Warning: Do not read this edition of the Clean-Slate Top 25, the ranking that only considers what teams did in this week’s schedule, if you are an Auburn fan. Don’t consume any media at all, in fact. Make a nice vegetable soup and contemplate how much of your life does not, as a simple calculation of time, involve Auburn playing football.
1. New Mexico State: There is a stereotypical manner in which you might imagine a Group of Five team beating a Power Five team of some name value. It involves some turnover luck, a special teams miracle or two and some timely big plays. New Mexico State didn’t force a single turnover against Auburn. It didn’t generate any punt or kickoff return yards, it made one normal-distance field goal and the only onside kick was attempted by the Tigers. The longest Aggie play went for 31 yards. So the final score of New Mexico State 31, Auburn 10 has to fit a much simpler pattern: one team just stomping on the other. The Aggies outgained Auburn 220 to 97 in the second half, scoring touchdowns on every possession before they kneeled it out to end the game. They were aggressive, going for it twice on 4th down and picking up both, without being reckless and chewed the clock without being timid. And they made a lot of money in the process.
2. Georgia: Tennessee’s first play from scrimmage went for 75 yards and six points. Its next 54 went for 202 and zero, as the Volunteers went a miserable two-for-11 on third down. Passing on third down illustrated the imbalance in Georgia’s 38-10 win. Bulldog QB Carson Beck went 8/9 and threw for 111 yards, while Tennessee’s Joe Milton III finished 4/8 for 29 yards while taking a sack to boot.
3. Oregon: I mean, come on with this.
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Nix only showed up for one drive in the second half before calling it a day, with 404 yards and six touchdowns on 29 passing attempts. Three Arizona State quarterbacks, meanwhile, combined for 205 yards and zero touchdowns on 47 throws. Oregon didn’t end up punting all game; two drives ended in interceptions, one with the game clock running out and the other seven resulted in touchdowns.
4. Clemson: Drake Maye’s passing line in the second half was astounding, but not in the way you’re probably used to: 7-on-16, 67 yards, two sacks, one interception and no touchdowns. (At least he ran for 53 yards.) Maye was not the subject of the most impressive defensive play in Clemson’s 31-20 win over UNC, however.
5. Arizona: Utah likes to drag teams into brutal wrestling matches, so Arizona avoided that early by scoring touchdowns on its first three drives, all of which spanned more than 70 yards. The Arizona defense countered by forcing three straight punts, the first of which was blocked and returned for a score. The Wildcats and Utes finished about even in terms of total offensive yardage, but Arizona was far more efficient, averaging 7.8 yards per play to Utah’s 4.9 on the way to a 42-18 Arizona win.
6. South Alabama: Marshall quarterback Cole Pennington (yes, that’s Chad’s son, we’re all old, sorry) had a truly unpleasant first half against the Jaguars, throwing 19 passes for 62 yards and three interceptions. South Alabama then sat on the ball for large chunks of the second half, which meant the Thundering Herd only had three possessions after halftime in a 28-0 loss. The best example was the last Jaguar drive, which started at their own 28 with 7:30 left in the game and ended at the Marshall nine-yard line with time expiring.
7. Texas: Let us take a moment to acknowledge the contributions of Texas special teams in a 26-16 win for the Longhorns. Punter Ryan Sanborn pinned Iowa State at its own 10 twice in the first quarter. Kicker Bert Auburn made all three of his field goals, including a 50-yard attempt on the last play of the first half. The punt return unit took one kick to the Iowa State 33, setting up the first Texas points when the offense struggled early. And it blocked an extra point that flipped the Cyclones cutting the lead to three into a return that expanded the Texas lead to five.
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8. UCLA: Sacks counting against rushing totals help make this true, but all four UCLA Bruins who got carries finished with more yards than USC (three yards on 22 attempts) did as a team. The infamous Trojan defense let the Bruins convert 13 of their 20 third-down tries, and USC struggled with bad field position all game, with five possessions starting at or inside its 20-yard line. UCLA never trailed on the way to a 38-20 win, and the Trojans never made it a one-score game after UCLA took a 21-10 lead midway through the third quarter.
