Here’s a stone. Please step on it.
San Diego State needs a new football coach and I won't mind if it's a pattern
“Don’t cry because it’s over; smile because it happened.”
I’m thinking about Dr. Seuss today because San Diego State has an opening for a new football head coach, this is the most important coaching hire in two decades for my beloved university, yet I’m already thinking about the next coach who will replace this yet-to-be-named new coach.
As I view the various lists of possible coaches, and debate them with my fellow alums, I frequently hear this angst of not wanting to hire a coach who will be successful, then leave after a few years for a bigger payday with a bigger university.
I actually hope that happens. I want excitement. I want to be happy. I want to smile because it happened. Even if the new coach said at his introductory press conference that he plans to leave in a few years, that wouldn’t bother me. That means he’s motivated to win, win immediately, and win with a flashy style that makes him attractive for another job. Please let that happen.
Sure, you’d prefer the best of all worlds. A coach that loves San Diego, wins immediately, doesn’t want to leave, rejects other job offers, continues to evolve as the sport changes, continues to win, and provides stability over decades.
It’s just incredibly rare for that to happen, anywhere, especially at San Diego State. Somehow it did happen at SDSU – minus the “continues to evolve as the sport changes” part -- in both football and men’s basketball. I can’t fathom that will ever happen again, and I sure don’t want the university chasing stability and sacrificing excitement.
Steve Fisher led the basketball team for 18 years, before turning it over to his longtime assistant Brian Dutcher, and he’s now in his seventh year. That’s 25 straight years of continuity. The tandem of Brady Hoke, then his assistant Rocky Long, then back to Hoke, led the football program for 15 consecutive seasons.
Aztecs fans were spoiled by this consistency. Yet we also felt the agonizing constraints of coaches who didn’t always evolve as the sport changed.
Sports always change and collegiate athletics are changing more rapidly than ever. You need a coach who will embrace the transfer portal, and Name Image Likeness opportunities for players. You need a coach with a dynamic personality to convince teenagers to shun bigger schools to come play in a system with innovation, creative play calling, and the opportunity to showcase their skills for the pros.
That’s what Don Coryell did fifty years ago at SDSU. When the original San Diego Stadium opened, the Aztecs routinely outdrew the NFL’s Chargers in attendance. They did it because they won, but also because of a compelling style of play that just hadn’t been seen.
Even during the football team’s recent sustained run of excellence, it’s been fairly boring.
I met Hoke a few times and always liked him a lot. I will always be grateful that he turned around the football team at a time when the program was so bad the U-T published a story suggesting the Aztecs should drop football entirely.
In the 10 years before Hoke took over, starting with the first year of the Mountain West Conference, the Aztecs went 39-78 under Ted Tollner (11-22), Tom Craft (19-29) and Chuck Long (9-27). They had zero winning seasons and no bowl games.
After a 4-8 first season, Hoke led the Aztecs to a 9-4 record in 2010 and a win over Navy in the Poinsettia Bowl. That convinced the University of Michigan to hire Hoke to replace Rich Rodriguez and he took a lot of his assistants with him to Ann Arbor.
Long stayed and led the Aztecs to nine consecutive bowl games, four teams won 10-plus games, and three were ranked in the Top 25. Hoke returned as Long’s assistant, then took back over the reins in 2020, when Long decided he was tired of being a head coach.
Hoke guided the team through Covid, playing home games in Carson, won a school-record 12 games in 2021, but slipped to 7-6 last year as the new stadium opened, and the team is in last place this year with one of the worst offenses in the country.
It was time. Hoke needed to go. The parents of current players were attacking him on social media. Recruits were de-committing. Attendance at a 2-year-old stadium was already crumbling when you should still be enjoying the honeymoon period.
SDSU announced his departure as retirement. The U-T reported that Hoke told his assistants he was fired. The “fired vs. retired” is significant because Hoke had three years remaining on his contract with a buyout of about $5 million. That’s nothing compared to the $77 million Texas A&M is paying Jimbo Fisher to not coach – don’t ever complain about what players make – but $5 million is a lot for SDSU and disgruntled fans have spent the last two months concerned it was too much money for a coaching change.
Hoke told reporters on Monday, “It’s time. Believe me. I’ve done 42 years (of coaching), so it’s time to move forward.” I commend him for reading the room, hope he enjoys retirement, tailgates in the parking lot at Aztecs games, and enjoys them as a fan.
I’ll let the accountants worry about the fine details of his buyout. My focus reverts back to the new coach and the new coach after him.
JD Wicker, the Aztecs athletic director, said in a radio interview that he’s not exclusively focused on a coach with an offensive background. But I sure he hopes he hires one.
“Offense sells tickets; defense wins championships” is an old slogan. Well, the Aztecs need to sell tickets. They need pizzazz. This is San Diego, the home of Air Coryell, Dan Fouts, Brian Sipe and Marshall Faulk. The Murph’s finest moments were not based on a stout defensive effort, but electric offense. The 52-52 tie against BYU remains my favorite football game ever.
And the Aztecs need an adrenaline shot.
Just six months ago, the Aztecs were basking in the glow of the basketball team’s trip to the national championship game, the opening of a new football stadium, and an invitation to the Pac-12 Conference seemed inevitable. Since then, the Pac-12 disintegrated, the football team sank to last place, and attendance plummeted.
So, yeah, give me USC offensive analyst Kliff Kingsbury. I know he went 35-40 at Texas Tech and 28-37-1 with the Arizona Cardinals. I also know it’s been absolutely maddening the Aztecs can’t recruit and/or develop a quarterback, while Kingsbury was previously the coach of Johnny Manziel, Baker Mayfield, Patrick Mahomes and Kyler Murray. I don’t care if he leaves after 2-3 years for a bigger college or a return to the NFL.
If he’s not interested, give me an Washington offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb. I know he’s only 30 years old and has never been a head coach. I also know he’s in charge of a dynamic fun offense with leading Heisman Trophy candidate Michael Penix, Jr. I don’t care if Grubb leaves after 2-3 years either.
Or maybe it’s another offensive coordinator, such as Oregon State’s Brian Lindgren (age 43) or Oregon’s Will Stein (age 34). I’m not going to pretend like I know any of them personally, how responsible they are for recent success, what type of recruiters they are, or what skeletons might be in the closet. That’s why search committees and the background checkers exist.
I’m talking about a vibe, an energy, that will resonate with casual fans and non alums.
Some of my fellow alums, and others on social media, are clamoring for Jimbo Fisher. The argument for Fisher: he doesn’t need the money, he still wants to coach, he likes to golf, San Diego has nice golf courses, and if one Fisher became a legend at SDSU, how about another?
The argument against: it’s a pipedream that Fisher would take a job at a college with drastically fewer resources than he’s become accustomed, and even if he doesn’t need the money, he wouldn’t take the job for what SDSU can pay.
Personally, I don’t want a longtime coach who is looking to coast into retirement.
I want a visionary coach with lofty dreams and loftier schemes. So what if he leaves after a few years? Bring on the next one after him.
When Steve Fisher was hired in 1999, the natural questions involved what did he know, or what should he have known, about the (then illegal) payments to Michigan basketball players. Fisher was hurt by the experience, but he reflected on his time with the Wolverines with a song by Garth Brooks about a guy who gets divorced.
These are the words:
And now I’m glad I didn’t know
The way it all would end
The way it all would go
Our lives are better left to chance
I could have missed the pain
But I’d have had to miss the dance.
Fisher was glad he didn’t miss the dance.
Yeah, let’s go dancing with the next Aztecs football coach, and we’ll cry together over a beer if he leaves us too soon.