Ryan Swanson’s ‘A Beautiful Shame’ captures New Mexico’s final season and underscores the mounting threats to men’s college soccer

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AFC Richmond had Trent Crimm. 

The University of New Mexico had Ryan Swanson.

Like the fictional “Ted Lasso” journalist, the UNM professor spent a season embedded in a soccer team. Both chose significant years: a push for promotion, and the final fall for a storied program.

Yet unlike the fired Independent writer, Swanson actually produced a book that can be read.

“A Beautiful Shame: One Team’s Fight for Survival in a New Era of College Sports” details the Lobos’ 2018 season, months after officials announced the men’s soccer program would be discontinued. The decision — following the first rumblings of major disruptions in college sports including the transfer portal and NIL, and Title IX directives — caused a statewide uproar. 

Key players transferred from Albuquerque. The squad struggled. Swanson was there – at training sessions, matches, and off the field. All along, he took notes.

He was no stranger to sports. A professor in the Honors College at UNM, and director of the Lobo Scholars Program — an innovative initiative serving NCAA Division I student-athletes — he met many soccer players who were as academically strong as they were physically gifted. (New Mexico had more soccer Academic All-Americans than any other college, Swanson says.)

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“When losing a program like New Mexico’s, the entire soccer community shares a sense of grief and apprehension. For a nonrevenue sport like soccer, with Title IX still a work in progress at many universities, there is always the threat of cutting sports.”
— “A Beautiful Shame” by Ryan Swanson.

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In the summer of 2018, when administrators announced that the upcoming season would be the Lobo men’s last, coaches reached out to Swanson. “They hoped I’d lead a faculty revolt,” he recalls. “That overstates the power a college faculty has.”

Instead, Swanson was invited to the first day of training. And the next … and the next. The hope, he says, was that by publicizing the team, the program could be saved.

Other authors had chronicled other college sports. John Feinstein’s “A Season on the Brink,” about the 1985-86 Indiana University men’s basketball team, is the most famous. More than a decade later, Chris Lear’s “Running with the Buffaloes” documented the University of Colorado men’s cross country team’s quest for an NCAA title.

“I knew the (Lobos) team mattered to a lot of people in the state,” Swanson says. “They were always one of the national attendance leaders. Thousands of kids had gone to their camps. They got a lot of local coverage. But I didn’t know what I’d do. Maybe articles for TopDrawerSoccer.com? Maybe a book?”

Without a plan, he nonetheless was pulled into the “fascinating” season. “I was in my mid-40s. It was a long time since I’d been around a team,” the professor said. “I had forgotten all the traditions, the razzing, the quirkiness – and the power a coach has.”

He became attached to the team. “I loved the guys,” he says. “I respected the coaching staff so much. They wanted their players to play at the highest level, and get their degrees.” 

There were awkward moments. At halftime of difficult matches, Swanson was there when coaches erupted in the locker room. He had access — but he was still an outsider.

It was more than a difficult season — it was UNM’s first losing record in a couple of decades. But it came in the midst of a gubernatorial election. Michelle Lujan Grisham promised that, if elected, she would save the men’s soccer program.

The state was in the midst of an oil boom. Yet there were other priorities to address, like child welfare and income inequality.

When Lujan Grisham was elected, the speaker of the house doubled down on the pledge to restore soccer. But UNM’s president and athletic director refused the funding — unless it was recurring.

Swanson realized that debate was part of a larger issue, beyond one team. “Who’s in charge of higher education?” the educator asked. “The governor? The legislature? The president? The board of governors?”

He wrote about that — and the season in general — in five stories for Top Drawer Soccer. Then he put his notes away.

In 2023, the last players from that 2018 team graduated. At the same time, an editor Swanson met at a conference asked casually, “Did you ever write that soccer book?”

The rumbles from five years earlier — NIL, conference realignments, Title IX enforcement, and more – had grown far louder. In just half a decade, college sports changed dramatically. With the scene reminiscent of the Wild West — and with college soccer more imperiled than ever — the time seemed right to tell that story, through that 2018 lens.

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“Since the Lobos’ final season in 2018, name, image, and likeness (NIL) dollars began to flow directly to athletes. The transfer portal led to unprecedented athlete movement. … Conference realignment broke up century-old alliances. Scholarship and roster limits came under intense scrutiny.”
— “A Beautiful Shame” by Ryan Swanson.

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“A Beautiful Shame” was published July 10. Swanson set out, he says, to “write a great soccer book. I wanted to capture the quirky culture of a team.”

But more broadly, he roams into the politics of college sports. He calls it “a Shakespearean drama.” It all boils down to one question: “What are we trying to do?”

Reaction has been very positive. Pre-orders sold out, and especially throughout New Mexico, interest is high.

“People appreciate it on a couple of levels,” Swanson reports. “On one level, it’s the story of a soccer team just trying to win games, and keep track of their soccer balls. On another, it gives insights into all kinds of sports, college and politics.”

Swanson has heard from many soccer players and fans. He has not heard a word, though, from the NCAA.

A Beautiful Shame: One Team’s Fight for Survival in a New Era of College Sports By Ryan Swanson, Bloomsbury 2025, 272 pp.

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