9. Ohio State: TreVeyon Henderson had nearly as many offensive yards (172) as the entire Minnesota offense (179) as Ohio State easily dispatched the Golden Gophers 38-3. Minnesota’s longest drive gained 39 yards and it never snapped the ball inside the Buckeye 30-yard line. The defense only forced two Buckeye punts and didn’t come up with any turnovers as Ohio State scored on seven different possessions.
10. Appalachian State: Through three quarters, the Mountaineers were pitching an absolute defensive gem against James Madison. They’d forced four punts and three turnovers, picked up four sacks and held JMU to three points scored by the offense. Things unraveled a bit after that when the Dukes put together two 75-yard touchdown drives to force overtime, but the defense made another stand to limit JMU to a field goal and the offense responded with a walkoff touchdown to win 26-23.
AUBURN, ALABAMA – NOVEMBER 18: Running back Makhilyn Young #22 of the New Mexico State Aggies looks to maneuver the ball by linebacker Austin Keys #6 of the Auburn Tigers during the second half of play at Jordan-Hare Stadium on November 18, 2023 in Auburn, Alabama. (Photo by Michael Chang/Getty Images)Michael Chang/Getty Images
11. UNLV: It took a 17-0 run after halftime for UNLV to beat Air Force 31-27, and the Rebels pulled it off thanks to a lot of bending without breaking. In the second half, the Falcons had three drives reach UNLV territory — the last of which got all the way to first and goal at the UNLV nine-yard line — but didn’t score on any of them. The 14 plays Air Force ran on the Rebel side of the 50 in the second half only netted them 10 yards.
12. Virginia: UVA quarterback Anthony Colandrea threw for 189 yards and two scores in the second half of Virginia’s 30-27 win over Duke, with 44 of those yards and both touchdowns taking place on third downs. The Hoos also overcame 117 penalty yards on 12 flags by winning the turnover battle 2-0 and hitting all three of their field goal attempts while Duke missed from 44 yards.
13. Arkansas State: Good news for Texas State: The Red Wolves didn’t score on offense for the last 23 minutes of this game. Bad news: In that time, they piled up three defensive touchdowns and one kick return to the house. Worse news: Before that, Arkansas State had already put up seven rushing touchdowns, and the total of all of this box score damage was a 77-31 win.
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14. Iowa: Iowa entered the fourth quarter down 10-9 to Illinois, and the Illini started by doing more Iowa things. First, it kicked a 29-yard field goal rather than attempt to convert a fourth-and-one. Then it forced a three-and-out. Next, it punted from its opponent’s 44-yard line before forcing, you guessed it, another punt shortly after that. But the impression fell apart thanks to Iowa’s Kaleb Johnson, who, on the last two Hawkeye possessions, ran for 42 yards, the go-ahead touchdown and a first down that kept Illinois from getting the ball back as Iowa won 15-13. Never try to out-Iowa Iowa.
15. Navy: Shutting out an FBS opponent is a difficult task. It becomes more difficult when, like Navy in this 10-0 win over East Carolina, you are not staying on the field with drive after drive that erodes the clock, playing keepaway from the opposing offense. The Midshipmen only had two possessions that moved the ball for fifty yards and just one drive that took up more than seven plays. But the Navy defense made 11 stops on third down and forced four turnovers, and never let ECU past the Navy 32-yard line.
16. Toledo: The Rockets dug themselves an 18-point hole at halftime and needed a massive effort on defense to climb out of it. They delivered, holding Bowling Green to three total points on its eight drives in the second half while the offense finally managed to pull ahead late in the game on a fourth-down conversion that went for a long touchdown and a 32-31 final score.
17. LSU: Did Jayden Daniels need to throw six touchdowns and run for another two on just forty combined passes and rushes as LSU easily beat Georgia State 56-14? Did he need to score two of those touchdowns in the fourth quarter when the Tigers had already built a 28-point lead? I have two answers. First, for Heisman purposes, maybe he did, yes. Second, sometimes you just have to let an awesome thing exist in the world even if it’s unnecessary, like the conception and construction of Jurassic Park. I’m like 90% sure that’s the lesson of that movie.
