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UNM’s head football coach Danny Gonzales watches as his team goes through the first day of spring football practice. Tuesday. (Jim Thompson/Albuquerque Journal)
University of New Mexico offensive lineman Jer’Marques Bailey, all 6 feet, 6 inches and 350 pounds of him, settled in to catch a punt on Tuesday morning at the Lobos’ football practice field.
If Bailey caught it on the first attempt, the practice would end. A drop and he would join his teammates for some running and conditioning.
The big guy showed proper technique, cleanly catching the punt, turning his hips and running as if he were taking it back for six. It was as if he did score because his teammates celebrated with him.
He was Burston with talent.
Had Cameron Burston brought those talents to the University of New Mexico as originally planned, and not to Tarleton State University, what might have happened?
Normally, I try to stay away from what-ifs. This one, though, caught my fancy this week.
Burston, I wrote in April 2017, just might be the guy University of New Mexico football had never had under then-head coach Bob Davie – hadn’t had, truly, since Graham Leigh in the late 1990s: a quarterback who could pass or run with equal effectiveness.
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Other teams in the Mountain West Conference had found such people: Brett Smith and Josh Allen (whatever happened to him?) at Wyoming, Cody Fajardo at Nevada, Grant Hedrick at Boise State, others with similar run-pass skills. The Lobos, though, had never found that guy.