Hicks Talks Good Game and Plays Even Better : SDSU Free Safety Doesn’t Mind Making People Mad, Before or During Games

Among most football coaches and players, it is considered taboo to criticize an opponent before a game.

Harold Hicks, San Diego State’s free safety, has never adhered to the theory. Instead, he would rather have the opposition listening to him during the week.

And when Harold Hicks talks, opponents’ bulletin boards perk up.

Consider:

--In high school and community college, Hicks habitually downplayed the top opposing player before the game.

“I don’t think the guy is that great,” Hicks once said of an opposing high school running back. “I don’t see an ‘S’ on his chest. He’s not Superman.”

--Before the Aztecs played Utah this year, Hicks discussed the Utes’ quarterback and top receiver.

“They weren’t that good when I played against them in junior college,” Hicks said. “I don’t see why they would be any good now.”

This week, with SDSU needing to beat Brigham Young to win the Western Athletic Conference championship, Hicks is a changed man.

“I don’t know any of BYU’s players,” Hicks said. “I can’t say anything about them.”

If Hicks were familiar with BYU’s players, he undoubtedly would be holding court.

“I like being cocky,” Hicks said. “An hour before a game I’ll say to myself, ‘Look at what I said this week. They’re going to come at me now.’ By being cocky, I put added pressure on myself to do better. You can be cocky if you do things right.”

Hicks has done quite a bit right in his career. At Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, he was an all-league player and led his team into the city playoffs. At Pasadena City College last year, one scouting service rated him as the No. 2 community college player in the nation.

“He’s a little cocky, and that’s good,” said Chick Epstein, Hicks’ high school coach. “I guess when you’re a good player, you get that type of attitude. If a kid is good, he hopes the ball comes in his direction. That’s the type of attitude Harold had.”

At SDSU, coaches want Hicks to tone down his act.

“He could use a little more wisdom about what he says in the press about what he feels about people,” said Ron Mims, SDSU’s secondary coach. “Obviously, that’ll come with a little more maturity. You have to have the confidence and cockiness he does to play in the secondary. You can’t be scared back there.”

At practice, Hicks is not afraid to talk. At home, nothing changes.

“He’s always talking about football, his position and what he has to do,” said Kirkland Charles, Hicks’ roommate and an SDSU basketball player. “When you play a sport and excel, you eat, drink and sleep it. Harold is always thinking and talking about what he has to do as far as football is concerned.”

This has been a good week for Hicks to talk about football.

Not only is the BYU game this week, but he can also talk about a 100-yard interception return he made Saturday night against Hawaii.

Saturday afternoon, Hicks had seen Arizona’s Chuck Cecil return an interception 100 yards. Immediately, Hicks told himself he wanted to duplicate the feat against Hawaii.

“When I caught the ball, I hesitated until I saw nothing but green,” Hicks said. “I just kept telling myself to run as fast as possible. I said it so much that I pulled a hamstring on our 30. I had to downshift and go into third gear. Then, I thought somebody was chasing me. I kept running fast because I knew if I got caught, I would never hear the end of it on this campus from my teammates.”

At Birmingham High, Hicks was a wide receiver and safety. In 1982, his senior year, he had 25 receptions and 7 interceptions.

“When we had scrimmages, I always told Harold to hold our runner up and not put him on his back,” Epstein said. “We were afraid he would rip one of our players in half. He was a devastating tackler.”

A tackle on Hicks made him exclusively a free safety for his final three high school games.

“I got hit in the ribs one game at Birmingham trying to catch a poorly thrown ball,” Hicks said. “I didn’t want anything to do with playing receiver after that. You sort of miss the glory of being a receiver, but you do get in a few good plays like I did Saturday. Offensive players get their name in the paper more. But punishment-wise, I was tired of getting hit.”

After high school, Hicks was not recruited by major colleges because he weighed only 165 pounds.

Hicks enrolled at Pasadena City in 1983, but he didn’t even let coaches know he was on campus. He sat out one year, bulked up, then went out for football the next season.

Last season, Hicks began drawing raves from major colleges. He actually selected Georgia but ran into complications before ever enrolling.

Georgia requires an associates degree for community college transfers, and Hicks needed to complete six units of summer school to qualify. He said he didn’t want to attend summer school, so he decided to enroll elsewhere. SDSU does not require the degree for community college transfers.

Chuck Lyons, a Pasadena City assistant coach, contacted Mims about recruiting Hicks. Lyons was acquainted with Mims because Mims had recruited him to Washington State several years before. Mims, an assistant at Purdue last season, had earlier attempted to recruit Hicks for the Boilermakers.

Hicks enrolled at SDSU in August. He was far behind in football because he had missed spring practice.

However, he was impressive in preseason practice and earned a starting position for the season opener against Cal State Long Beach.

“He had to make a fast adjustment with a compressed time period,” Mims said. “In normal circumstances, it usually takes a little time to adjust. We put constraints on him and limited him in certain games. We didn’t want him to have errors of judgment. We’ve given him a little more latitude the last couple of games. He’s doing things the way we want him to now.”

Hicks, the Aztecs’ fifth-leading tackler, had his first two interceptions against Hawaii.

His rise has coincided with a rise in the entire defense. The Aztecs, who allowed an average of 33.3 points in their first four games, have allowed an average of 17.3 points in the last six.

“Harold is one of the reasons our defense has improved as much as it has,” Coach Denny Stolz said. “It was really rough on him walking in cold in the fall and having to learn our free safety position. Naturally, like everyone else, he had trouble picking up our system early in the year. Now, I don’t know where we would be without him.”

Aztec Notes

Offensive guard Doug Aronson has been selected to the all-Western Athletic Conference first team for the second consecutive year. Also selected to the firstteam were tight end Robert Awalt, defensive tackle Levi Esene and safety Steve Lauter. Second-team selections were quarterback Todd Santos, running back Chris Hardy, linebacker Randy Kirk and cornerback Mario Mitchell. Honorable mention was given to center Kevin Wells and defensive end Mike Hooper. . . . Denny Stolz coached once before against Brigham Young. Stolz’s 1983 Bowling Green team lost to BYU, 63-28. “They had a $40-million quarterback (Steve Young) then,” Stolz said. . . . Fred Miller, SDSU athletic director, predicted before the season that the SDSU-BYU game would be for the WAC championship. “I didn’t necessarily agree with him then,” Stolz said. “He looks smart now.” . . . John Reid, executive director of the Holiday Bowl, said all 40,000 public tickets for the game have been sold. Each of the competing schools will receive 10,000 tickets to sell. Reid said the Holiday Bowl is taking applications for fans who want to be on a waiting list in case either competing team is unable to sell its alloted tickets.