Rocky Smooths Over Fans, Prepare for 18-1

Here's one coach who didn't take long (pun sort of intended) to win over his fan base.

In one fell swoop, Rocky Long undid 24 hours of despair by San Diego State fans and restored their self-worth. Even the best of psychologists would have taken years and charged thousands to accomplish such a feat.

While Jim Harbaugh and Les Miles and, apparently, Jon Gruden were saying no thanks to Michigan, former Aztecs coach Brady Hoke was slobbering over athletic director Dave Brandon's shoes. For all the great things he accomplished here, Hoke personally and the SDSU football program were diminished as a result.

Then defensive coordinator Rocky Long stepped to the plate and said SDSU was where he preferred to be and that the program was in better shape than that of the Wolverines. What he lacks in football sense is made up by his ability to spot a higher quality of life. Nothing could have picked up the program, and its backers, more.

The two things I did not expect Monday night were for Hoke to leave and for me to be happy about it because of the replacement. Hoke's regime at State was never all about him, to his credit. The strength was in the staff as a whole, particularly in the core of Hoke, outgoing offensive coordinator Al Borges, Long running the defense, QB coach Brian Sipe and strength and conditioning coach Aaron Wellman. While State will be worse off for the breakup of the staff, they're better off at the top. That surprises me.

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I don't understand the animosity of fans toward Hoke for leaving. These things are always ugly, but the vast majority of it can land at the feet the former chief Aztec was licking. For God's sake, Hoke took our run-down wreck of a program and turned it into a bowl winner in less than three calendar years. If you remember 2008, what happened this past season was a miracle.

Yeah, Hoke could have handled it better, but some of the complaints, like him not meeting with the SDSU players, hold no water -- the example because the students don't return to campus until next week.

I thank Hoke, and his staff, for what they accomplished here and I'm happy for him that he got his dream job. He has a big job ahead of him, and the stakes and pressure will be much bigger than they ever were here.

Meanwhile, the Dominoes Pizza airplane flew from Ann Arbor to Baton Rouge to Hilton Head, S.C., back to either Ann Arbor or Baton Rouge -- at any rate, it was in the Louisiana city again somehow -- to Ann Arbor to Orange County and finally to Ann Arbor again. I think someone may have noted a stop in Phoenix along the way. All in service of finding a head coach for Michigan. I wonder how many poor teens in Detroit could have been given part-time jobs for the money spent just in fuel.

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San Diego State's first loss will be Saturday at New Mexico, and 18-1 still looks really darn good. I just don't think the Aztecs can win two bruisers in a row, the second following a long plane trip. They're also in a typical mid-season slump, having had to resort to winning ugly the past couple of weeks. Former SDSU basketball teams would have lost some of the recent games. It's a sign of the high level of the current team that they're winning, sometimes easily, when they aren't playing their best. But this is an annual thing. Coach Steve Fisher, who gained his 400th career victory in the UNLV game, always has his team ready for the madness at the end of the season.

(Late Saturday edit: ain't it nice being wrong. 19-0. Wow!)

I liked the towels, mainly because the wife and kids had fun with them...Maybe it's me, but I'm seeing Malcolm Thomas moving ahead of DJ Gay and Kawhi Leonard for team MVP. He's been a huge force lately...I figured out why Billy White is so inconsistent. He has no rhythm, so he can't dance. Check him out in the huddle during pre-game introductions sometime. He looked like a computer science major before the UNLV game...The equipment manager might want to check with the Marines for body armor before they go to Vegas for the UNLV rematch.