It takes good football teams to expose your flaws, and TCU is a really good team that exposed a lot of issues with San Diego State in Saturday's 55-12 win. The result is essentially meaningless, unless you really thought the Aztecs had a chance to upset a Horned Frogs team that right now is playing as well as any in the country. SDSU remains on track to go to its first bowl game in 11 years if they take care of business in its two remaining winnable games: Wyoming next Saturday and the Thanksgiving weekend finale at UNLV. That by itself would be a monumental accomplishment.
However, first-year head coach Brady Hoke, his staff and players have a long way to go if they want to reach the upper tier of the Mountain West Conference, where TCU, Utah, BYU and sometimes Air Force reside. A competitive game would have opened some eyes but, alas, that didn't happen.
-- So much talk has been made about how Hoke's staff has changed attitudes for the better, and how they're playing hard every snap of every game. However, this was the first time I've seen this coaching staff bring out a group of Aztecs that were emotionally and mentally unready to play. Penalties and other mistakes out of the gate virtually ended the game before anyone broke a sweat. If this happens again next week, there will be no December reward.
-- The one unit on the field that has not improved over the course of the year, and has maybe regressed, is the defensive line. That's the unit that Hoke coaches directly. A personnel overhaul has been needed here for years. Hoke might want to reconsider whether he is capable of both coaching the DL and the team as a whole.
-- The offensive line loses RT Peter Nelson at LG Ikaika Aken-Moleta at the end of the season. Both have improved substantially over the course of the year and had decent showings against the nation's top defense. I worry greatly that only one of the many young linemen on the Aztecs has impressed, that being Nik Embernate, who unseated Aken-Moleta at RG a month ago.
-- Any winning team needs a good defense, and TCU cruised to 551 yards. It could have been much worse. None of the younger players appear close to making breakthroughs toward stardom. You can say there are some who've played well under the circumstances: being young and in the first year of a new system. That pretty much applies to most of them. But in this year of rotating in something like 20-25 players in what amounts to an audition for future playing time, no one has stood out. I like what I've seen from LB Marcus Yarborough while others are talking up LB Miles Burrus, but neither appears to be a budding star.
I'm not a real naysayer. The win total is double over Chuck Long's last year and the bowl remains a possibility. It's just that TCU showed how far the distance still remains.
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My reaction to the story in the newspaper about SDSU athletic director Jeff Schemmel is to take a wait-and-see approach to the direct issue, but I don't see how he holds his job even if he is cleared. I've read enough court documents to know that when lawyers start requesting evidence, they ask for the world. They want to get their grubbies on every last little thing that might have something to do with their case. In many instances, what they ask for is inconsequential.
Clearly, the lawyers in the divorce proceeding want to know who received money or financial benefits and from whom, making Schemmel's expenses potentially relevant.
The story for us boils down to one major question and one (in college sports vernacular) mid-major query.
The biggie: did an AD drawing a quarter of a million annually from a financially strapped athletic department and university force California taxpayers to pay for his liaisons? If so, he's done. He might have just used the card while traveling and since it was for personal reasons, reimbursed the school. That doesn't look good, considering the circumstances, but is not as bad an offense.
The not-quite-as-biggie: even if Schemmel can produce financial records that clear him of financial wrong-doing, do his actions bring shame upon an honorable institution of higher learning? He wasn't using a university credit card to visit family, for example. Remember how Chuck Long went back to Illinois to see his dying father last year? I wonder if he used a school credit card account that was later reimbursed. People would look upon such a thing much differently because of the nature of the trip.
Even if Schemmel does clear himself of out-and-out wrongdoing, my bet is that question number two results in his undoing. His tenure has resulted in enough black eyes to blind someone.
-- He fired a veteran swimming coach just before she was finally, after years of hard work, given an aquatics facility that would allow her to compete on a more even footing with other schools. Oh, yeah, she was suffering from breast cancer and getting a divorce at the time, and later won a lawsuit against the school.
-- He ignored the recommendation of coaching search guru Chuck Neinas to hire Chuck Long, who might go down as one of the worst selections in the history of sports.
-- He had to be wrestled to the ground by university President Stephen Weber to fire Long despite last season's 2-10 record, a second loss to Cal Poly, and an alleged criminal assault by one player against another.
Schemmel might never have a hair out of place, but his record at State is not admirable, no matter how things work out in his latest problem.
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On this otherwise rough weekend on Montezuma Mesa, the Aztecs women's soccer team won the MWC tournament championship with a 1-0 victory at BYU, completing a rebuilding process several years in the making from still another coaching disaster. Congratulations to coach Mike Friesen and the team. They and USD learn their post-season fates on Monday.
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