Aug. 29, 2014
SAN DIEGO -
Past Mick McGrane 2014 football features
Kaehler: A Thinking Man's Game (Aug. 5)
Whittaker: Long Time Gone, Never Forgotten (Aug. 6)
Life in the Weight Room: Hall's Strong Suit (Aug. 15)
Roberts: A Career Comes Full Circle (Aug. 21)
The Season's in Session, Take Your Seats
By Mick McGrane (@MickOnTheMesa)
There is no "hook." The venue is unattractive. The coach is sometimes perceived dull. The schedule is void of marquee opponents. The options to spend money elsewhere are myriad and you've just been informed by your doctor that your well-being can only be comprised by contact with the human race.
Where avoidance factors involving San Diego State football games are concerned, the laundry list is laughable.
And the laundry smells.
If my former position of documenting the team's daily doings does not afford license to condemn apathy, it does afford ample leeway to provide perspective.
As a beat writer for the Aztecs, I witnessed 2-10 in 2008. I saw every snap of the defining seven-game skid, a run so inglorious it hadn't been accomplished in the program's previous 27 seasons. A defensive coach whose unit yielded 70 points in a single game informed me that statistics were a poor measure of performance. I saw players shed tears less from frustration than fear of the future.
What Aztec football was --- all too recently --- and where it hangs it helmet now can be measured not merely in degrees of success but in recovery of respect. No longer is hope defined as faint. No longer are goals left unpaired with the word lofty. No longer is losing allowed to linger in a locker room until fire and passion are snuffed out by resignation.
And no longer should fan indifference be affixed to San Diego State football. As recently as five years ago, desperation arose with the dawn. If only the Aztecs could string together a succession of winning seasons. If only winning a conference title had its roots in reality instead of some far-flung dream. If only becoming bowl-eligible was achieved absent of magic wands and eyes of newt.
No longer. SDSU, in the past four seasons, has accomplished all of the above, as well as twice beating perennial BCS buster Boise State.
Yet the stakes --- as well as the challenges --- grow ever higher in college football. Perhaps lost in the discussion of Big Five autonomy and which school can trump lasagna with lobster is that teams not associated with the ACC, SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 or Pac-12 can still dine with the big boys. While the highest-ranked team from the so-called "Group of Five" conferences (American Athletic, USA, MAC, Mountain West and Sun Belt) is guaranteed a berth in this year's College Football Playoff provided it has not already gained a playoff spot, major bowls not hosting semifinal or title games are up for grabs.
Winning has never been more imperative, a practice made doubly difficult for teams whose stadiums are perceived to serve as havens for empty echoes.
A "hook" you say? Forgetting a moment that the product dare take precedence over the pomp, the Aztecs of 2014 offer a quarterback (Quinn Kaehler) who became one of just two walk-ons at the FBS level to start a game in 2013. Despite not starting two contests, Kaehler joined eight other SDSU quarterbacks to throw for 3,000 yards in a season and finished with 19 touchdown passes.
There is sophomore running back Donnel Pumphrey, who last season merely became the first Aztec freshman since Marshall Faulk (1991) to rush for 100 yards in three straight games. A preseason candidate for the Doak Walker Award, presented annually to the nation's top running back, Pumphrey was one of two freshmen in the nation in 2013 with at least 750 yards rushing and 230 receiving yards.
There is senior cornerback J.J. Whittaker, who prior to last year suffered three consecutive season-ending injuries before the Aztecs concluded the opening week of fall camp. Whittaker, who has petitioned the NCAA for a sixth season, returns as a preseason all-Mountain West selection and a candidate for the Jim Thorpe Award, awarded to college football's top defensive back.
There is head coach Rocky Long, whose 87 career Mountain West wins rank first in league history and a team that has accomplished a feat unparalleled in program annals --- an appearance in four straight bowl games.
Failing those hooks, there's this: Aztec single-game tickets start at $12. Single-game tickets for the NFL team sharing Qualcomm Stadium with SDSU? $66.
Of course, if a building's aesthetics are essential to fan allegiance your favorite player is probably Frank Lloyd Wright, in which case you fit firmly under the heading of "casual" fan. And while the casual fan is not to be discounted, the accompanying characterization can no longer serve to define the following of a program clearly deserving its due.