New Mexico State is set to hire Jerry Kill as its next coach, sources told ESPN on Saturday, confirming an earlier report.
Kill will replace Doug Martin, whose contract was not renewed after the Aggies’ season ended Saturday. An official announcement on Kill’s hiring is expected Monday, according to a source. Kill had been serving as TCU’s interim coach after Gary Patterson’s departure. TCU ended its season Friday with a loss at Iowa State.
New Mexico State beat UMass on Saturday to finish the season at 2-10. Martin, who did not speak with reporters after the game, has a contract set to expire in June. He finishes 25-74 at the school.
Athletic director Mario Moccia did not comment on reports that Kill was the leading candidate to replace Martin, but said New Mexico State would move quickly with its search. Moccia was athletic director at Southern Illinois when Kill served as the program’s head coach in 2006 and 2007.
“Certainly kept in touch with him and his staff throughout the years,” Moccia said Saturday. “And then when Jerry went back to Southern Illinois as the athletic director, we certainly would always have conversations because I was in that same chair.”
Kill, 60, last served as a permanent head coach at Minnesota, which he led from 2011 until 2015, when he had to retire for medical reasons. Kill, a cancer survivor who suffers from epilepsy, returned to coaching in 2017 at Rutgers. He then became Southern Illinois’ interim athletic director in 2018 and remained until 2019, when he took a job on Virginia Tech’s coaching staff. Kill came to TCU in 2020 as a special assistant to Patterson.
Kill is 154-101 overall as a college coach.
The Las Cruces Sun-News first reported New Mexico State’s expected hire of Kill.
