Why San Diego State is a New Year's Six bowl contender

SAN DIEGO — The trophy recognizing last season’s Mountain West Conference championship sits on a picnic table tucked inside the main doorway to San Diego State’s football offices, across the hall from the Aztecs’ modest meeting room and one floor above a weight room the football team shares with each of the university’s athletic programs.

Elsewhere, perhaps, such signs of success are wall-mounted, hidden behind glass, bathed in bright lights and showcased for the world to see, as evidence of games and championships won. It is that for San Diego State — draped in school colors, positioned below a sign preaching one of the Aztecs’ main tenets (“Hard Work Hones Our Edge,” it reads) and topped with mementos — only different: it’s just a picnic table.

“We’re not one of those schools that amaze them with what I call ‘bling,’ ” head coach Rocky Long told USA TODAY Sports.

The Aztecs’ locker room, in Long’s words, “looks like a high school locker room.” The weight room is “very average.” There’s no training table or cafeteria reserved for student-athletes. There are no waterfalls, no bells, no whistles, no “music and all that stuff.”

“We don’t have the problem of getting the kid that comes there because it’s the prettiest and it’s the best and it’s the most wonderful,” Long said. “We don’t have that problem, because the kids know what we’ve got. And if they don’t, they see it when they get here.”

At first glance, the Aztecs’ surroundings quietly highlight, almost at a whisper, the program’s recent success. They are on a streak of six consecutive bowl appearances and enter this season on a 10-game win streak — the second-longest active winning streak in the Football Bowl Subdivision, trailing only Alabama, the defending national champions.

There’s more to this picture, and there’s more to this program. Here in this hub of laid-back and easygoing Southern California, the Aztecs’ nuts-and-bolts physical appearance is mirrored by an identity and mentality: San Diego State has, if nothing else, willingly elected to turn its perceived negatives — no great history of success, a roster of players largely ignored by power-conference recruiters, throwback offensive and defensive philosophies, and an utter lack of frills — into the engine behind its success.

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“We’re about the brick and mortar, the foundation here,” said associate head coach Bobby Hauck. “It’s maybe even a dying art in our game to approach it that way, but the formula hasn’t changed. You go back 100 years in this game. The formula works. And until they make blocking and tackling illegal, it’s still going to work. It’s still going to be a formula that works in this game.

“You’ve got to come and go to work here to play on this team and to work here. You have to have a bit of a blue-collar mentality. That’s a hard blend here, and it’s difficult to get. But when you do it’s something special.”

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Something special is brewing at San Diego State — even if at a whisper, well off the national radar heading into the heart of college football’s offseason.

Fourteen starters return, including six first-team All-Mountain West selections. Among teams in the FBS, only Oklahoma, with nine, had more players earn first-team all-league honors. Counted among those returning starters are the reigning conference offensive, defensive and special teams players of the year; San Diego State was the only team in the country and just the second team in Mountain West history to sweep the three major individual awards.

Last year’s team became just the sixth in the past 20 years to win each of its regular-season league games by a double-digit margin, joining Miami (Fla.) in 2000, Boise State in 2002, Oklahoma in 2003, Utah in 2004 and Florida State in 2013. When coupled with its returning talent, San Diego State’s torrid close — coming as it did on the heels of three losses in its first four games — paints the Aztecs as perhaps the strongest contender for the berth in a New Year’s Six bowl afforded to the best team on the Group of Five level.

“Our expectations are always high, so we don’t remind them of anything,” Long said. “We go about our business and do things the way we always do. Not even one time did we even mention last year. We didn’t mention the expectations this year either, other than what our own expectations are.”

Alone, that the Aztecs are in this position is noteworthy: SDSU had long been viewed as one of college football’s greatest underachievers, defined by an inability to take advantage of a deep and talented recruiting base in its own backyard. That perception of the program has changed under Long, who has captured two conference titles since being promoted from defensive coordinator following the 2010 season.

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In an era when spread offenses have multiplied across every conference and championship contenders are marked by wealth as much as wins, San Diego State swims successfully against the current with a commitment to a bygone era of the game.

“We're the dinosaur. I feel that’s our niche,” offensive coordinator Jeff Horton said. “That’s who we are. Teams always say when they get ready to play someone good, ‘We’re looking forward to playing real football, old-fashioned football.’ But they haven’t had a guard pulling on ‘em or tackles blocking down or a fullback leading the way.”