18. Army: This is some pure, undiluted Army play distribution: 62 rushes for 365 yards and two passes for zero with one of them intercepted. The Black Knights came nine seconds short of holding the ball for a full 40 minutes in their 28-21 win over Coastal Carolina, and the Army defense picked off a pass and got a fourth down stop on Coastal’s first two drives into Army territory after halftime.
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19. Wyoming: Wyoming QB Andrew Peasley pulled a miniature Bo Nix, throwing 17 passes with three touchdowns and three incompletions for a total of 319 yards. The Cowboys scored TDs on five of their first six possessions on the way to a 42-9 defeat of Hawaii; the Rainbow Warriors only forced Wyoming into third down on two occasions through the first three quarters.
20. TCU: The advantage of the Clean-Slate Top 25 is we literally refuse to acknowledge any other part of TCU’s season has taken place. All we know is that it beat Baylor 42-17, averaged an astonished 8.3 yards per play, went nine-for-11 on third down and stopped the Bears on three straight fourth-down attempts in the second half to squash any attempt at a comeback. Ignore everything else that happened this year for the Horned Frogs! It’s not real! You’re imagining those losses!
21. Boise State: With an interim coach and a 10-point deficit after a little over one quarter, the Broncos scored seven unanswered touchdowns to roar back and beat Utah State 45-10. The vast majority of that damage came on the ground, where George Holani, Ashton Jeanty and Jambres Dubar combined for 320 yards and four touchdowns on 37 carries, an impressive per-rush average of 8.6 yards.
22. South Carolina: After Kentucky took a 14-10 lead midway through the third quarter, the Wildcats got the ball five more times. They punted three times in a row, lost a fumble on a sack and turned the ball over on downs, never gaining more than 23 yards on any of those drives and failing to get any farther than the South Carolina 49-yard line. The Gamecocks weren’t consistently more effective after that — three of their last four drives, excluding kneeling out the clock, gained a combined total of four yards— but found one 74-yard touchdown drive in them where receiver Xavier Legette had 62 yards and the game-winning score.
Also, Shane Beamer got to thank Finnish DJ Darude.
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23. Penn State: The Rutgers quest to score more than 10 points against Penn State will have to wait another year, as the Nittany Lions shut the Scarlet Knights out in the second half of a 27-6 win. Penn State quarterback Drew Allar left the game with an injury early in the third quarter, and the offense decided to simply stop passing after that, calling 17 straight runs before it threw again. Rutgers, on the other hand, had a very frustrating day on the ground, with 27 yards on 22 carries in the second half.
24. Notre Dame: Whether you think the transfer portal is an important part of player autonomy or one of the evil things ushering college football into ruin, I suspect we can agree that it was probably weird for Wake Forest fans to see former Demon Deacon Sam Hartman throwing for four touchdowns at 277 yards in a game Wake lost 45-7. At least this was in South Bend and late enough in the season that everyone’s had time to adjust to the situation.
25. Cal: Stanford only held the ball for 3:52 in the final quarter of a 27-15 home loss to hated rival Cal. The Cardinal racked up 100 yards of penalties and the Bears ran 25 more plays, aided in large part by converting their last four attempts on fourth down. And now they get to keep the Axe, possibly the only traveling trophy that can be used specifically to harm one of the involved mascots. (Unless you wanna get real dark with the Purdue Cannon, I guess.)
A New Mexico man has accepted a plea deal in the 2023 shooting of a Native American activist protesting a conquistador statue, lawyers said on Monday, in a case that highlighted rising political violence in the United States.
Ryan Martinez pleaded no contest to aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and aggravated assault for shooting activist Jacob Johns and pointing his handgun at Malaya Peixinho, another demonstrator, according to his lawyer Nicole Moss. He will serve four years in state prison.
“He is still maintaining that he acted in self-defense,” Moss said, adding that Martinez would likely serve under three years in prison by accruing good time, followed by five years probation.
Mariel Nanasi, a lawyer representing Johns and Peixinho, called the shooting “a racially motivated hate crime by a MAGA-proud gun-toting crazed man who came to a peaceful prayer ceremony with a fully loaded live gun.”
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Martinez was at the protest wearing a red cap with the Donald Trump slogan “Make America Great Again.” He was originally charged with attempted murder, which carries up to 15 years in prison.
