To Upbeat Stolz, the Rose Bowl Isn’t Such a Bad Place to Start

To my way of thinking, the Rose Bowl is a wonderful place to visit in January . . . but a haunt of a house in September.

Being there in January represents a celebration and a culmination, but it is no place for a beginning.

San Diego State went to the Rose Bowl last September to open its season against UCLA and absorbed a 47-14 drubbing. As a toddler would say, that was an “owwww-eeee.” As in ouch.

With UCLA and the Rose Bowl on the agenda once again this week, I expected to find San Diego State Coach Denny Stolz in a dour mood. Here were his Aztecs, once again getting to the entree before the hors d’oeuvres . . . and once again figuring to get devoured by said entree.

Dour mood? Stolz?

Are you kidding?

This man has been upbeat and optimistic throughout preseason training. Actually, he has been frighteningly cheerful throughout the off-season, in spite of the fact his 1987 Aztecs slipped from Western Athletic Conference champions to 5-7 also-rans.

“Please don’t tell him,” a bystander said at practice one day this week. “Maybe he doesn’t realize it.”

It’s not that Stolz is an ogre by any means. But this time of year, he generally has stuck his smile in a closet for a few months. This is a time for serious business.

And yet there he was, actually joking with a couple of players on the sidelines.

And there he was, wearing a hat with strips of tape on both the bill and the front.

What was written on the tape?

“25 pts”

How whimsical. That happens to be the spread by which UCLA is favored tonight.

And this man was still smiling.

“Hey,” he said, “I see a great foundation here. All the players on the traveling squad are there because they had to beat somebody out for a job. In the first year, after our first 40 players, we just filled in the names. It didn’t really make much difference.”

Remarkably, in that first year, the Aztecs won the WAC and gave Iowa an E Ticket scare before losing the Holiday Bowl, 39-38. The top of the roster was so good that the bottom did not make any difference.

“But we lost the top off that team,” Stolz said. “Last year, we took a step back, mainly because we couldn’t play defense well enough. Now we’ve had two great recruiting years with really, really solid players. The foundation’s here now. We’re not a championship team, but we have fewer question marks today than we did last year, and we’ll have fewer next year and fewer the year after that.”

The idea is to build an orderly program with a constant succession of players, a balanced spread of seniors, juniors, sophomores, redshirt freshmen and freshmen. It takes time. The gleaming new Aztec Athletic Center may have been built in a few months, but it takes a little longer to build the team that inhabits it.

“It takes time,” Stolz said, “but we’re closing ground on UCLA and BYU, people like that.”

All of the WAC, it would seem, is closing ground on BYU.

“We changed all that by winning in ‘86,” Stolz said. “Then Wyoming won it last year, and now it’s a conference, a race.”

And Stolz was talking before Wyoming opened the season with that victory over BYU Thursday night.

But the WAC is not the problem tonight. UCLA is. And Stolz is not talking as if he expects the Aztecs to remain cannon-fodder for the Bruins, though an upset would be an outrageous thought. After all, UCLA is ranked No. 5 in the nation.

“This is as good a place to open as anywhere,” Stolz said. “It gives us a chance to learn about our team. Obviously, UCLA is the best team on our schedule.”

Ultimately, Stolz wants his Aztecs to measure up to UCLA . . . not be measured against them. That will come.

For now, however, it’s time to let a little secret out of the bag. UCLA may be using San Diego State as a warmup for next week’s game against Nebraska, but San Diego State is using UCLA as a warmup as well. Air Force comes to San Diego next Sunday for a game of tremendous consequence if SDSU harbors any thoughts of winning the WAC championship.

“Actually,” Stolz said, “this was supposed to be the fourth game of the season for both of us, but they wanted to play earlier because they didn’t want Nebraska to have a game up on them and, since Air Force opens this week, we wanted to have a game behind us, too.”

Thus was born this seemingly hopeless but apparently helpful trip to Pasadena.

It can’t be all bad. Or Denny Stolz would not be smiling.