The Aztecs’ offense is borrowed from a previous era: Horton uses a scheme first learned during his stint as an assistant under former Wisconsin coach Barry Alvarez, creating a system that dictates time of possession with its run-first approach while avoiding crucial missteps — the Aztecs threw just three interceptions last fall, the second-fewest in the FBS.

“We just feel like in the course of a game, we’ll just keep wearing on you,” said Horton. “We’re going to out-hit you and out-tough you, and we’re going to slow the game down.”

The defense, an alignment of three linemen and three linebackers in front of five defensive backs, aggressively attacks spread and pro-style opponents alike with a mix of blitzing and stunting; last season’s defense led the Mountain West in overall sacks, tackles for loss and interceptions, and in yards and points allowed per game.

“Our coach doesn’t preach the flashiness,” said senior running back Donnel Pumphrey, a two-time all-conference selection. “He just preaches the hard work and the toughness on and off the field. Because when you play football, you can’t be soft out here. And there are a lot of spread teams that are soft. I mean, they win games, but they’re still soft.”

Unflashy? Sure, but don’t equate a lack of flash with a lack of skill. Contained in San Diego State’s unconventional approach is talent and experience, two assets that paint the Aztecs as a team prepared to leap into the center of the College Football Playoff conversation.

“We’re not all flashy,” said senior linebacker Calvin Munson. “We’re not out there with different-colored helmet every single game, different jerseys. We run our program old-fashioned. We’re a tough team. We run the power on offense, we get after it on defense. We don’t have any tricks. We just go out there and play football, and try to be the toughest team and have fun.”

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The heightened expectations — even if Long hesitates to acknowledge the team’s potential — are rooted not only in the active winning streak but the way last season began: SDSU lost three games in a row to cap non-conference play, leading the team’s senior leaders to focus on the small mistakes that plagued the Aztecs’ sour start.

This year’s upperclassmen are undeniably more talented. Pumphrey is a Heisman candidate, cornerback Damontae Kazee is a reigning All-America selection, left guard Nico Siragusa might be the top offensive lineman in the Mountain West and Munson is the among the league’s most decorated returning defenders. Thirteen seniors are penciled into the starting lineup, based on the coaching staff’s post-spring depth chart, giving the Aztecs a level of experience largely unmatched across the FBS.

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For the Aztecs to match their potential, however, these same seniors must match the leadership exhibited by last season’s senior class, Long said, calling that group the core of “the most unselfish football team I’ve been around as a coach.”

“This group is much more talented, but that does not mean we’re going to be a better football team because I don’t know what kind of leadership we’re going to get from them,” Long said.

“Everyone is going to have these expectations because we have these named players coming back. But it has nothing to do with us being good or bad. Now what happens is if this year’s senior class is as good as last year’s senior class, we could be really good.”

How good? “The biggest goal for this season is really to go undefeated,” said Pumphrey. Echoed Munson: “We want to win every game. We want to win a Mountain West championship again.”

Consider the schedule: SDSU draws California at home — with a goal of avenging last season’s 28-point loss — and Northern Illinois on the road before turning to conference play, which includes trips to Utah State and Nevada but avoids cross-divisional matchups with Air Force and Boise State.

Take into account the returning talent, driven by a gifted senior class, and the combination of a clock-chewing offense and an opportunistic defense; this mixture can fluster opponents.

“Can it be done?” Long asked, before answering: “Of course it can be done, because people are involved, and you can never judge their minds and their hearts. So it can be done.”

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A push for an unbeaten regular season would be significant for a program long shoved to the fringes of irrelevance as a result of unrealized potential — a program that won a combined 41 games during the nine seasons prior to Long’s promotion and has since gone 43-23, asserting itself among a crowded mix of major-conference and overlooked contenders with its unorthodox approach.

What makes San Diego State different — what separates this program from other off-the-radar contenders for a Playoff bowl — is what makes the Aztecs a legitimate national threat.

“There’s so many ways to skin a cat in this game,” Hauck said. “Around here, there are certain things: toughness, discipline, work ethic. Those are the things that have made this a perennial contender in our conference. That’s the culture in this program.”

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