What Pavia has done is go from getting free IV drips (via NIL) in Las Cruces, New Mexico, to becoming a national celebrity at least for now. The nation is falling in love with the guy who looks like he could be your next-door neighbor.
"Sometimes guys slip through the cracks," said Beck, a lifer at the lower levels of college football before becoming Vanderbilt's offensive coordinator. "The quarterback position is such a unique position. There's so many stories about Tom Brady not starting until he was a senior in college. ...
"When you evaluate a quarterback, when you find a guy who is different and can lead people, that has a lot of value."
The evaluation of this overlooked overachiever starts with this question: How tall is Pavia?
"No comment," Joe Fortchner said.
Then the former New Mexico Military Institute head coach laughed.
"He's probably 5-10, 5-11," Fortchner said. "He swears he's 6-foot, but he's not."
The media guide these days says 6-foot, 207 pounds. The road it took Pavia to get to Vanderbilt tells another tale. Fortchner had Pavia for his freshman season at NMMI in 2020. The isolated campus in Roswell, New Mexico, is referred to as "Nimmy" or "The Grindhouse" by the regulars. By all accounts, the school is your typical junior college military academy, full of discipline all the time.
"Get up for formation at 5 every morning, ready to go with your uniform on," said Tenori, who played with Pavia at NMMI. "March to breakfast and go about your day. They don't call it The Grindhouse for no reason.
"It's unexplainable. Go to bed, wake up, make your bed, go to practice, go to school. I guess you'd say the perfect lifestyle, right?"
In that first season, Pavia was part of a three-man rotation during a 5-4 season that was played entirely in Texas because of COVID-19 restrictions. Fortchner stepped down after that season when his wife was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. Shelby Fortchner recovered and remains the Broncos' volleyball coach.
Under new coach and former Broncos defensive coordinator Kurt Taufa'asau, Pavia developed into a dual threat with an attitude. In that championship season, Pavia had a 21-1 touchdown-to-interception ratio to go along with 658 rushing yards.
In 2021, the Broncos went 12-1, winning that national championship.
In that "Hooters Bowl" witnessed by Beck and Kill, NMMI won 31-13 with Pavia throwing for two scores and running for one.
"We knew the kid had a heart in him," Taufa'asau said. "Obviously, he was overlooked throughout his high school recruiting process. He was overlooked because of his height and size and the position he was playing."
That heart began to show through. Taufa'asau said Pavia came to NMMI as a walk-on who eventually earned a legislative scholarship that paid for 40% of his tuition.
"Really, he was a Taysom Hill to us," said Taufa'asau, comparing Pavia to the former BYU quarterback. "Utility guy, backup tight end, backup slot receiver, running back and quarterback. He ultimately led us to the best season in school history."
That season, Beck scouted Pavia in person during a playoff game against Northwest Mississippi.
"You talk about a football-playing machine," Beck said. "This guy, that's what he does. He wants the ball in his hands. He wants to be in the moment. He's not afraid of anything. I've had some tough quarterbacks over the years, but he's one tough cookie both physically and mentally."
A funny thing happened on the way to New Mexico State. Pavia was being used as "a pawn" in recruiting, as Taufa'asau described it, to land more valuable teammate Anthony Grant. The package deal never happened. Grant ended up at
Nebraska.
Even Pavia's hometown school, the state flagship -- New Mexico -- never showed any interest.
"I think that had a huge role in what he was trying to do to continue to prove people wrong," Taufa'asau said. "No one wanted to take a chance on him. I was trying to push his name out there."
Pavia's frustration with that perceived snub surfaced last year when
film emerged of the quarterback appearing to urinate at midfield on the Lobos' logo in their indoor facility.
"When he peed in the indoor?" Fortchner asked. "He's from there. He's from Albuquerque. He would have been playing 10 minutes from his house. It was kind of insulting, really. Just the complete lack of interest. They weren't even recruiting him as a walk-on."
As impressed as Beck was, he still wasn't completely sold in 2022 when Pavia arrived at New Mexico State.
"He struggled in the beginning. He had an injury I didn't know about. He kind of kept that to himself. We went back and forth … No one really wanted to take the job," Beck said.
"It was a hard evaluation when your offensive line is trying to block Minnesota and Wisconsin and Missouri. It's hard to get a good evaluation on the quarterback. It came to a point where I thought he had something different."
After starting the 2022 season 1-5, the Aggies won won six of their last seven and made only their second bowl since 1960. Last season, New Mexico State won 10 for the first time in 60 years.
