When it comes to youth baseball, New Mexico is growing, no question about it. For 18 years, Farmington has hosted the Connie Mack World Series, and for the last two years, Albuquerque and Rio Rancho have played host to the Don Mattingly World Series, a tournament for 17-year olds on the verge of becoming seniors in high school.

These tournaments are good for the state in more ways than one. New Mexico has proved to be an attractive destination for such events. The weather is generally pretty cooperative and these tournaments add to a growing tourism industry in this state, something more important than usual in these economic times. And the out-of-staters can get introduced to New Mexico delicacies such as green chile...not a favorite of mine admittedly, but there's nothing wrong with trying new things.

As for the Don Mattingly World Series, it's an outlet for high school seniors to be to showcase their skills to potential colleges looking for talent. If you have talent to play baseball and you can get a college scholarship to play, you can really make mom proud and dad happy in sending a kid to college and not having to pay for it.

And one other benefit to these leagues and tournaments...they keep kids active during the summer instead of doing things they shouldn't be doing, like getting into trouble. There's nothing wrong with exercise over video games.

So get out and support these tournaments. You just might see a future college or pro baseball star. Hey, they have to start somewhere.

Disclaimer up front...if you're a die-hard Lobo fan, you may not want to read this. If you do anyway, don't shoot the messenger.

The Mountain West Conference pre-season media football poll has UNM finishing seventh. You heard that right...seventh. It's been quite awhile since you seen that in print with the pre-season poll. TCU has been tabbed the pre-season favorite, followed by BYU, Utah, Air Force, UNLV, and Colorado State AT 6. San Diego State and Wyoming are below the Lobos at 8 and 9.

To be realisitic, 7th is about right for the Lobos. Granted, there are some nice pieces coming back for UNM, but there's a lot of uncertainty in what a new coaching staff and a new offense and defense will do coming out of the gate. You don't makes massive changes like these and not go through some growing pains. It isn't easy changing over from a gimmicky 3-3-5 defense that former head coach Rocky Long used to a more conventional, power oriented 4-3 defense. It takes strong personnel to run such a scheme and trhe jury's out whether the Lobos have the athletes right now to do it.

In time, Lobo football will be just fine. There's some pedigree in this new coaching staff that will produce solid results over time. Lobo fans just have to be patient.