Now They Have Raisin to Believe

“Running Scared” was a great song by Roy Orbison and now the tune Fresno State Coach Pat Hill is singing about big-time California football programs. After knocking out major conference schools in Colorado and Oregon State in successive weeks, he has seized the bulldog bully pulpit.

“We will play anybody, any time, anywhere,” Hill says. To back it up, Fresno State is at Wisconsin on Saturday.

First, may we interject that Fresno State deserved to beat Colorado and absolutely played Oregon State off its feet Sunday night. In four years at Fresno, Hill has built a nice little program in the shadow of the Pacific 10 Conference.

Hill had a plan: Because Fresno State plays in Western Athletic Conference obscurity, he has to schedule tough and scream loud to get anyone’s attention. He claims, flat-out, that the four California Pac-10 schools will not play Fresno State.

What are they, chickens?

“We had a chance to play SC a couple years ago,” Hill says. “We’re calling their AD all the time, and never get any answers. But a couple of years ago they chose Louisiana Tech over Fresno State for a game. We could have brought 20,000 fans. All we wanted was a bus ride and a hotel room.”

USC hasn’t played Fresno State since, yep, that infamous defeat in the 1992 Freedom Bowl, a low point in Trojan football history.

“Those are the same schools, when we’re recruiting against them, they’re saying their program is a lot better than ours,” Hill says of USC. “The only way we can really settle that is on the field.”

For the record, the Trojans’ schedule is booked for the next four seasons.

A USC spokesman said Fresno State is always “in the mix” of schools USC would consider playing. The Trojans have played San Jose State three times in recent years, partly because the Spartans did not require a home game in exchange. UCLA and Fresno State have met three times since 1995--all Bruin victories--yet Hill maintains the Bruins aren’t interested in continuing the relationship.

“You look at their schedule in the future,” Hill says, “they have no problem playing San Diego (State) home and home. We don’t even care if it’s home and home. I told them we’d go down there. To us, going to UCLA is not a hard trip.”

This is news to UCLA’s sports information director Marc Dellins, who handles the team’s scheduling.

He said he arranged games with Fresno State in 1999 and 2000 after the University of Pittsburgh dropped off the schedule. He said UCLA’s football schedule is booked until 2009.

“Certainly, if there was a game to open up, they’d be one of the schools we’d call,” Dellins said.

Stanford? Its schedule is booked through 2010.

By then, perhaps, the Cardinal will have defeated San Jose State and be looking to move inland for a WAC opponent.

Cal won’t play Fresno?

Cal played at Fresno State last year ... and lost, 17-3.

You can’t blame Hill for his bluster or his bravado.

This is all about “us” versus “them.” Unlike other NCAA sports, there is a caste system in football. It is dominated by six major Bowl Championship Series conferences--Pac-10, Big Ten, Atlantic Coast, Big East, Southeastern and Big 12. All other leagues have been relegated to second-tier status.

The champions of the six BCS conferences are guaranteed slots in one of the four major bowl games--Sugar, Rose, Fiesta, Orange--while top-notch teams from other conferences have to fight for scraps. A school from a non-major conference has to finish in the top six of the final BCS rankings to earn one of two at-large berths into a major bowl, and even that had to be negotiated after the WAC went to Congress and cried “antitrust” after one-loss Brigham Young was denied a major bowl bid in 1996.

It is extremely difficult for non-BCS teams to crack the top six because they cannot A) muster enough schedule strength in the computer rankings and B) garner enough respect from national pollsters. Marshall, a Mid-American Conference member, finished undefeated in 1999 yet ended up No. 10 in the final AP poll.

Same story in 1998 for Tulane, which finished unbeaten and No. 7. Fresno State, however, could be the first party crasher.

“It’s early, and it’s speculative, but if a non-guaranteed BCS team or conference can’t get in by going undefeated with a nonconference schedule of Colorado, Oregon State and Wisconsin, maybe it’s impossible,” WAC Commissioner Karl Benson says.

Fresno State also plays at Colorado State, a respected program from the Mountain West Conference.

Are we jumping a little ahead of ourselves here?

Ah, just a tad.

Fresno State still has 11 games remaining, six on the road. Still, Hill deserves credit for stirring the debate and doing all within his power to get Fresno State to the next level.

