Go throughout a football season with a rising program like San Diego State and you often hear that such-and-such upcoming game is going to a test, a real indicator of where you stack up with the rest of the teams.
Usually, you can take such statements with a grain of salt, but Saturday night's game against Utah at Qualcomm Stadium really is such a game. This will be the truest indicator all season of where the Aztecs are.
The Utes are a very good Mountain West Conference team that has stumbled on hard times the last two weeks. They were shocked by the TCU stormtroopers and were still too dazed to come out of the rain at Notre Dame. They are too well-coached and too talented to struggle for a third straight weekend, darn it. For the bulk of the season, they have existed where the Aztecs want to live, at the upper reaches of the conference and national rankings, with a big fat zero in the L column. Yet, the last two weeks have also proven that the Utes aren't perfect. Compare yourself with the Horned Frogs and you get yourself in trouble. The Aztecs 5-point loss in Fort Worth last week was good for a hand clap, but not a whole lot more. The Utes are a more realistic test, and it will be interesting to see how the Aztecs stack up.
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USD might have a good football coach in Ron Caragher. There hasn't been much positive to write about the Toreros on the gridiron the past couple of years as the record progressively slipped to 4-7 last year. However, even though USD finished the season 5-6 in 2010, there are some bright spots on which to build.
Once former Coronado High QB Mason Mills got settled in, the Toreros won four of their final five games. Two of their losses were to scholarship teams, three others were to the top three finishers in the Pioneer Football League standings and the other to Azusa-Pacific, which is plenty capable of knocking off USD in a down year. Once the Toreros got into conference play, their level, they went 5-3, and two of the setbacks to those teams above them came on the road.
No one is going to celebrate 5-6, but considering all the circumstances, it could have been worse.
I still have a hard time with the hypocrisy of the USD athletic administration, which saw fit to fire some pretty good coaches a few years back in an effort to grow their programs while not holding their successors to the same standards. They hit lightning in a bottle with ex-football coach Jim Harbaugh, now weaving his magic up north at Stanford, but those 11-1 seasons are becoming a distant memory. However, Caragher did a pretty good job to hold the program together, and it seems worthwhile to keep him around to see what next fall will bring.
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News: the Padres added seven minor leaguers to the 40-man roster Friday to protect them from the Rule V Draft, including top young pitching prospects Simon Castro and Jeremy Hefner.
Reaction: Of the seven, only one was among Baseball America's top 10 prospects in the organization...Castro. Several others on the BA list, like P Wynn Pelzer, were sent packing in mid-season trades. Another, P Corey Luebke, finished 2010 as a major league player.
Of those Top 10 players, which certainly will be updated this off-season to reflect the new realities will include most of the seven promoted on Friday, only Castro is on the 40-man roster. Just kind of strange.
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