“This is a continuation of colonial violence. Unfortunately, this criminal process is reflective of the systemic white supremacy that indigenous people face,” Johns said in a statement, adding that as a Native American he would have been sentenced to life imprisonment for shooting someone at a MAGA rally or a Christian prayer service.
New Mexico First Judicial District Attorney Mary Carmack Altwies offered the plea deal to Martinez.
“The resolution is in the best interests of justice and the community,” she said in a statement.
Johns, a global climate activist and artist, was shot as he tried to prevent Martinez from pushing his way into the vigil in Espanola, New Mexico, opposing reinstallation of the statue of a 16th century Spanish colonial ruler.
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The Juan de Onate bronze was removed in 2020 from a site just north of Espanola during nationwide anti-racism protests and was to be reinstated at a county complex in the town.
Peixinho called the plea deal inappropriately light.
“However it shows our desire for conflict resolution,” Peixinho said in a statement.
The shooting marked the latest violence around Onate statues put up in the 1990s to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Spaniards to New Mexico.
The monuments have long outraged Native Americans and others who decry his brutal 1598 colonization. Onate is known for the 1599 massacre of a Pueblo tribe, leading a group of Spanish settlers into what is now New Mexico.
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Some descendants of Spanish colonial settlers, known as Hispanos, say Onate should be celebrated as part of New Mexico’s Hispanic heritage.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A new KOB 4/SurveyUSA poll shows that incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez has a solid lead over Republican challenger Yvette Herrell.
We asked voters in New Mexico’s Second Congressional District, “If the election was held today, who would you vote for?” Here were the results:
This race is a rematch of two years ago when Vasquez beat Herrell when she was the incumbent. Vasquez has served CD-2 since winning in 2022, representing much of southern New Mexico, including communities like Alamogordo, Carlsbad, Silver City and Las Cruces, and parts of the Albuquerque metro like the West Side and the South Valley.
We asked voters, “What is your opinion on Gabe Vasquez?”
There are many issues that are playing into elections across the board so we asked CD-2 voters, “Which of these issues will have the most influence on your vote for the U.S. House of Representatives?”
Consuelo Bergere Kenney Althouse received an unexpected phone call in March 2021.
The voice on the other end of the line was an attorney from the U.S. Department of the Treasury seeking permission to decorate millions of commemorative quarters with the face of Althouse’s distant relative, Adelina “Nina” Otero-Warren.
To Althouse, Otero-Warren was one among a “mantle of tías” — a looming but loving group of women with shiny shoes, tight buns and high expectations — in Althouse’s large Santa Fe family. Althouse had grown up visiting Las Dos, Otero-Warren’s homestead in the hills north of Santa Fe, for family celebrations.
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But the request from the Treasury Department — and the research it triggered for Althouse and her family — made it clear Otero-Warren was also a powerful voice for women’s rights and multicultural education.
“That really brought her to life for me,” Althouse said.
Born in Los Lunas in 1881 to an influential Hispano family, Otero-Warren first appeared in The New Mexican‘s society pages — yes, we had those — as a young woman. The paper carefully documented her travels and social engagements.
A story published in February 1900 announced she had attended a wedding wearing a white organdy dress with pink ribbons. In November 1901, the paper announced Otero would spend “a season with friends” on the Upper Pecos River.
The paper’s coverage of Otero’s June 1908 wedding to Rawson D. Warren lavished praise on the bride: “Wherever known she is very popular and greatly liked. She is a very bright, charming, finely educated and attractive young woman, endowed with many graces of heart, mind and body.”
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Her husband was also “of excellent reputation,” the story noted, but said little else about the U.S. Army lieutenant.
The marriage was short-lived, with the couple divorcing two years later.
“Due to the prejudices against divorced women at the time, Otero-Warren maintained that she was a widow and continued to use her hyphenated name,” postdoctoral fellow Mariana Brandman noted in a biography of Otero-Warren compiled for the National Women’s History Museum.
After her marriage ended, Otero-Warren grew increasingly politically outspoken.
