Nov. 20, 2015
Past Mick McGrane 2014-15 football features
2014
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 Aztec Football (Nov. 29)
Winds of Change: "Rise To 25" Fuels New Direction for Football (Dec. 23)
Pumphrey in Need of a Playing Partner (Dec. 24)
2015
Football no Longer Needs Sun to Sell Itself (Feb. 4)
Aztec Football is Flush with Experience in 2015 (Feb. 20)
Regardless of Road, Whittaker's Future is Flush with Success (July 23)
Gordon no Longer Wrestling with Football Future (July 30)
Kazee has the Corner Covered in Aztec D (Aug. 5)
Hageman has Given Boot to Aztec Kicking Woes (Aug. 14)
Life is a Snap for Aztecs' Overbaugh (Aug. 21)
Munson Shines upon Emerging From Shadows (Aug. 28)
Pumphrey Prioritizes Winning in Rush to Stardom (Sept. 2)
Aztecs Positioned to Take Next Step in '15 (Sept. 4)
Aztecs Look to Get Offense in Gear (Sept. 6)
Penny's Stock Rising on Rate of Returns (Sept. 7)
Sorry, No Apologies Forthcoming (Sept. 11)
Seeking a Solution at Quarterback (Sept. 18)
Aztecs, Hauck Have Something Special (Oct. 2)
Aztecs Positioned to Make Statement (Oct. 22)
Aztecs Deliver Message to MW (Oct. 24)
Aztecs' O-Line Removing All Doubt (Oct. 30)
Aztecs' Offense in High Gear (Nov. 15)
McGrane: Long has Razed, Resurrected Aztecs
By Mick McGrane, @GoAztecs Senior Writer (@MickOnTheMesa)
In a world of Power 5 conferences versus those struggling for air, Rocky Long is a realist.
A realist who also will never flee from a fight.
"All of us that are non-Power 5 teams have the exact same problem: It's all about the evaluation of players," Long said. "There are a lot of good kids out there who maybe haven't reached their potential size-wise or strength-wise or speed-wise, and you have to be good enough to recruit the kids who aren't going to get recruited by the Power 5 teams. Anybody can identify the top 10 college prospects in the country, but finding a player who can become just like one of those (top 10 prospects), but isn't at that level yet, that's hard to do.
"And because the resource difference is so big between the schools that are Power 5 schools and those that aren't, the players that anybody can pick out (as a top 10 prospect) are going to go to the Power 5 teams; that's just the way it is. Your job (at a non-Power 5 school) is to identify the kids who are going to be like that three or four years from now. The coaches that can do that are going to win and the ones that can't are going to get fired."
Consider Rocky Long's name filed among the former.
During a college football season where seven FBS head-coaching positions were vacant by midseason --- a figure that according to Stats L.L.C. represented the same number as the previous three seasons combined --- Long has a program once south of sorry parked on the precipice of a 7-0 start in league play, a feat never accomplished at San Diego State. Should the Aztecs win at UNLV on Saturday, they would also win the West Division of the Mountain West while securing a spot in the league championship game on Dec. 5.
Whatever your vision of improbable, it's likely short-sighted. This is a program that in 2008 braced itself for a trip to Notre Dame by piping in crowd noise on the practice field, only to have non-practicing players screaming at the top of their lungs when the sound system failed. This is a program lost twice in three years to FCS Cal Poly. This is a program that won a combined nine games between 2006 and 2008, a figure that will be surpassed in but a matter of weeks should the Aztecs win out.
A program that now has a coaching staff in place whose idea of fun is to flatten anything in its path while selling recruits on success, a selling point that only six years ago would have ranked somewhere between laughable and full-blown loony.
"I think success is the biggest factor in recruiting," Long said. "Now, we're not talking Power 5 versus non-Power 5. But if you're recruiting on an equal basis, kids always want to go where you win."
And in the Mountain West, no one currently is proving more accomplished in that arena than SDSU. The Aztecs, in addition to being the only unbeaten team in league play, have won eight straight conference games, a figure tied for fourth nationally. During that time, SDSU has outscored the opposition by a staggering 274-83, its last four wins having come by 23 or more points, a figure matched nationally by exactly no one.
And a figure that in no small way has factored exponentially in potential recruits now crowding the SDSU sideline.
"On Saturday night, we probably had three times as many recruits down on the field before the (Wyoming) game as we've ever had before," Long said. "Counting parents and brothers and sisters, there were probably 1,000 people down there. My first couple years here, if we had 15 guys down there we were pretty happy. We probably had over 100 potential recruits at the game."
It's what happens when you own the ninth-longest winning streak in the nation. It's what happens when, since Oct. 1, you've ranked no lower than fifth in the nation in 10 statistical categories, including first in scoring defense (10.3) and opponent yards per game (214.3). It's what happens when you've won six straight games by at least 10 points, a feat matched nationally by only No. 1 Clemson and Arkansas State.
And when it happens with a staff offering stability rather than endless seasons of pathetic pratfalls, it has a tendency to happen with increasing frequency. Rocky Long may have yet to be accorded the level of adoration reserved for Steve Fisher, but give him time. With college football coaches being cut adrift with the same regularity as their NFL brethren, haste can have harrowing results.
"It's got to be someone that has a plan and is given time to execute the plan," Long said. "I think people are so impatient now. There are a lot of guys out there right now who have the ability to turn programs around, but they're not given the opportunity.
"The coach at Wyoming (Craig Bohl) who's struggling right now is one of the best coaches to have ever coached college football. But if they don't give him five or six years to do it, he won't get it done, either. He won (three) national championships at (North Dakota State) and lost two games (in his final three years). But now all of the sudden he can't coach? I'm sure (Wyoming fans) are upset because they're not playing well and their record isn't very good, but when you hire a new coach now, people expect you to fix it in a day. You don't fix programs in a day. It takes you six or seven years to fix a program."
Long is in Year 5. And with the dust now settling in the wake of the razing and renovation, the resurrection of San Diego State football is at hand.
"This football team has a lot of energy," Long said. "When they go out to practice, it bugs me sometimes because they don't act like they're concentrating. Have you noticed what players are doing on the field now during TV timeouts? They're just out there dancing and having the best time. And we have more of those kinds of guys on this team than we've had in the past. They really enjoy themselves. I think that's important and it's a critical part of the game. Good for them. They don't have to be nervous like me."
Not that losing sight of the objective is absent of consequences. Football at SDSU is now no-nonsense, a place where so-so is no longer provided sanctuary.
"I think we're evaluating players well enough that they come in and develop into pretty good football players and give us a chance to be competitive," Long said. "And more important than that is that every kid in our program now believes in how we do things. Either that or they leave."
And miss out on this much fun? Fat chance.