Nov. 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 (Aug. 29)
How Quickly We Forget (Sept. 7)
Looks Can Be Deceiving (Sept. 19)
O-Line has Aztecs' Running Game in High Gear (Oct. 23)
Falling Short is no Longer an Option for SDSU Football
By Mick McGrane (@MickOnTheMesa)
If the days didn't dawn with despair, neither did they serve as harbingers of hope. Losing has a tendency to do that, to dampen and ultimately break the spirit, to sap the will and hasten surrender.
To kill dreams. If, indeed, dreams dared raise their heads.
And so it went at San Diego State, where for a decade-plus, to think postseason was to think pony for Christmas, where wishing for a bowl bid was to wish upon a dying star.
Losing has a tendency to do that, to prompt a shrug of the shoulders, to make one throw their hands in the air and walk away.
But for the recent-arrivals, those who've never sampled the flip side of successful seasons enjoyed by the Aztecs since 2010, know this:
The fun has just begun.
The Aztecs, whose participation in the postseason was once viewed as untenable if not sheer folly, are headed to their fifth straight bowl game after making short work of San Jose State, 38-7, in Saturday's regular-season finale.
SDSU is expected to accept an invitation to the Poinsettia Bowl, where it will face Navy at Qualcomm Stadium on Dec. 23.
"Some people might say (qualifying for the postseason five straight times) is not a big deal, but I've been coaching a long time and I can tell you that it is a big deal," said head coach Rocky Long. "And I would love to stay home. The Poinsettia Bowl is a classy bowl and it's a nice game to be a part of. So, I'd love to stay home if they'd have us."
While critics are quick to suggest that bowl bids are now parceled out like candy from a Pez dispenser, trust me when I tell you there will be no apology forthcoming from the Aztec camp. Having witnessed first-hand every single game from 2005-08, a period that produced 14 wins in 48 games, a period where the direction of the program loomed somewhere between down and deeper down, this is utopia replete with unicorns.
Consider: Prior to 2010, SDSU had one non-losing season (6-6 in 2003) in 12 years. Prior to the team's other Poinsettia Bowl appearance, also in 2010, the Aztecs played in two bowls in 20 seasons. This isn't merely a reversal of fortune, it's a steady hand on the wheel of a program once veering toward the vanishing point.
The degree of difficulty in qualifying for a fifth straight postseason game? SDSU entered Saturday's contest as one of only 29 teams in the nation to make an appearance in four straight bowl games. Translation: 77 percent of the remaining FBS teams in America failed to match that feat.
But it's more than a feather in the cap of the 16 SDSU seniors saluted Saturday. It's nearly a month of additional practice time for underclassmen who will battle for playing time next season. It's an evaluation period that would otherwise be pushed back until next spring. This year, more than four months --- time spent without coaches --- elapsed between the conclusion of spring drills and the opening of fall camp in early August.
It's additional time for Oregon transfer quarterback Jake Rodrigues, a former four-star prep standout who chose SDSU over interest from Miami, Michigan, Texas and Utah State. It's a time to further hone a defense that returns seven starters, one that prior to ceding a fourth-quarter touchdown on Saturday hadn't allowed a touchdown in five consecutive quarters for the first time since 2003. It's a time to celebrate the remarkable talents of sophomore running back Donnel Pumphrey, who rushed for 267 yards Saturday in posting his ninth 100-yard performance in 12 career games.
Mostly, however, it's a time to put further distance between present and past, to further forge a future flush with possibility.
Winning has a tendency to do that.