She signed on to an open letter published Oct. 7, 1916 — four years after New Mexico’s statehood and four years before women won the right to vote — as one of a group of “well known Santa Fe women” who invited all progressive women in the area to gather “in the interest of suffrage.”
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“The situation in the nation today calls for united action on the part of all forward looking women,” the suffragists wrote.
Earlier that year — after serving in a prominent role in New Mexico’s state conference of suffrage leaders — Otero-Warren traveled to Washington to lobby for passage of a constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote, later known as the 19th Amendment. By 1917, she was listed among the leading Santa Fe suffragists.
Even after Congress passed the 19th Amendment in June 1919 — and she hosted a “suffrage victory celebration” — Otero-Warren knew there was more work to do. The change still had to be ratified by three-quarters of state legislatures.
In New Mexico, ratification remained an uphill battle.
Otero-Warren publicly demanded a special session of the New Mexico Legislature and joined a group of local suffragists calling on lawmakers to ratify the amendment.
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In an opinion piece published in The New Mexican, the women wrote, “We are justified in urging your prompt action so that New Mexico may take her place among the truly progressive states of the Union.”
The piece was relegated to Page 6, beneath the headline, “Suffrage, fashions and other things of interest to New Mexico women.”
Still, New Mexico became the 32nd state to ratify the 19th Amendment in February 1920; Otero-Warren was there.
The vote, TheNew Mexican reported, solicited “an outburst of hand-clapping” from suffragists who packed the galleries and “a sprinkling of men.”
“There were enthusiastic speeches for suffrage and more of the same against it,” the paper reported. “And Mrs. Adelina Otero-Warren, head of the women’s division of the republican party in the state, was present, probably the first woman to attend a party caucus in the state.”
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Otero-Warren did all of this in defiance of some of her male family members, Nancy Kenney, Otero-Warren’s grandniece and a family history buff, said in an interview.
Her advocacy for women “was going against the grain of her family,” Kenney said.
While fighting for women’s suffrage, Otero-Warren grew increasingly interested in issues affecting children. She headed the “child welfare department” of the Santa Fe Woman’s Club and traveled to schools throughout Northern New Mexico with then-Santa Fe County Superintendent John Vincent Conway. She even organized pig and poultry clubs for students across the district.
In the final days of 1916, The New Mexican announced Otero-Warren would take over for Conway as the county’s superintendent, joining a group of three other women in the state holding a school district’s top office.
“I believe the appointment of Mrs. Warren is excellent,” then-State Superintendent of Schools Alvan White said at the time. “We have regarded Mrs. Warren as an educator and educational enthusiast for some time, for she has shown a keen interest in the schools of Santa Fe county.”
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Her work began with a comprehensive tour, visiting schoolhouses from La Cueva to Tesuque. “It is Mrs. Warren’s intention to visit every one of the 53 districts so as to become personally acquainted with every school teacher,” The New Mexican reported in January 1917.
In her first few days as superintendent, Otero-Warren marked the opening of several “moonlight schools,” which provided nighttime courses to adults who could not read or write in English.
The openings highlighted her multilingual approach: “As she talked in Spanish the pupils and patrons of the school gave shouts of delight,” a reporter noted in the Jan. 6, 1917, edition.
This was in stark contrast to the prevailing wisdom of the day, which prioritized linguistic and cultural assimilation into white America, Brandman wrote. Inspired by her own pride in her family’s Spanish cultural heritage, Otero-Warren encouraged bilingual education and the study of traditional Hispano arts.
Otero-Warren’s demanding day job as superintendent didn’t halt her political pursuits.
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In 1922, she became the first Hispanic woman to run for Congress, winning the Republican Party’s nomination over a male opponent.
“The service performed by Mrs. Otero-Warren to the women of New Mexico has been notable and presents a record of sincere and successful practical achievement, with few rivals in the United States,” The New Mexican wrote in 1922.
She lost the race by fewer than 10,000 votes, her run hampered in part by public discovery she was divorced rather than widowed, according to Brandman’s biography.
Shortly after her ill-fated congressional run, rumors swirled in 1923 Otero-Warren had been appointed to an important post with the U.S. Department of the Interior.
She had. In addition to her role as superintendent, Otero-Warren became Santa Fe County Inspector of Indian Schools.
