Ted Tollner saw the best of football times at San Diego State, and some of the worst. Tollner, who reportedly is retiring as a coach at the age of 70, was offensive coordinator during the golden age of SDSU football during the 1970s and the head coach when the program began its slide toward near-oblivion.
Tollner is perhaps the least understood figure in the Aztec football family, respected by those who know him for his football knowledge and gentlemanly demeanor, and reviled by those who view him from afar and wrongly blame him for the program's collapse at the end of his tenure.
It was Tollner calling the plays in 1977, when the team that was arguably the Aztecs best went 10-1 and scored its signature win, a brazen 41-16 rout of a Bobby Bowden-coached Florida State team that earlier that day was awarded a bowl berth -- in an age when there were but a dozen post-season contests -- and SDSU could only dream of a late-December game. He developed star quarterbacks Jesse Freitas and Craig Penrose, and nursed productive seasons out of highly inconsistent Joe Davis and Mark Halda. His first stint also encompassed the 1979 team that beat Miami, Wisconsin and Arizona before he left in 1980.
When he returned to Montezuma Mesa 14 years later, it was as head coach, but the landscape of college football had changed.
-- SDSU's greatness in the 1960s and 1970s stemmed from being one of the few schools that relied on the pass, torching defenses built to stop ground-oriented option offenses. Everyone was throwing by the time he returned, and everyone had defenses designed to stop the pass.
-- The Aztecs dominance also stemmed from owning JC recruiting back in the day when JC players were worth something. When Tollner returned, they no longer had the stranglehold on California's community colleges they once did, and two-year schools did not produce mass quantities of quality players. The situation is even worse now. The latest SDSU recruiting class of 23 players has no one from the JC ranks.
-- The forerunner of the BCS, the Bowl Alliance, began in 1995, a year after Tollner returned to State. With the Aztecs in the Western Athletic Conference, there was going to be no opportunity for a major bowl appearance or bid for a championship. When a 12-1 BYU team was denied a major bowl, and a pair of 8-win SDSU teams failed to be invited to bowls of any sort, Tollner's recruiting efforts were doomed, and it soon showed.
Tollner had the right idea when he returned. The Aztecs had to have an effective power-running game to consistently succeed. Defenses were anywhere from pretty good to great. But you need a roster of quality depth to win in college football, and Tollner couldn't keep the cupboard full. He rarely took risks with recruiting and eventually stopped competing against the Pac-10 for players -- one of things that Tollner-haters point to even today.
Simply put, Tollner won when he had players and lost when he didn't have enough. Thanks to the Bowl Alliance and the BCS, the deck was stacked against him.
The end came in 2001, when the Aztecs lost 31-3 to a UNLV team that was 1-4 at the time. It was clear then, even with five games left, that the Tollner-era was crashing down, and I wrote as much on my old Web site. He was fired before the finale, in which his Aztecs won -- getting their first victory since before the UNLV game.
I never blamed Tollner for what happened, and I don't now. He was in a tough, possibly no-win situation. I think my theory was proven by his successor, Tom Craft, who went the other direction by gambling big-time in recruiting and lost in spectacular fashion. I don't blame Craft, either. He had to do what he did, and it just didn't work.
Recruiting finally picked back up under Chuck Long, and that was only because Utah proved that the BCS noose on college football could be loosened. The Utes, Hawaii, Boise State and TCU have since opened the floodgates and now SDSU can compete for any high school player it wants. It is no accident that it took this long for SDSU football to get back to post-season play. Those players brought here by Chuck Long matured and were augmented by better recruits from Brady Hoke. Tollner, after his first few years, and Craft never had that chance. I think Tollner would have had the Aztecs bowling regularly if he had a roster of the kind of players he enjoyed in the mid-1990s. There was just no way he could get them anymore, and he knew it.
The hate for him, and Craft, is something I don't understand about my fellow Aztecs fans. It is misplaced. Both tried and it just didn't work out. My sincere hope with Tollner retiring is that Athletic Director Jim Sterk and new head coach Rocky Long will reach out and bring him back into the Aztec family where he belongs.
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