New Mexico State releases 2018 football schedule

By Brian Wilmer -

New Mexico State released its 2018 football schedule Friday morning. The slate includes five home tilts and seven road contests.

The Aggies open the season with an August 25 home date against Wyoming. Five days later, they will travel to Minnesota for their first road outing of the year.

Home games with New Mexico, Liberty, Georgia Southern and Alcorn State follow. New Mexico State will travel to Utah State, UTEP, Louisiana, Texas State, and BYU, before closing the year with a rare in-season home-and-home at Liberty.

2018 NMSU Football Schedule

Comments (9)

Congrats to the Aggies for quickly assembling their first schedule as an independent.

So for 2018 CFB schedule is almost complete:
1. Florida has one non-FCS OOC game to announce.
2. GT, Miami FL, WF, TCU, UCF, Houston, Cincin, UNLV, Mid Tenn, FIU, UAB, West Mich, Akron and Coastal Carolina still have one OOC FCS game to announce (or of course can be a game versus P5/G5 opponent).

So of the above programs who will Florida schedule?
Still have another neutral Atlanta Kickoff game that could be announced.

And Wyoming, Nevada, Utah St and UNLV could add an additional 2018 game (via Hawaii Exception rule).

I’d love to see UNLV schedule a top notch opponent for 2018. Especially, with the Hawai’i rule. Schedule a game against the toughest team they can find, and another against an FCS team.

I like the in-season home and home, but that reeks of desperation. Not sure being an independent is tenable for the Aggies.

We’ll see. New Mexico State has the dubious distinction of having been a member of FBS/I-A since its inception in 1978 yet not actually having played in a bowl game since 1960.

Congratulations to New Mexico State. Not a bad schedule at all, and it’s awfully tough for an independent to put a decent one together.

Florida has several open dates in September. Not sure if Florida would give up a home game, but if so then a 9/1 neutral site game in Atlanta vs GT (or UCF). Otherwise expect Florida season opener home game versus a G5 opponent (UAB). Or the Gators season opener could be a SEC conference game and then Florida-FIU on 9/8 (FIU still needs to announce the MiamiFL game date), or Florida-Coastal Carolina on 9/22. Florida-UNLV would need to wait to 9/29, which seems unlikely.

As the 2018 Kickoff opener in Atlanta goes, not sure if GT wants to add more weight to their OOC schedule, but could push the GT-BG game to another year. And Florida is at Florida State in 2018 and already has the annual neutral site Georgia game In Jacksonville. So a potential matchup in the Chicken sandwich kickoff game would be about the money, for Florida to give up a home game. If not Florida-GT, then Florida-UCF would be a possibility, that is if UCF could move Pitt game to another season.

Another possibility for 2018 Kickoff opener in Atlanta is GT-UCF. But GT-UCF already has a home-and-home beginning this season. So it is possible announce of GT-UCF 2018 kickoff game in Atlanta is on hold until after this years game.

Almost all the other programs still with 2018 open dates already have fairly well balanced schedules and will schedule an FCS opponent.