SDSU Turned Things Around in ’86 : Despite Loss, Aztecs Look to the Future

Going into the 1986 season, San Diego State’s football team had suffered through three consecutive losing seasons for the first time in nearly three decades. It had changed coaching staffs and morale was at an all-time low.

Now, two days after the Aztecs’ 39-38 loss to Iowa in the Holiday Bowl, things are a lot brighter--except for the fact that they could have beaten the Hawkeyes.

SDSU, under first-year Coach Denny Stolz, showed this season it can stay with a good Big Ten team. The Aztecs wereno longer an easy victory for teams looking to pad their records.

In 1986, the Aztecs went from also-rans to a team that had its advertised Return to Glory.

“I was talking to Don Coryell at the Holiday Bowl,” SDSU Athletic Director Fred Miller said. “He said this town has to go to bat for us now. The question is whether this town will do the things to help us become the Penn State of the West. There’s no reason San Diego State can’t be to the West Coast what Penn State is to the East Coast.”

Realistically, Miller might be a bit presumptuous at this point. The Aztecs did lose to their two Pac-10 opponents, UCLA and Stanford. And despite coming close, they were unable to beat Iowa, the Big Ten’s third-place team.

Nevertheless, the Aztecs have come a long way for a team that finished sixth in the Western Athletic Conference in 1985. Never before had a WAC team jumped from sixth to first in one season.

“We’ve had a euphoric kind of year,” Miller said. “Everybody is smiling on this one. What this season does is give us credibility. People like to come to a winner. Winning the WAC and playing so well in the Holiday Bowl adds to our successful ingredient.”

Already, there is a question of whether SDSU will be as successful in 1987. The Aztecs are losing seven offensive and six defensive starters. Two of the four offensive starters who will return were reserves until the final three games of the regular season.

Even so, winning already has had an impact on recruiting. The Aztecs have signed nine community college players, including six of the seven they had recruited from San Diego County. The seventh, Palomar defensive end Brad Henke, is undecided among USC, Brigham Young and SDSU.

By Wednesday afternoon, Stolz and his coaches were back on the recruiting trail. The players had left for home, leaving the SDSU football facility a ghost town for the first time since two-a-day practices began in August.

Before departing, players shared their sentiments from SDSU’s first bowl game in 17 years.

“This was like the Super Bowl for us,” fullback Corey Gilmore said. “We were trying to be the first team at State to win a big bowl game. The game does mean a lot to us for the future. We’ll be able to recruit a great deal better players who will be coming here instead of USC or UCLA.”

Quarterback Todd Santos: “It was a typical great Holiday Bowl, and the team with the ball last won. This should help our recruiting efforts. We showed a lot of people around the country that we can play football. Although we’re disappointed we didn’t win, the game was icing on the cake and we had fun.”

SDSU’s last postseason appearance was in the 1969 Pasadena Bowl, when it beat Boston University, 28-7. Before that, the Aztecs had beaten San Francisco State, 27-6, in the 1967 Camellia Bowl, and Montana State, 28-7, in the 1966 Camellia Bowl, and had lost to Hardin-Simmons, 53-0, in the 1948 Harbor Bowl.

None of the previous bowl opponents had Iowa’s national reputation.

“We proved that we can compete with a Big Ten team,” halfback Chris Hardy said. “We came into this game wanting to be recognized, and we achieved that.”

The Aztecs gained the attention of Hayden Fry, Iowa’s coach.

“San Diego State may be the greatest loser in a bowl game, if you can call them losers,” Fry said. “We certainly don’t. I just wish to hell they wouldn’t play so hard.”