The Pied Piper of Fresno : Sweeney Has Taken Bulldogs From the Backwoods to the Biggest Game in Their History

Jim Sweeney, Fresno State’s football coach for 15 seasons, seems normal enough. His handshake is firm, his smile warm. There is a twinkle in his eye when he tells a funny story.

Watch him closely, though. There is a decidedly oddball side to the man.

Here’s Sweeney becoming so enraged over an official’s call earlier this season that he yanks off his shirt and throws it to the ground.

“You’ve taken everything else from me, take my shirt, too,” he’s screaming at the stunned officials.

Here’s Sweeney breaking into song at the end of a recent practice.

“We are the Bulldogs

“Mighty, mighty Bulldogs

“Everywhere we go

“People wanna know

“Who we are

“So we tell them . . . . “

Here’s the Fresno Bee printing the lyrics to all his favorites.

“A bunch of crap,” he says, laughing. “Don’t they have anything better to write about?”

Here’s Sweeney whistling the USC fight song while Don Andersen invites Fresno State to the Freedom Bowl. Here’s Andersen, the game’s executive director, cracking up.

Here’s Sweeney running up the score on a pitiful New Mexico team last season.

The 94-17 final is just deserts for a bitter loss two years earlier, he’s figuring.

“He’s a beauty. . . . A great guy. . . . One of a kind,” said Gene Murphy, former Cal State Fullerton coach and a longtime friend and rival.

“I wonder if other coaches are like him,” said Derek Mahoney, the Bulldogs’ kicker for the last three seasons.

“He knows how to get you motivated and how to pick you up when you’re down, that’s for sure,” said Jesse Hardwick, an All-Western Athletic Conference offensive tackle.

“I’ve had people fooled for a long time,” Sweeney, 63, said.

It’s one of the all-time con jobs.

If the San Joaquin Valley feeds the nation, then Sweeney satisfies the Valley’s appetite for a winner. With the nearest professional or major college sports teams about 250 miles away in either Los Angeles or San Francisco, the Bulldogs truly are the only game in town.

But the Dogfather, as Bee columnist Eli Setencich

called Sweeney the day before the Bulldogs beat Texas El Paso and clinched a share of the WAC title, says he has never had a winner like this one.

Fresno State (8-4) plays what Sweeney calls the biggest game in the school’s history when it faces USC (6-4-1) in the Freedom Bowl Tuesday night at Anaheim Stadium.

“People from Troy, don’t look past them,” Murphy said.

Win or lose Tuesday, this is where Sweeney has always hoped to take the Bulldogs. Five California Raisin Bowl appearances since 1982 were one thing, but this is USC. This is a chance to bring Fresno State out of college football’s backwaters and into the national spotlight.

Who knows what sort of reaction an upset victory would bring? A victory parade down Shaw Avenue perhaps?

Eleven consecutive winning seasons is front-page news in Fresno, but not in the rest of the country.

“People ask me, ‘FSU? Are you from Florida State? Bulldogs? Are you from Georgia?’ ” Sweeney said. “It’s tough when you’re not well-known.”

He knew it would be like that when he came to Fresno after stints at Washington State and Montana State. He was used to playing in the boondocks.

“He claims he brought football to Bozeman, Montana,” Murphy said.

He brought it to Fresno, too.

As recently as 1980, the Bulldogs were playing in 15,000-seat Ratcliffe Stadium and getting knocked silly by Fullerton and Cal State Long Beach, two schools that no longer field teams.

That was the start of Sweeney’s second term as Fresno State’s coach. After coaching the 1976 and ’77 Bulldog teams, he left to become an assistant with the Oakland Raiders in ’78 and the St. Louis Cardinals in ’79.

He returned to Fresno in 1980 and faced the fans’ wrath.

“They thought I was a traitor for leaving,” he said.

They had a point. Sweeney left after posting a 9-2 record and winning the Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. championship.

Consecutive 5-6 records did little to pacify the Bulldog fans, who were so desperate for a winner that they raised $7 million to build Bulldog Stadium, hoping it would help bring Fresno State into the big time.

By 1982, the dream began to take shape, and Sweeney captured Fresno’s imagination with an 11-1 record and another conference championship. Victories and conference championships piled up, crowds grew and Bulldog Stadium was expanded from the initial 30,000 capacity to the current 41,041.

One thing seemed to be holding Fresno State back, however. As long as it was a member of the Big West Conference--and to be sure, there was nothing Big about it--Fresno State could never really reach its potential.

When the opportunity arose to join the WAC this season, Fresno State couldn’t move fast enough.

“A lot of people said Jim Sweeney is going to get killed in the WAC,” Sweeney said. “(But) I always felt like we could play in the WAC.”

The move couldn’t have come at a better time. With quarterback Trent Dilfer, a talented group of running backs and wide receivers and a hulking offensive line leading the way, Fresno State tied Brigham Young and Hawaii for the WAC title. Losses to BYU and Hawaii kept the Bulldogs from a Holiday Bowl berth.

“This is probably the best offensive team we’ve ever had at Fresno State,” Sweeney said. “It might be one of the best (overall) I’ve ever had. I keep telling our players, ‘Thank God, we don’t have to play ourselves.’ ”

Don’t be fooled into thinking Sweeney is overconfident coming into the Freedom Bowl, though. His style is blunt, but he’s not saying Fresno State is going to beat USC.

“Unfortunately, my experience against USC has been unfortunate,” he said.

In eight seasons at Washington State, Sweeney went 0-7 against USC. Fresno State and the Trojans have never met.

“Our football team is very, very young,” he said. “We look to be an underdog in the football game. We all know USC is going to be favored. USC’s not going to be hyped up to play us like they get hyped up to play Notre Dame. If they do, we’ll be in trouble.”

Can Fresno State win?

With Sweeney anything is possible. Certainly, the 30,000 Bulldog fans expected to descend upon Anaheim Stadium hope so.

Having lifted the expectations of the Red Wave, as Bulldog fans are known, Sweeney wonders what might happen if the program were to fall on hard times.

“The guy who replaces me better not be 6-5,” he said.

Fact is, Sweeney better not be 6-5 in coming seasons.

“If we were 6-5 for two or three years, I wouldn’t be here,” he said. “They’d say I was too old or too mean. If you’re 6-5 at Fresno State, you’re going to get fired. Six and five isn’t going to cut it.”

In the end, he has only himself to blame. After all, he’s the one who built this empire in the Valley.