Doggone Good

These were college football’s outsiders.

The quarterback would sneak into the stadium as a kid with his father and brother, just to practice.

“See where the red wall is? Where it says, ‘Danger, Beware Dogs?”’ Fresno State’s David Carr said, pointing toward Bulldog Stadium. “If you weigh less than 100 pounds, you can sneak in there. But after awhile you weighed a little bit more than that, so you had to climb over the barbed wire.”

The coach, Pat Hill, got in the hard way too. He lived in a ’64 Chevy van for six months as an unpaid assistant at L.A. Valley College in the 1970s, moonlighting as a nightclub bouncer and working a third job setting up pins at a Reseda bowling alley.

“I had an extension cord hooked up to a clock radio in my van,” he said. “It was just easier for me. I was a free spirit.”

Together, they have cracked the inner sanctum of college football. Fresno State is in the top 10--led by this coach with the distinctive mustache and his quarterback, a married and devoutly religious Heisman Trophy hopeful as likely to carry his 16-month-old son’s diaper bag as an equipment bag.

After the consecutive upsets of Colorado, Oregon State and Wisconsin, Sports Illustrated put Carr on the cover with the baffled headline: “Fresno?”

“A kid from the Valley, you don’t expect to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated,” said Carr, a strong-armed senior who moved from Fresno to Bakersfield before high school. “Like I said, you don’t go to Fresno to win the Heisman Trophy. You go to Notre Dame.”

You don’t go to Fresno to play in the Fiesta Bowl, either. But this is the fascinating possibility: If the Bulldogs can sweep the rest of their schedule--against modest competition the rest of the way--they could become the first team from a second-tier conference to grab a spot in one of the four major bowl games by finishing in the top six of the BCS standings.

Around a city that hears too much about being a cow town or a piece of the Midwest stranded between L.A. and San Francisco, people are embracing California’s top-ranked team.

“Everywhere you go, it’s just hugs and ‘Thank you very much,”’ said Joe Schey, an offensive lineman from Diamond Bar. “People say, ‘God, we can’t believe it, keep up the good work.’ Just nothing but praise.”

Praise--and talk of 13-0.

“That’s usually the next thing out of their mouths,” Schey said. “But the next thing out of my mouth is that you’ve got to do it one week at a time.”

With their three big-splash games behind them, the Bulldogs took the next of what might become a tedious series of baby steps with a 37-18 victory over Tulsa on Saturday. This week, they host Louisiana Tech.

“We’ve just got to keep winning,” said Hill, who says he won’t run up scores simply to impress the experts and hasn’t shown an inclination to try to pad Carr’s statistics either, instead running the ball in the fourth quarter against Tulsa.

“We’re No. 10 in the nation because people believe we are a good football program,” he said. “This week, you’re going to see some teams we’ve played play in some big games. UCLA is playing Oregon State. Wisconsin went in to Penn State and won. Colorado keeps winning. Fresno State, in the eyes of the people who vote, is a legitimate football team.”

Fresno State has had good football teams before. During the ‘80s and early ‘90s, quite a few of former coach Jim Sweeney’s teams were briefly ranked in the Associated Press poll, though never higher than No. 16, after an 11-0-1 season in 1985 that ended with a 51-7 victory over Bowling Green in the California Bowl.

Until now, the most famous occasion in Fresno State history was the 1992 Freedom Bowl, when the Bulldogs upset USC and Larry Smith was fired after his prophetic pronouncement that big names and logos don’t mean much in college football anymore. Plenty of NFL players have passed through Fresno. Henry Ellard played for the Bulldogs and went on to become a standout receiver with the Rams. Trent Dilfer, the quarterback in the Freedom Bowl upset, went on to win the Super Bowl with the Baltimore Ravens.

But this is different.

“Nothing we ever did matched this,” said Dilfer, a backup with the Seattle Seahawks after the Ravens discarded him. “This is a much better football team than any team I played on. We excelled offensively. We had eight or nine NFL players on one team. But they have great special teams, a great defense, a great offense.

“And we never played the nonconference schedule they do. They’re light years ahead of where we were.”

Sweeney, retired since 1996, agrees.

“We were better than your average football team, but we had to be 8-0, 9-0, 10-0 before anyone paid attention because our schedule wasn’t tough enough,” he said.

“And we only had one or two really good defensive teams in all the years I was here. Our defensive teams were not as good as this defensive team.”

This team, Sweeney believes, is complete.

“I watch football probably as much as anybody in the country. If the games are available, I’ll watch 17 hours. I don’t see anybody better. I’d vote them at least No. 6 or No. 7.

“I don’t see anybody in the Pac-10 as good. I watched Oregon. I think we’d beat Oregon.”

Sweeney expects the Bulldogs to sweep their Western Athletic Conference schedule and win the rest of their nonconference games.

“They have the incentive to run the table. All of us are going to be really disappointed if they don’t,” Sweeney said. “They could have trouble in Hawaii. That’s a tough place to play. And Sonny Lubick does a good job at Colorado State. But I think with the incentive of being in the top six and going to a major bowl game, I just don’t see them losing.”

Carr is one reason.

His talents are obvious. At 6 feet 3, 225 pounds, he is an agile quarterback with a strong, accurate arm.

Another part of what makes him special can be found on the shady bluff overlooking the practice field where his wife, Melody, and their son, Austin, play near the bleachers.

“Every football player he sees he says, ‘Daddy, daddy,”’ Melody said. “Touchdown is one of the very few words he can say-Mama, Dada, dog, touchdown.”

