Dec. 12, 2015
Past Mick McGrane 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)
Long has Razed, Resurrected Aztecs (Nov. 20)
Aztecs Have Taken the Long Way Home (Nov. 27)
Aztecs Roll with Punches --- and Pumphrey (Nov. 29)
A Future Flush with Fortune (Dec. 2)
A New Dark Side Dawns at SDSU (Dec. 4)
SDSU's Potential Packed with Promise (Dec. 6)
McGrane: For Aztec Fans, the Fun has Just Begun
By Mick McGrane, @GoAztecs Senior Writer (@MickOnTheMesa)
The polling of a handful of San Diego State assistant football coaches produced the customary coach-speak, with the expectant ifs, maybes and you-never-knows embedded in virtually all of the respective responses.
It was two weeks away from the 2015 season opener and the Aztecs, for the first time in their 17-year Mountain West history, had been tabbed as the team to beat.
Was there reason to believe or was it simply hype, the usual preseason prattle generated by those who in coaches' eyes don't know a football from a frying pan?
"When people (pick you to win the division), I think it shows a lot of respect in terms of what you've been able to get done on the field, but that's only what people think," said offensive coordinator and associate head coach Jeff Horton. "You still have to be able to do."
"I think we have a chance to be a good football team," said special teams coach Bobby Hauck, who had come to SDSU after five years as head coach at UNLV. "But I don't think there's a coach on this staff who doesn't feel we have a ways to go before we get to where we want to be."
"You need to have a few bounces go your way, you need a Iittle luck and you need to stay healthy," said cornerbacks coach and recruiting coordinator Tony White.
And that's where the anticipated adages came to a sudden stop.
"If we can do that, we've got a shot to win it all," White continued. "It's like wildfire. You begin to believe that there is truly no way you can lose. Those are the things that really matter when you start talking about championships."
While talk of last week's MW championship understandably has yet to die down, the future is hardly absent of allure. A team that won 10 games for the first team since 1977 and heads to the Hawai'i Bowl having won nine straight has the potential to return 15 of 22 starters next season. Depending upon senior quarterback Maxwell Smith's decision to return in 2016 (he suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee in the regular-season finale) , it's a team that could enter spring drills with two capable quarterbacks --- Smith and MW Championship marvel Christian Chapman --- as well as a potential Heisman candidate in junior running back Donnel Pumphrey.
It's a team where three underclassmen --- Pumphrey, junior cornerback Damontae Kazee and sophomore running back/kick returner Rashaad Penny --- were named the league's offensive, defensive and special teams players of the year, respectively. Six of the seven SDSU players earning first-team all-league honors were underclassmen.
It's a team whose head coach, Rocky Long, the MW Coach of the Year, will begin his sixth season as mentor of a program that has won as many league titles (two) over the past four seasons as it did the previous 25 years. There is nary a player in the program now who wasn't recruited by Long, whose estimation of a coach needing six to seven years to fully rebuild a program appears to be right on schedule.
"Our program has gotten much better," Long said. "We have better athletes in our program. The players understand the expectation level. They understand how we do things and how hard they have to work.
And when you win 10 games you also have to be a little lucky. You have to have some bounces go your way and you obviously have to stay healthy and not be faced with losing some of your better players. We were lucky that way.
"So, we could actually have a better football team next year and not win 10 games. But I do think next year's team has the potential to be as good or better than this one was. And when you're building a program, every year should be like that. I don't think our team would be worried about playing anybody right now. You can take any of the top 10 teams in the country. I don't think we'd be worried about it and I also think it would be one hell of a football game."
Who's to argue? After 37 years in the business, Long knows championship caliber when he sees it. He also knows that with the enormous recruiting advantages enjoyed by Power 5 schools that projecting a player's potential three to four years into the future has become paramount to long-term success. It's a crapshoot to be sure, but one Long and his staff have moved ever closer to mastering. Consider: Prior to its 27-24 victory in the MW title game, SDSU had defeated 10 straight league opponents by an average of 24.7 points.
That's not merely a step in the right direction, that's full-blown dominance.
"Each year that Coach Long has been here we've done well," said senior defensive tackle Jon Sanchez. "Now we've won 10 games and a conference championship. I think we're getting to where we want to be. Each year now we're getting good players and the coaching staff has mostly stayed the same. I don't see why there would be any reason now why the program wouldn't be able to continue to succeed."
Nor does a certain head coach whose team just captured the school's first outright league title in 29 years.
"I think we're getting better all the time," Long said. "I think winning 10 games shows that the program has gotten better. I actually think we've gotten better to the point where we might not win 10 games next season, but we could still be a better football team.
"But a lot of things have to go into it for you to be able to win 10 games and win a conference championship. We had a veteran quarterback (Smith) that got better and better and never put us in jeopardy by throwing interceptions. We had an offensive line that wasn't very good at the beginning, but got better and better and was really good at the end of the season. We had a defense that played well without having any injuries, and then we got an injury (to senior nose tackle Christian Heyward) that really hurt us against the type of offense (Air Force's triple option) that we ended up having to play. We had our starting quarterback go down. That stuff could have happened four or five weeks ago and we might not be sitting here talking about a conference championship."
And yet they are. And for a team enters the bowl season with the third-longest active win streak in the nation, they're also talking about the future.