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NOTE: since the publication of this article, Carruthers was elected to the president post at NMSU LAS CRUCES — Garrey Carruthers, one of five finalists for president at New Mexico State University, said during an open forum last week that he was open to the idea of moving the football team down to a lower division or perhaps even dropping the program all together. Amidst discussion of academia, leadership and fundraising, Aggie athletics — particularly football — has also been an important topic during the presidential search. Two of the five candidates — Elsa Murano and Daniel Howard — will have their open-forum sessions early this week. Carruthers sad he has already had discussions about dropping to a lower division in football. "I've actually had conversations with people in the Big Sky Conference," Carruthers said, referring to a league in the Football Championship Subdivision. "That's sort of a notch below in football. They're not eligible for BCS bowls. But what do you think our prospects of getting (to) a BCS bowl anytime soon will be anyway? Not great. I think there's some other conferences around, where our athletics budget would actually be at the top of the list instead of at the bottom in terms of how much money we're spending." Carruthers added, "I do know there's a limit to how much money we can spend. And that limit is probably what we're spending right now. We have to find a conference we're comfortable in financially." Carruthers said during the public forum that he would also consider dropping football altogether. "The rest of our sports are doing rather well, believe it or not," he said. "Maybe we should be a minor-sport (program) .... Somebody even mentioned to me yesterday, maybe we should drop football. Maybe one of the options is just stay the course and just join the Missouri Valley (Conference) and play all the sports they play. ... That's an option we need to take a look at. The most expensive sport is football, and probably the least successful at the moment." Read more: http://www.lcsun-news.com/las_cruces-news/ci_23123757/carruthers-tells-forum-participants-hes-open-dropping-football