Video Interview With New Football Coordinators Al Borges and Rocky Long

SAN DIEGO -- GoAztecs.com sat down with Aztec football's new defensive and offensive coordinators Rocky Long and Al Borges to discuss their outlook on Aztec football and how they view their roles in the upcoming season.

Rocky Long, who amassed the most victories of any Mountain West Conference head coach in the league's history, has been named defensive coordinator at San Diego State, Aztec head coach Brady Hoke announced Wednesday.

At the same time, Hoke announced that Al Borges will serve as the team's offensive coordinator. Borges has held the offensive coordinator title for 23 seasons, was a two-time nominee for Frank Broyles Assistant Coach of the Year and most recently helped lead Auburn to a 42-9 record and four bowl game appearances from 2004-07.

The last time Long and Borges were coordinators on the same staff was at UCLA in 1997. That season the Bruins went 10-2, won the Pac-10, advanced to the Cotton Bowl and finished fifth in the final AP poll.

View their complete bios and the complete one-on-one video below as well as the transcripts of each interview.

Rocky Long One-on-One Interview

Click here to watch video

On the thought process of leaving New Mexico and coming to San Diego State:
"As a head coach there are a lot of things involved other than just coaching and I really missed coaching. I thought at the University of New Mexico it was time for a change; that they needed some new blood and some different direction and to give them a chance to be better than we were. But the real reason is I missed coaching. Head coaches don't get to coach very much where you actually get to be with players and have your own position groups. Coordinators do a lot of important things for a football team, but nobody knows it. Everybody blames the head coach for offense, for defense, for special teams; they all blame the head coach. There's a whole bunch of other guys coaching that stuff. The head coach is just kind of the manager and oversees it. I missed actually being with the players and head coaches aren't usually with the players very often."

On why he choose the Aztecs over some of the other schools that showed interest:
"I didn't plan on staying in the same conference and I didn't really want to. I had opportunities to go someplace else, but the friendship that I have with Coach Hoke and our similar philosophies we have on defense and knowing what I was getting into and we're friends from way back and ran this kind of defense together one time at Oregon State, it was a lot more comfortable and a lot better fit than going someplace where I didn't know anybody or feel as comfortable or at ease as I do here."

On the defensive philosophies he and Coach Hoke share:
"We're an attack-first team. Everybody wants to say that they're an attack defense and we'll probably blitz 80 percent of the time, maybe more. We would like to be a man-coverage team. We would like to dictate to the offense rather than the offense dictate to us. We would like them to make adjustments, we would like them to change their protections, we would like them to change their blocking schemes. Rather than the defense always adjusting to the offense, we'd much rather the offense have to adjust to us. The philosophy is to bring a lot of blitzes, run blitzes, pass blitzes, try to attack their blocking schemes and see if we can make them change from what they do best to something they don't do very often."

On whether he will look at the talent at SDSU to create a defense or if he will run his defense and hope that they adapt:
"No I think it's smart that you evaluate your talent, as we will, and we'll put the 11 best defensive players on the field and the defense will be designed around the 11 best players. And then we will recruit to try to get to the defensive scheme that we want to be in. But you put your 11 best guys out there and if that means five defensive linemen, we'll put 5 defensive linemen out there. If that means six or seven DB's, we'll put six or seven DB's out there and adjust the scheme to our best players. And then we'll recruit to try to get to a 3-3-5 defense."

On the kind of defensive success he's had and whether or not it is it stop the run first:
"I think you have to stop the run first. More and more teams are going to four and five wide receivers and more and more teams are going to the spread offense where they're going to throw it maybe 40, 50, 60, 70 times a game. But even in those spread offenses, you have to stop the run. You try to make someone one-dimensional. The worst thing in the world is to get a beating by people running it down your throat because that's a physical beating as well as a beating on the scoreboard. If you give up 400 yards rushing, it is a whole lot worse on your mentality than 400 yards passing."

On if the Mountain West Conference is as good as it has been since the time that he has been here:
"The Mountain West Conference is as good as most of the BCS leagues, better than a couple of them. The Mountain West Conference deserves an automatic berth to the BCS like anybody else; we just don't have the media power or the television power to make them do that. Nobody wants to play a Mountain West Conference school. Last year the MWC was 6-1 against the Pac-10. We saw what Utah did to Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. This league is as good as most and better than probably two BCS leagues; we just don't get the credit."

On his offensive counterpart Al Borges:
"I had a great time at UCLA with Al as the offensive coordinator. He enjoys the challenge where he doesn't put any stipulations on what the defense can do; I enjoy that challenge too and I don't put any stipulations on what the offense can do while you're putting in your offense and defensive schemes. It's a lot of fun. He's an excellent offensive mind. He's a great play-caller. As a defensive guy, you like to think you can lock into certain guys, and you can, and I won't tell you who they are because I want to keep locking into them. But there are certain guys you can't lock into and they always have you off balance and Al is one of those guys. We had great success with Bob Toledo as the head coach and we had great success at UCLA; it was a lot of fun, so hopefully that same success is coming with us here."

On the new coaching staff at San Diego State:
"I think Brady will do a great job as the head coach. I think he has the right mentality. He loves his players but he's very demanding on his players. I think the combination of him at the helm and the two coordinators, we think we understand football. The most important thing about winning football games is the players. You have to get the players to do what you want, you have to get them to execute well, you've got to get them into a team spirit where they want to win as bad as the coaches do and for each other, not individuals but be a team. That takes a long time to do. I hope fans don't get too excited because it's going to take more than a year to get that mentality across to the players in this program, but once it's there, it's there forever. Once you get on a roll, it lasts for a long time. I have great belief in both those guys; I have great belief in Coach Hoke and Al and I, I think we can do it, but the players are the ones that win games."