Fresno State has played three BCS teams a year for five years and taken its share of lumps. Hill’s Bulldogs are 3-9 in those games, and were 0-7 until breaking through last year with a victory against California.

“Our goal is to compete at the national level,” Hill says. “I think that should be our goal. Gonzaga gets the chance in basketball. In the late ‘70s, Florida State, nobody knew about them. Why not have a school like Fresno State try?”

Jerry Palm, who runs an Internet site that specializes in chronicling the BCS, says “the deck is stacked “ against Fresno State but thinks a 13-0 Bulldog team could be the first to secure a top-six finish and a major bowl berth.

The WAC is already comparing Fresno State to the miracle of 1984, when BYU sprung from nowhere--well, you could see it from there--to win the national title. That year, BYU was propelled by nonconference wins over Texas A&M; and Washington.

“This is by far the most aggressive nonconference schedule that anyone has had success with after two weeks of the season,” Benson says of Fresno State.

Hill knows there is no room for error. To stay in the national mix, he must win at Wisconsin this week--then keep on winning.

“One loss and we’ll fall right off the radar screen for the year,” he says.

That’s another Orbison song: “Only the Lonely.”

WAC Attack

What a nice comeback story. The once bloated 16-team conference was on the endangered species list when the top football-play schools bolted to form the Mountain West.

Benson has fought desperately to hold the WAC together through an influx of change. This year, Texas Christian left to join Conference USA, but Benson filled the void by adding Boise State and Louisiana Tech, bringing WAC membership to 10 schools.

Wac-10.

Has a nice ring to it.

“We survived two years of the unknown,” Benson says. “I’m proud the league has stuck together, that it has solidified.”

It doesn’t hurt to have Fresno State carrying the banner. The Bulldogs cracked the AP poll this week at No. 19. For the record, no Mountain West school ranks among this week’s top 25.

Hurry-Up Offense

Thinking way ahead: Should Fresno State end up winning its conference title and remain in national contention, it is not obligated to play in either of the two WAC-affiliated bowls, Silicon Valley and Humanitarian. Benson said the WAC would have the flexibility to “perhaps shop our champion” to a bowl with a higher profile and payout.

Why schools may think twice before booking a game at Fresno State: Not only have the Bulldogs won 16 straight games, the visiting-team amenities are not exactly user friendly. There are no visiting locker rooms; opposing teams are lodged in the baseball locker room designed to hold 25 players. Oregon State brought 66 players on its recent trip. Postgame interviews were conducted in the third-base dugout.

The bad news? Oregon State returns to Fresno again in 2003.

Mississippi quarterback Eli Manning is already ahead of the quick-release collegiate pace established by his famous father, Archie, and brother, Peyton. In his first start last week against Murray State, Eli completed 20 of 23 passes for 271 yards and five touchdowns. He threw completions to nine different receivers and established a school record with 18 straight completions. Eli: “I do not know if I have ever completed 18 in a row at practice.” Where did Eli’s start rank on the family tree? In Peyton Manning’s first start at Tennessee, he completed seven of 14 passes for 79 yards and no touchdowns. Archie Manning, in his first collegiate start at Ole Miss, completed eight of 14 for 116 yards and two touchdowns.

The real first test for Eli, though, comes Saturday, when Mississippi opens the SEC season at Auburn.

Brigham Young’s NCAA-record streak of 326 games without being shut out is not likely to end any time soon. The Cougars (2-0) are averaging 66 points and 662 yards a game. With 122 total points in victories against Tulane and Nevada, BYU broke the school record for most points in consecutive games, eclipsing the mark of 104 in 1977.

Has the University of Pittsburgh at long last passed Penn State for football supremacy in Pennsylvania? “I don’t mind people talking that way,” Pittsburgh Coach Walt Harris said this week on the Big East Conference coaches’ teleconference.

Not so fast: Penn State may be fading fast in the last years of Joe Paterno but Pittsburgh has some work left. The Panthers’ home opener against East Tennessee State at new Heinz Field drew fewer than 50,000 fans, 15,000 below stadium capacity. Penn State drew more than 109,000 against Miami at ever-expanding Beaver Stadium.

You can stash those “Still Undefeated” T-shirts they were peddling at Florida Atlantic University, coached by Howard Schnellenberger, which made its football debut Saturday with a 40-7 loss to Slippery Rock. Most notable Florida Atlantic stat: 13 players ruled academically ineligible before kickoff.