COLLEGE FOOTBALL: TONIGHT’S GAMES : HOILDAY : Aztecs Carry WAC’s Hopes

“Good luck to San Diego State University. Sorry we couldn’t be there. Signed, LaVell Edwards.”

That message from BYU’s football coach was read Monday by master of ceremonies Jay Randolph at a luncheon honoring San Diego State and Iowa, the combatants in tonight’s Holiday Bowl.

The note from Edwards signaled both the end of his team’s dynasty--BYU had won or shared the Western Athletic Conference title for the last 10 years--and the rise of the Aztecs under Coach Denny Stolz.

SDSU soared from a sixth-place finish under Doug Scovil in 1985 to the league title in 1986, the biggest improvement in WAC history.

Taking note of the Aztecs’ climb, Iowa Coach Hayden Fry observed, “They probably made as much if not more progress from the beginning to the end of the year as any team in college football.”

Stolz appeared to take that as something of a good-natured slur.

“Hayden was very nice, but what he really meant was that we stunk in the first half of the year,” Stolz said.

The Aztecs closed with a four-game winning streak, including a 10-3 win over BYU that clinched the WAC championship.

Now, according to Stolz, it’s time to see just how far the team really has come.

“This game is a yardstick for me,” he said.

“It is going to be interesting to see where we are and how competitive we can be. I sense the competitive sense more and more in our players.”

The game has a different meaning for Iowa.

The Hawkeyes are playing to save face. After falling to UCLA in the 1986 Rose Bowl, 45-28, they are playing not so much to win but to avoid losing.

Fry, who said he considers himself a student of history, believes that bowls tend to produce games that are out of character with a team’s regular-season results. As an example, he cited last year’s Rose Bowl, when Iowa running back Ronnie Harmon fumbled four times and the Hawkeyes were buried by UCLA.

Fry declined to predict what sort of game tonight’s might be, but said he wouldn’t be surprised if it were high-scoring.

If bowls somehow do produce skewed results, they apparently don’t alter the personalities of coaches.

Living up to a time-honored tradition of building up the opposition, Fry painted the Aztecs as a thoroughly worthy and dangerous team.

“San Diego State is more balanced than any team we’ve played,” he said. “They’re not super in any one department but they are sound on offense, defense and in the kicking game.

“They may be a faster team than we are. We thought we were as fast as UCLA, but we got fooled. Surprisingly, San Diego State is also as big as we are. They just look a little smaller in those all-black uniforms. My advice to people who are overweight would be to wear all black.”

Fry said he wasn’t trying to sound like San Diego’s chamber of commerce, but he seemed intent on creating the impression for the people back home that it wouldn’t be history’s biggest upset if the Aztecs won.

The Aztecs do have a number of apparent advantages.

They are playing on their home field before a crowd that should be decidedly in their favor, although it should also be noted that Iowans quickly scooped up the school’s allotment of 10,000 tickets and looked elsewhere, to BYU followers, for extra seats.

This will be Iowa’s first game on real grass this year. All 11 regular season games were played on synthetic surfaces. The last time the Hawkeyes played on grass was in Pasadena last Jan. 1.

Iowa has twice lost bowls under circumstances similar to those of the Holiday Bowl. Playing in an opponent’s home area on grass, the Hawkeyes lost to Florida in the 1983 Gator Bowl, as well as to UCLA in the Rose Bowl.

Fry termed San Diego State’s success under Stolz as “kind of miraculous.”

He accounted for that miracle by noting the presence of about 40 fourth- and fifth-year players on the Aztec roster.

“They have to be the most experienced team in America,” Fry said.

One last advantage for the Aztecs may be psychological.

As a representative of the Western Athletic Conference, the Aztecs are opposing a delegation from what is one of the country’s strongest conferences, the Big Ten.

“It would be a king-sized feather in their bonnet if they beat us,” Fry said.

Of course, there is a precedent for a WAC team beating a Big Ten team in the Holiday Bowl. Only two years ago, BYU defeated Michigan, and in so doing, won the national championship.

The stakes are not as elevated in tonight’s game, but it is still an important one for San Diego State.

The game presents an opportunity to consolidate the gains made under Stolz and Fred Miller, the new athletic director.

The Aztecs will be without wide receiver Anthony Conyers, declared ineligible by the NCAA after a drug test disclosed cocaine use. The offensive burden will fall upon quarterback Todd Santos, halfback Chris Hardy and fullback Corey Gilmore, the team’s leading receiver.

Iowa’s offense revolves around the passing of quarterback Mark Vlasic, who backed up Chuck Long for four seasons before getting his chance this year. He ranked among the nation’s leaders in passing efficiency despite a shoulder injury that hampered him for more than half the year.