Al Borges One-on-One Interview

Click here to watch video

On why he thinks SDSU is the right job for him:
"I think the better question is, `why not?' For me, this is the perfect job at the perfect time. I've had the opportunity to coach in a lot of different conferences and places, but being out of coaching for a year and having the opportunity to go back to the West Coast at a place, in my opinion, is a sleeping giant. The potential and the promise this program demonstrates to me, basically as an outsider looking in, for years I thought that this could be a great program. Getting the chance to work with Brady Hoke and Rocky Long again, I can't see any reason in the world why we, in time, shouldn't have a pretty good program here."

On his past experiences with Coach Hoke and why he looks forward to working alongside him as the new Offensive Coordinator:
"Well we have both been in the foxhole and that helps in coaching. When you are installing offense and defense in a new conference for me, not so much for him, now that helps because he has been in it and I'll use him a little bit as a sounding board in that regard. But he knows how I work and I know how he works and we have a great working relationship. When you have been there with him, it's a tremendous advantage. If you haven't, there are always a few growing pains; they don't have to be major, but it's just all the better that you had the chance to work with a guy before."

On his past experience coaching alongside Rocky Long as well as coaching against Brady Hoke:
"I've actually coached against Rocky too. I've been on both sidelines on that one. I prefer being on the sideline that he is on, but when he was at Oregon State I had a chance with him. Brady was at Michigan when I was at UCLA and we played them twice. My second year at Auburn we played Ball State in 2005. So I have had a chance to go against and be with Rocky and totally against Brady. I never coached with Brady before."

On his thoughts about Brady Hoke's leadership skills and what he believes Hoke can achieve with the program:
"What you see is what you get. Now I hear that about a lot of guys, but I think it pertains more to Coach Hoke more than it does anybody. He is sincere, he is real, he is tough and what he says he means. He is not going to lie to anybody and I have a tremendous appreciation for that. Those are great character traits and players, in time, will feel the same way. Not to mention that he is a hell of a football coach."

On Coach Hoke's preferences for recruiting tough and speedy players:
"Tough and speed is a really good combination. You throw size in there and you've got a team, although they don't have to be big everywhere. The one thing we are going to try to do, and we have all agreed on this, but we really didn't have to talk about it without already knowing it, is that the first thing we are going to try and do is present a physical mentality. Offensively, defensively whatever, we are going to bloody some noses maybe sometimes, but I think that is where you have got to start in football because this is still a game of fundamentals and toughness. Obviously you have to have technique, you have got to have schemes, you got to have all of that, stuff but if you are not very tough, if you don't have that to start with, I don't think you have a good foundation for success."

On the nuances of taking over a new team, introducing a new offensive philosophy, and assessing players' skills and how they fit that philosophy:
"I've gone into every job with a nucleus of offense. We are going to run this nucleus of offense and once you get an idea of who your weapons are, what you do best, what you don't do as well, and a lot of it is geared to the skills of the quarterback, then you can set up how the system is going to work. Our system is such where we have had all different flavors of players. We have had quarterbacks who are tall, quarterbacks that are short, quarterbacks that can move, quarterbacks that couldn't move, receivers that were the same, but what we try and do is see who are weapons are and get the ball to our weapons the best we possibly can. The concept of balance is the first thing that jumps into my mind. We are going to try and run the ball effectively and pass the ball effectively without depending on either one knowing that through the course of the year that certain defenses will let you do certain things and you have got to counter punch to be able to survive."

His thought on last year's quarterback Ryan Lindley:
"He is excited. You know change is always intriguing. It's scary sometimes, too, from both perspectives, but he is excited about having a new staff and, with all due respect for the last staff because I think he liked them too, but it's different. We told him it's going to be a little different and I have told him you have to be a catalyst for change. You have to be the guy that is banging the drum for `this is what we are going to do and this is going to work' because coaches are doing that all the time, but you need some people internally that will jump on your side too."

On his thoughts about recruiting on the West Coast again:
"As a coordinator you are lucky because you get to do a lot of cross recruiting. For example, you will have an area but because offensive players need to be seen, not just by the recruiting coach, they need to be seen by the coordinator, so I got to a lot of different places all over the country because I have coached all over the county at one time or another, but I'm from California, I'm comfortable in California. I understand the high school coaches and how things work here the best."

On his thoughts of the Mountain West Conference:
"I think that the record speaks for itself. First of all, it's a little misleading. Last year I did not coach, first time in a long, long time, so I had way too much time on my hands so I did a lot of research into every conference. The one thing that jumped out to me about this conference is that it is a very good defensive conference. There is a perception out there that it is a wing it and ding it, throw it all over the lot, get a million points, but if you look at the numbers there are several football teams that have excellent defenses and the better teams, the ones that are winning in this conference, are playing it with good defense. From an offensive coordinator's perspective you have to be keenly aware of the schematics you are dealing with week in and week out and the speed of the teams that you are playing against. I think that is the first thing. The second thing is the upper tier of this conference, the teams that are winning every single year, can play with anybody. They just proved that now. Even the teams that didn't win their games played and could have won just as easily as they lost. The competition in this conference is as good, top to bottom, as I think any conference I have been in."