LAS CRUCES, N.M. — "No vacancy" signs are posted at nearly every hotel in the Southwest area — a tourism boom that has little to do with New Mexico State's homecoming football game against Hawai'i today.

The Rolling Stones played in the Sun Bowl in nearby El Paso, Texas, last night.

Oscar De La Hoya is promoting a boxing card tonight in the Don Haskins Center on the Texas-El Paso campus.

And completing the trifecta of entertainment is a Star Wars convention.

Instead of cursing his scheduling misfortune, New Mexico State coach Hal Mumme sees Aggie Memorial Stadium as being half-full.

"We have a big challenge, but we're starting over, and we feel we're going in the right direction," Mumme said.

Mumme does not look to the standings as a measuring tool. The Aggies are 2-4 — both victories were against Division I-AA opponents — and 0-2 in the Western Athletic Conference.

The Aggies have lost 17 consecutive games against Division I-A teams, are 0-10 in two years of WAC membership, and last appeared in a bowl game in 1959, when Bobby Darin's "Mack the Knife" was a top hit.

But Mumme knows things could be worse. That would be last season, his first at NMSU, when the Aggies went 0-12.

He inherited a team with a filthy locker room, and a lot of dirty laundry.

"There was really a lack of discipline," Mumme said. "They had guys in trouble with the law, drugs, and stuff like that. We had to clean up all of that. It was really a disastrous situation for the whole season. There was a new sheriff in town, and most of the players didn't like the new sheriff."

Mumme was hired Jan. 1, 2005, giving him about a month to assemble a staff, create a recruiting list and sign players. His first recruit was Chase Holbrook, the starting quarterback at Mumme's previous school, Southeastern Louisiana.

Holbrook redshirted last season, in accordance with NCAA transfer rules, and "it took us about a year to figure out how to play our style of play."

Meanwhile, the athletic department was underdoing a major renovation. FieldTurf was installed on the practice field. The locker room was refurbished. New offices were built for the coaches. The annual recruiting budget swelled to $200,000 — nearly three times more than UH's football recruiting budget.

The roster also underwent a makeover.

"There were a few rotten eggs who weren't quite on the same page we were," Holbrook said. "Some of those guys are kind of gone now."

Mumme said: "Some of the guys, we told them: 'We don't see eye-to-eye; y'all go away.' You've got to want to go to school. You've got to want to lift weights. You've got to want to work hard on the field. Everybody who is with us now does that."

Holbrook is an experienced rebuilder. In 2002, he was hired to resurrect the Southeastern Louisiana football program, which had ceased production 20 years earlier.

His first move was to coax out of retirement Woody Widenhofer, architect of the Pittsburgh Steelers' Steel Curtain defense of the 1970s and early 1980s.

"It was quite a challenge," Widenhofer recalled. "There were a lot of things we laugh about now. Our first meeting, there were 400 guys who wanted to try out. There were guys in their 30s and 40s at the meeting. There were guys from other schools at the meeting. We had to explain to them: 'Hey, if you're at another school, you can't come to Southeastern to play. You have to play for your school.' Things like that."

Mumme said: "It was a lot of fun. We had to do everything. When I got the job there, we had one ball, one helmet, one legal pad, one pencil, one tiny little office."

The team did not play any games in 2002. Instead, the team practiced on weekdays and scrimmaged on Saturdays.

"In 2003, we kicked off the first game they had at Southeastern Louisiana in 20 years," Mumme said. "We went 5-7 the first year. The next year we turned it around and went 7-4. When we left there, they had a full football office and a refurbished stadium and money in the bank and a winning season and an All-American quarterback. We think this can be a similar-type deal. We want to have fun while getting this program going."

Reach Stephen Tsai at stsai@honoluluadvertiser.com.