Fresno finds good, bad in its schedule
By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Columnist
The University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Oregon State. Oklahoma in Norman. Colorado State in Fort Collins...
Fresno State calls it the first part of its 2003 football schedule.
At a lot of other places they'd call it career suicide for coaches. Or, the revenge of an angry athletic director.
That's the noble thing about Bulldog coach Pat Hill: Nobody had to put an AK-47 to his noggin to get him to take these games. He went willingly, purposefully, excitedly even.
When somebody else couldn't lay a check down fast enough to buy its way out of a contract to play at Tennessee, Hill jumped at the opportunity to take their place in front of 104,000 maniacs three time zones away.
And, it wasn't about the money. It was about the challenge, as it always is for the man whose motto is "anybody, anyplace, anytime," and who lives it every season by marching into Ohio State, Wisconsin or some other opponent's lair like a guy barging into a gang bar spoiling for a fight.
Sometimes you get the feeling half the reason he and the Bulldogs are here to play Hawai'i at Aloha Stadium tonight is because the Oakland Raiders were unavailable.
Hill's pursuit of a reputation for the Bulldogs by playing the biggest and the baddest is as commendable as it is daring. It has given FSU and, by reflection, the Western Athletic Conference, some visibility and recognition they wouldn't otherwise have gotten.
It is a philosophy light years apart from too many coaches and schools who line up the twinkies and then wonder why nobody takes them seriously.
But you also have to wonder if there is a point of fading returns somewhere along the line, too. If, as Rocky used to say, it starts to hurt after you get smacked in the face the first 100 times.
There are reasons the Bulldogs, despite their impressive talent and coaching, haven't won or shared a WAC championship since 1999, when they split one with UH and Texas Christian. And one of the reasons, you suspect, is the punishment they take from the non-conference schedule and what they have left on the field there.
More than once the Bulldogs have been the favorites to win the WAC and been left with nothing to show for it. In 2001, their best of seasons, the Bulldogs ran the gauntlet of Colorado, Oregon State, Wisconsin and Colorado State in non-conference only to take their tumbles in the WAC, where UH and Boise State prevailed.
From tonight's game against the Warriors, the 3-3 Bulldogs face a stretch of seven consecutive conference games to close the regular season. Ample opportunity to see if the Bulldogs' best this season is in front or behind them.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.
