SDSU’s Hope Dissolves into Disgrace
Traffic was backed up leaving San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium Saturday night. This was to be expected, to be sure, what with a crowd of 52,108 gathered to watch San Diego State play top-ranked Miami.
Except this was at 6:30.
This was at halftime .
Miami, en route to a 63-17 victory, was already up 28-3.
These were obviously shrewd people who realized they could still make something of their Saturday night, something the Aztecs were not doing. Folks were lined up at pay phones, probably hastily making dinner reservations. Plenty of time remained for Christmas shopping.
Nothing much was left to be seen at the stadium. The sports junkies could still get to the Gulls’ game, for heaven’s sake, or catch Notre Dame-USC on the tube.
Movies, anyone?
Anything but one more half like the first . . . or maybe worse.
Anyone still in the stands by the end had to be asleep. There could be no other accounting for it. The ushers should have had the compassion to awaken them and point them toward the exits.
Right or wrong, this game was billed as a showdown for the Heisman Trophy between SDSU’s Marshall Faulk and Miami’s Gino Torretta. This fizzled before the game even began, when Faulk’s injured knee tightened up during warm-ups. He retired to the sidelines dressed in white sweat pants and a hooded black sweat shirt.
Unfortunately for Faulk, he could not take an early leave like the paying customers. He had to watch while Torretta and Co. carve up this turkey of a defense.
Indeed, Faulk’s absence had absolutely nothing to do with the outcome of this football game. A healthy Faulk probably would have trimmed the deficit from something resembling the federal debt, but he certainly could not have put the Aztecs on the black side of the ledger. They were terribly overmatched.
What makes this frightening is that Al Luginbill, the head coach, has always insisted games such as these are benchmark games, against which the progress of the SDSU program is measured.
Whew.
This game confirmed what most SDSU fans already figured out. This program has taken giant steps backward since the season began. All the hope and promise of September, when the season started with the tie against USC and the victory at Brigham Young, have dissolved in disappointment and disgrace in December.
Disappointment? The Aztecs finished the season with a 5-5-1 record. I would have been hard-pressed to come up with a scenario in which this team could be any worse than 8-2-1. Backsliding and losing to the likes of Air Force, Wyoming and Fresno State did not occur to me.
Disgrace? Bench-clearing brawls in the last two games of the season--actually two Saturday night--indicate more of a lack of discipline than feistiness, at least in my book.
Nice shows for television audiences, college students mixing it up like a bunch of hockey goons. It was nice when the nation’s viewers were seeing clips of the flights of Faulk rather than fights of frustration.
SDSU never got into the football part of this occasion, which was essentially the type of occasion it was supposed to have been. Its offense could not get going and its defense could not get Miami stopped. That was a nasty combination that almost assured that the evening would turn ugly.
If anyone dared hope that the Aztecs would make a game of this, that disappeared in the final 22 seconds of the first half. Miami took over on its own 28 after an SDSU punt and took all of 18 seconds to travel 72 yards on three Torretta passes.
On the ensuing kickoff, a penalty against Miami could have forced a re-kick . . . but SDSU declined that opportunity. That’s called waving the white flag.
And the fans were on their way.
It was even uglier in the third quarter, when Miami scored 35 points. Two of those touchdowns were on interceptions of SDSU passes. Miami didn’t have much problem scoring no matter who had the ball.
The second interception return ignited the biggest of the two brawls and spilled off the field and up against the temporary seats beyond the southeast corner of the end zone. Folks who left for the Gulls’ game at halftime will be disappointed when they see clips of this skirmish.
Mercifully, Miami had most of its guns out of the game by the end of the third quarter. Included was Torretta, who completed 19 of 35 passes for 310 yards and one touchdown--a nice game but hardly a Heisman-clinching game. Maybe he and Faulk should have spent the fourth quarter playing gin rummy for the trophy.
When the scoreboard posted the seat location of the so-called “Fan of the Game” after the third quarter, I just shook my head. By then, the chances of finding a fan in any seat were remote. The person who had that ticket was probably ordering dessert somewhere.
They should have been patient with this “award” and waited until the game was over.
The “Fan of the Game” would have been the one who was left.
