SDSU’s Pack-the-Stadium Push Not Just an Empty Dream

Al Luginbill has a game plan and a goal.

No, this has nothing to do with beating BYU and UCLA and Miami and going to the Holiday Bowl. San Diego State’s football coach has those goals too and hopes he has the other game plan and players to accomplish them.

He has another game plan being executed right now, and this one may be as ambitious as the aforementioned.

Fill The Murph.

That’s his goal. He would like to see San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium filled for all seven of SDSU’s home games this fall.

I know, get him onto a couch, or better yet into a straitjacket. Sniff the liquid in his coffee cup. Look into his eyes and see if anyone is home.

The stadium filled for all seven home games?

What are they going to do? Call Central Casting? Empty the bushes in Balboa Park? Go to Fans ‘R’ Us?

Are they playing their home games in a telephone booth?

SDSU isn’t trying to just fill the stadium. It’s trying to sell it out . That’s a unique notion.

Consider that The Murph holds 61,000 for football and consider that SDSU drew a total of 63,787 for its first three games in 1990, and you can see this is a very ambitious dream. The big Miami game drew only 34,201.

But here was Luginbill in his Fill The Murph shirt, red and black, naturally, with his Fill The Murph information packets. When Luginbill started to outline this game plan for packing the rafters, I almost frisked him for snake oil.

Actually, I might have frisked him if he had not been so remarkably gung-ho. I felt what it must be like in the locker room at halftime. I wasn’t sure if he was going to leave through the door or through the wall.

And what he was saying did not seem off the wall, at least not completely.

The key, as I understood it, is that Luginbill wants the community to participate in a drive for credibility.

“I wanted to see how we were perceived outside of the media . . . and outside of my office,” he said. “I went into the infrastructure of San Diego to see what was ticking. I know how we want to be perceived, but not how we are perceived. We wanted to change perceptions from the outside in.”

Thus, Luginbill has been pounding doors and pavement at a time when most head football coaches have their feet up on a golf cart or fishing dock. He is at it at 7 a.m. and goes until . . .

“Whenever it takes,” he said.

This type of a push comes at a good time. The Aztecs are getting very close to being a bowl-caliber team. And I don’t think any bowl game was any better (or maybe even as good) as that season-ending 30-28 loss to an outstanding Miami team.

The problem, to be sure, is that fans come into play when it comes to getting bowl bids.

“I felt coming out of the UTEP game, when we were 6-4, that we were a good football team at that time of year,” he said. “It bothered me that 6-5 teams would be going to bowls and we really didn’t have a chance. It was because of perceptions.”

A bowl committee looks at a team with a home-attendance average of 22,075 and does not perceive that anyone cares. If a team is not loved at home, it doesn’t figure to be loved a thousand miles away.

It should not be surprising that Luginbill is the pulling guard at the point of this sweep. He is a taskmaster of a coach who demands much of his athletes, both on and off the field. He is also enthusiastic and optimistic, and all these traits come into play in this endeavor.

So as not to make it seem like Luginbill is the Michael Jordan of this effort, it should be noted that six 30-person teams are at work. Without going into boring details, suffice it to say they are selling a variety of season-ticket packages.

I’m usually not one to get into the cost of tickets, but this program has a better chance to work because some of these packages are ridiculously reasonable. The Family Plan, for example, offers five season tickets for $245. That’s $7 per seat per game . . . or about the same price as a movie.

Geez, Al, how can you afford not to go?

“We’ve priced ourselves back into the market,” Luginbill said. “We want people in the stadium. We want people to come and see us.”

This is a positive approach. This gets away from whining about deficits and donations, those two “D” words which spend so much time in the same sentence hereabouts. Luginbill actually sounds like he is more interested in people than money.

Will it work?

Probably not to the extent they hope.

Filling The Murph for the likes of Cal State Long Beach and Pacific seems unlikely, but doing just that for UCLA and BYU is entirely reasonable.

This is a whole new San Diego from the one alienated by seat relocation a decade ago. This is a whole new football program from the one so regularly humiliated by BYU and others. And this is a whole new approach to the community.

You don’t go from 20,000 to 60,000 overnight, but a healthy jump in between would be a step in the right direction.

Meanwhile, don’t be surprised if you find Al Luginbill at your front door.