A blitz on third and long isn’t as nerve-jangling for a player whose happy blond toddler doesn’t understand the difference between a good time and a bad time to need attention.

“A diaper when I’m getting ready to go to class or almost late for practice--you just kind of take a deep breath,” Carr said. “It’s all going to be all right, just go for it.”

Dilfer, Carr’s idol from the time he met him as a seventh-grader, recognizes his maturity.

“I got married in college too,” Dilfer said. “You’re no longer a giddy little kid, carefree. His maturity helps him handle adversity.”

The friendship between Carr and Dilfer began to blossom before Carr’s junior season. Dilfer had been drummed out of Tampa Bay and was preparing for his season in Baltimore.

Carr, Billy Volek’s backup until then, was about to become the Fresno State starter.

The pair worked out together.

“I met Trent when I was in seventh grade, which was a really big plus for Fresno when it came time to sign,” said Carr, a player who drew considerable interest from Pacific 10 schools, including Washington, UCLA, Arizona and California.

“Now Trent has become one of my best football friends I can just call anytime. He’s been through everything, from the heights of winning a Super Bowl and being a first-round pick to the lows in Tampa Bay. And I mean, he’s gotten dumped on.

“I started calling him asking him about coverages. Then I started asking him questions about other things. Especially this year, when we started having success. None of us have had that kind of success here, but he did.

“He told me you’ve got to take it in stride. Don’t let it overwhelm you. Make sure you stay focused, and as far as your family goes, don’t take your wife for granted, and make sure you spend time with your son. He’s a model for me and a great friend.”

Dilfer has been impressed.

“Too often, people get excited about a one-dimensional player. Someone who’s very accurate, or a great athlete, or someone with a strong arm,” he said.

“Very seldom do you come across someone who can do everything well. But he has great mobility, great strength, great accuracy, arm strength and toughness.”

Carr is a special piece of the puzzle. So are the defense and a fleet of receivers led by Bernard Berrian, whose 96-yard kickoff return for a touchdown was the turning point against Wisconsin. Hill brings it all together with his sometimes unconventional approach.

He left a job as Sweeney’s assistant at Fresno State in 1990 and became offensive coordinator at Arizona and then an assistant coach with the Cleveland Browns and the Baltimore Ravens. But all the while, he was formulating a plan for the Bulldogs.

“I wanted to have a chance to make a run here at Fresno,” said Hill, 49, who says he is “not a climber” and recently agreed to a contract through 2006 worth a comparatively modest $350,000 a year.

“I said our goal was to be in the top 25. I patterned us after what Florida State did in the early years under Bobby Bowden, playing the tough games on the road.”

So Fresno State played the likes of Oklahoma State, Oregon, Colorado, Texas Tech, Oregon State, UCLA, Ohio State, UCLA again--and lost every game.

A victory over a 3-8 Cal team last season was the “breakthrough,” until the Colorado game.

Then came Oregon State, a team Fresno State has beaten more often than not. The difference was that this season, Oregon State had a ranking and national attention. Beating a Big Ten team on the road at Wisconsin meant it wouldn’t be fleeting.

Hill takes a little different path in recruiting too. He doesn’t disdain players who don’t qualify to play as freshmen under NCAA academic standards, recruiting about four a year.

“People point the finger and say Fresno State takes non-qualifiers. But we take non-qualifiers and do a good job with them, and we don’t take [many] JCs,” he said.

Alan Harper, a defensive tackle from Fontana and probable first-round draft pick, originally was headed for UCLA. He is one of Hill’s success stories.

After sitting out as a freshman, ineligible for an athletic scholarship and unable to practice with the team, Harper is on track to graduate in May.

“When we first got here, we were the first [NCAA Proposition 48] class, and [Hill] told us we’re going to set the stage for the other ‘Prop’ kids coming in. If we messed up, he’s not going to do it anymore.

“So we took it upon ourselves to be mature and say we’re going to do this. Me, [receiver] Rodney Wright, [running back] Paris Gaines, some others, we were all together. What it is, it’s a great opportunity for a guy who didn’t do well in high school that wants another chance and is willing to make sacrifices.”

Hill also implemented something called the Academic Gameplan, the brainchild of associate head coach John Baxter, who has a master’s degree in education.

Basically a study-skills program, it is required for all freshman football players and transfers, as well as any others who don’t meet minimum academic standards. With the program in place, the football team’s grade-point average has risen from 2.12 to 2.77.

Oregon, Washington State and Southern Mississippi have adopted the program, and Notre Dame is next.

Hill thinks out of the box, as evidenced again and again in his recruiting.

“I learned in the NFL that a lot of great players were taken in the later rounds of the draft or were free agents,” he said. “Beauty’s in the eye of the beholder. I don’t believe a kid has to be 6-3 or 6-5. Our corners might be 5-9 and somebody else wouldn’t take them because they’re not 5-11 or 6 feet. People look too much at numbers instead of potential and production.

“We don’t have our choice of the top kids. We have to make evaluations based on the pearl in the oyster. A kid has to play hard for us.

“If I see a big old kid, loafing, I say, ‘Why would I recruit him?’ I don’t care if a kid’s in SuperPrep or the [Long Beach] Press-Telegram [or any other recruiting ranking]. The No. 1 thing I care about is if he plays with passion and plays hard.”

That’s the kind of player they’re after at college football’s new stronghold in Fresno.

Yes, Fresno.

“To be really good, you have to stand the test of time,” Hill said. “We haven’t done that yet.”