers
Despite losing 56-7 at Texas last week, after trailing only 14-7 at halftime, Boston reports that new head coach Doug Martin has the program heading in the right direction. Martin was named head coach in February after former Gophers cornerback DeWayne Walker resigned to become defensive backs coach for the Jacksonville Jaguars,
“He really is working on the positives and his guys are certainly having a very, very good feeling about him,” Boston said. “It’s one of those things where they’re going to play hard for him. You have been around sports for a long, long time and when guys really play hard for a coach on any given Saturday, you can beat anybody.
“I mean [Texas] could have easily been ranked No. 10 in the country or higher. They’re legitimate, and they wore us down in the second half.”
