Hoke Challenges Fans, Padres and Bolts Notes

San Diego State football coach Brady Hoke ended his annual pre-training camp media day Friday with a challenge for the community and alumni to support his Aztecs this fall, a normal comment for someone in his position to make around now but one that is particularly relevant in these lean times.

Quite frankly, there has been no drearier place in town on a fall Saturday in recent years than Qualcomm Stadium when SDSU is playing. The Q is like a giant morgue when the red and black is on the field. I think the last time there was any sustained interest in the Aztecs among prospective fans was 1999, coming off the previous bowl season. There were sporadic moments of fun under Tom Craft, none under Chuck Long, under whom the program struck bottom.

Hoke and especially his fine staff have done what appears to be an excellent job of revitalizing the program, but I can tell you that until I'm blue in the face. You're not going to believe me until the Aztecs win some football games. That's how it should be after all this time. I think they'll get their share of victories, but I'm still not ready to say they're ready to take off. They should win enough to get into a bowl game. However, the average fan who has not shown up the past 10 years was right, and the rest of us who showed up for the weekly drudgery were wrong.

There's not much Hoke can do but win games and put together a few successful seasons in a row. A name-brand star a la Marshall Faulk will help. He might have two this year in QB Ryan Lindley and WR Vincent Brown. They're not Faulk but they could be darn good. They're also not household names. I've yet to hear anyone say they're willing to part with their time and money to watch those two play the way they did when Faulk was around. I'm not sure that you want to keep marketing in mind when you're developing a game plan, but if Hoke can find a way to have Lindley throw for 300 yards and have Brown catch 200 of them and grab three or four TD passes, that would be a good start. Ordinarily, you want to sit your starters early against the likes of Nicholls State, but he might not have such an option.

San Diegans might eventually respond to Hoke's call, but they'll want to see what cards he's holding first. Local college football fans aren't just twice-burned, they are more like 15 to 20 times-burned. They might take the coach seriously, but they won't act that way toward his team until he puts some big numbers into the W column.

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Okay, I love watching Padres OF Chris Denorfia. Hands down my favorite Padre now that 2B David Eckstein is on the DL ... Here's to hoping what we've seen the last week or two out of P Kevin Correia really means something positive. They need that one more solid starter and maybe he's the answer ... I was thinking of Eckstein as my team MVP, but with him being out so long now I'm leaning more toward C Yorvit Torrealba.

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Does the Chargers training camp strike you as being boring? Who cares about the damn holdouts anymore? And there aren't many real position battles ... Interesting how SS Steve Gregory is suddenly having a great camp now that he's got real competition for his job, in one of the fights for jobs that does exist ... LB Larry English beating LT prospect Brandyn Dombrowski like a drum does nothing for me unless pads are on.