SDSU Takes a Different Sort of Risk

Tony Fuller, in his new position as head basketball coach at San Diego State, has a tough act to follow.

No, not Jim Brandenburg, who was fired Feb. 11.

No, not Jim Harrick Jr., the interim coach.

Fuller has to follow in the footsteps of a fellow who never coached for a second at SDSU. In fact, the guy he is following may never have as much as set foot on the SDSU campus.

Tony Fuller is following Jerry Tarkanian.

He comes to San Diego State on the heels of what might have been rather than what was. It’s tougher to follow hopes and expectations than it is reality. It’s tough to step into a community that had been shaken from its apathy by the mere notion that Tarkanian would be the new coach.

That “whoosh” you heard Wednesday was the air rushing out of the Aztecs’ basketball balloon.

It had been said all along that it would take courage for Thomas Day, SDSU’s president, to hire a coach as controversial as Tarkanian.

Maybe we had it all backward.

Maybe it took more courage for Day not to hire Tarkanian.

Of course, some will suggest “courage” is not quite the right word. Fill in whatever you deem appropriate.

In the long run, Wednesday’s decision might look enlightened and ingenious. Fuller might be a marvelous coach. He might be a young guy ready to blossom at such an opportunity.

Fuller, 33, has 10 years of experience as an assistant coach under Jim Harrick Sr. at Pepperdine and UCLA. He was very smooth at his press conference. He said all of the right things about academics and defense and fundamentals and working hard and having fun and being like family. Those are things all coaches say.

The difference is between the saying and the doing.

Interest in SDSU basketball is back to zero, or awfully close to it, because the populace thought it was so close to getting an old-fashioned, gravelly-voiced coach who would have brought the highest winning percentage in the history of collegiate basketball.

Tarkanian would not have had to prove he could do what he said, because he always had. He doesn’t do smooth, but he does do win.

Fuller has to start at the bottom, and the bottom is a long way down with this program. He has to prove he is different and that he can succeed where Brandenburg, a remarkably successful coach at Montana and Wyoming, had failed.

Hire Tarkanian, and at least 11,000 believers would have been in the stands for SDSU’s home opener next winter.

The number now will be much closer to 1,100 . . . and they will hardly be believers.

Tark was a verboten word at the SDSU press gathering, the most vile of four-letter words. No one in any way associated with the Aztecs would dare utter the word Tarkanian, nor respond to anyone who did.

A member of the media--you know how those guys can be--asked Fuller how he felt about reports that Tarkanian . . .

And that was about as far as he got.

Fred Miller, the athletic director, rushed to Fuller’s defense as though he was a maiden in distress. It was a little unnerving to think that a head basketball coach could not handle such a query himself.

“We’ll field questions about the future,” Miller said.

So there.

Tarkanian has absolutely nothing to do with the future at SDSU. Miller, in truth, might well have been sensitive to further probings in that area because he himself was the standard-bearer for Tarkanian’s candidacy.

Tarkanian died a very silent presidential veto, at least from the public’s standpoint. Day never revealed where he stood in terms of Tarkanian until it was obvious. He might have avoided considerable controversy by simply stating from the start that SDSU was not interested.

That Day, or the university, expressed disinterest in Tarkanian only served to further excite the community. Not everyone was in favor of Tarkanian, of course, but no issue involving SDSU athletics previously caused such a stir.

And then what happened was that nothing happened.

Miller said it was a lengthy and thorough search, which happens to be Cliche A in the book on how to introduce new coaches. There was absolutely no acknowledgment that Tarkanian was even interested, which he was . . . very much so. And no acknowledgment that SDSU even took his interest into consideration.

Tony Fuller was hired. Period.

SDSU has a basketball coach. He might be a good one. Time will tell. Yawn. Play that one again.

SDSU could have had the basketball coach.

By being afraid to take a chance, SDSU did exactly that.