Aztecs Put Title Game in New Light

The preparation for Saturday’s Western Athletic Conference championship game started before Coach Al Luginbill ever left the field after San Diego State’s sixth consecutive victory last Saturday.

He told a radio interviewer that the pressure is off the Aztecs. They had won six consecutive games, and so what if they were scheduled to play Brigham Young for the WAC title Saturday?

The pressure is off.

That’s also what Luginbill told his team last Saturday night, that’s what he told the media minutes later, and that’s what he will be saying all week.

The Alfred E. Neuman Philosophy of Coaching. What, us worry?

Some coaches crack the whip. Some growl and snarl.

And, some coaches close their practices to the media.

Luginbill will do none of that this week. Instead, he is preparing the Aztecs by telling them there is no pressure. Never mind the championship. Never mind the expected crowd of 45,000-50,000.

“This team has had its backs against the wall,” Luginbill said. “What I will tell them is the pressure is off of us. There is no game after this one relative to the conference. In fact, we’ve got a week off.

“So let’s let it all hang out on every play, knowing we walked off the field having executed with the best intensity we could in all aspects of the game.”

Part of the reason for this philosophy is SDSU’s youth. Of 44 players listed on SDSU’s two-deep depth chart for the BYU game, 26 are freshmen, redshirt freshmen or sophomores.

Luginbill said his thinking would be a bit different this week if he had an older team.

“Then they would have been through it already,” he said. “They would already understand everything because they would have experienced it.

“What you don’t want to do is go in real tight and then lay the ball on the ground, have the wide receivers not relaxed, have the quarterback not throwing the ball right because he is tight, and have the defense too tight to make tackles.”

Said receivers’ coach Curtis Johnson: “The team is young and doesn’t know any better. All they know is what we tell them. They’ve never been in a championship game. They feel like whatever we tell them is the way it is.

“(So we tell them) if we go and do things we do well, we’ll be all right.”

Each week, Luginbill’s philosophy is the same. Ask him about keys to an upcoming game, and he always will say what the Aztecs need need to do--not how they need to deal with a particular strength or weakness of an opponent.

“He has the overall philosophy of taking care of ourselves, of our doing everything right,” Johnson said. “We’re not planning anything different this week from what we normally do.

“We feel that we have decent enough talent that we’ll be in the game if we don’t make mental mistakes and take care of our own business.”

And because this is a championship week, SDSU coaches figure mental mistakes should be down in practice and concentration should be up. Luginbill did say he thinks the magnitude of the game makes it easier to prepare his team.

“I think it does,” he said. “This is what you play for. Getting there was the tough part.

“And everybody talks about us getting ready. It’s possible BYU might run into a buzz-saw, too.”

So he will continue telling his team there is no pressure. Never mind the Holiday Bowl berth that is on the line . . . and what would be SDSU’s first WAC title since 1986 . . . and the national telecast (ESPN).

Hey. The correct coaching philosophy is in the eye of the beholder. Nobody ever said coaches didn’t twist, turn and mold situations to their advantage.

Especially when, sometimes, they have others to help them. When the Aztecs played at Utah Oct. 26, they walked into their locker room and found someone had papered it with copies of a story from the Salt Lake Tribune.

Luginbill said he didn’t see the clippings until after the game. Word is that Dave Ohton, SDSU strength coach, was responsible for it.

This is the paragraph the Aztecs read before the game:

“Virtually since joining the WAC in 1978, San Diego State has had the unenviable reputation of being the league’s biggest underachiever. With the exception of their 1986 championship year, the book on the Aztecs has always been that they had plenty of talent but lacked heart. SDSU could out-finesse you, but get them in a street fight and they wilted. Rain? Mud? Snow? Forget it. For the Aztecs, life was a beach.”

Pretty strong stuff, huh? The Aztecs thought so, too.

Now, read what the SDSU players didn’t have available--the story’s next two paragraphs:

“Until recently, that is. Under no-nonsense coach Al Luginbill, SDSU now runs the football down people’s throats, plays with pain and thrives on the road. Combine that with a much-improved defense and it’s not difficult to see why the Aztecs are off to their best start in 12 years.

“It’s also not hard to see why Utah will have its hands full when San Diego State invades Rice Stadium Saturday.”

“That’s ironic,” said Joe Baird, the guy who wrote the story. “A reporter being taken out of context.”

Ironic, but not unusual. The Los Angeles Raiders have had this philosophy for years. Whatever it takes. Just win, baby.

“You know, that happens all the time,” Johnson said about the out-of-context clippings.

He laughed.

“We didn’t make it up. It was in print.”

Yes, it was.

All is fair in love and football.