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This was in the middle of the Indian boarding schools era, during which the U.S. enacted laws and implemented policies to establish boarding schools for Indigenous children across the country, with the purpose of assimilating them and suppressing their native languages and beliefs, the Interior Department wrote in an investigative report in 2022.
Over 150 years, the report said, thousands of Native American, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children were forcibly removed from their families and communities to attend the schools, which often imposed harsh punishments and other forms of abuse.
As school inspector, Brandman wrote, Otero-Warren was a unique voice in that bleak era: She was a vocal critic of the poor conditions in the schools, and she argued removing children from their families threatened their communities and culture.
In the intervening century, Kenney said she’s reckoned with Otero-Warren’s role in the boarding school system: She didn’t create it, but she has drawn criticism as a semi-complicit actor who didn’t eliminate it.
Kenney, who knew Otero-Warren for the first 16 years of her life and holds a master’s degree in international and intercultural development education, keeps both sides of Otero-Warren in mind.
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“She was in the oppressing class, and she did what she could as a nurturer and a person who cared about children,” Kenney said.
In the 1930s, Otero-Warren and partner Mamie Meadors homesteaded more than 1,200 acres northwest of Santa Fe. They called it Las Dos Ranch — the two women ranch. Otero-Warren’s descendants continue to steward the land today.
Later in life, Otero-Warren established a real estate business, took to writing and served as the family’s hostess extraordinaire. Kenney recalled learning her manners at the feet of Otero-Warren, among other tías, in the family home on Grant Avenue.
Otero-Warren died in January 1965 at age 83.
“Nina Otero-Warren left her own mark on the first half of the 20th Century in New Mexico,” her front-page obituary in The New Mexican read. “At a time when most women were confined to the kitchen, she was one of the first to become professionally and politically active.”
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In 2022 — 100 years after Otero-Warren’s historic run for Congress — the U.S. Mint printed and released a quarter featuring her likeness, the fourth commemorative quarter released as part of a program dedicated to celebrating the contributions of American women.
One of thousands of potential honorees, Otero-Warren joined an impressive group. The other four coins printed in the first round of the American Women Quarters bore the faces of writer and activist Maya Angelou, astronaut Sally Ride, pioneering Chinese American actress Anna May Wong and Wilma Mankiller, the first woman elected principal chief of the Cherokee Nation.
In addition to three yucca blossoms — New Mexico’s state flower — Otero-Warren’s quarter bears the Spanish translation of the suffragist phrase “Votes for women”: VOTO PARA LA MUJER.
Though other proposed depictions of Otero-Warren for the quarter were more thrilling, showing her in suffragist sashes, family members favored an image of an older woman sitting at a desk, with her hands folded and a stern expression on her face.
“They felt like that was more true to the character of who she was,” Althouse said.
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The quarter is one way of uplifting Otero-Warren’s story, said Jennifer Herrera, vice president for external affairs at the National Women’s History Museum, which assisted in recommending women for the American Women Quarters program.
Herrera, who grew up in Albuquerque, said she’d never heard of Otero-Warren or her contributions until she started working at the museum. The suffragists in her own backyard weren’t included in the stories she’d been told about suffrage.
“This program is so critically important because we want people to reach into their pockets and, when they pull out a quarter, see a woman — and want to learn her story, want to know her name, want to know what she did,” Herrera said.
“There are countless women in human history who have done things like this — who pushed a little harder,” Althouse added.
“Every one of those stories is important,” she said. “The more that they come out and the more they have the opportunity to be shared, the more you realize how incredible these individuals are.”
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Brianna Clark, for one, has realized how special Nina Otero-Warren was.
A 17-year-old from Silver City, Clark spent much of her sophomore year of high school researching Nina Otero-Warren. Her paper on the subject — compiled through months of reading Otero-Warren’s writing and interviewing her family members — earned second place in the state’s 2023 National History Day competition.
Clark was impressed by “everything that she was able to accomplish in her lifetime, especially during a time where women and minorities didn’t really have a lot of freedom.”
“I thought she was really inspiring, as a young woman from New Mexico and New Mexico native,” Clark said.
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