When Dick Tomey became the head football coach at San Jose State in December of 2004, he said, "I feel this program, with the facilities that have been built, is just primed for success."

Five years later, as Tomey prepares to step down at season's end, it is hard to find anybody who still feels that way.

In fact, you have to wonder if the Spartans will even be playing major college football in another five or 10 years.

Give the 71-year-old Tomey credit for breathing some life into a once-proud program that he had found gasping for air. The man who revitalized UH football in the late 1970s, might have been the Spartans' last, best hope to avoid fate that has befallen a string of other California State University system schools that dropped football.

You have to wonder how long it might be before the Spartans join Long Beach State and Cal State Fullerton in the Big West.

While the Warriors focus mostly on the downtrodden Spartans (1-8, 0-5 WAC) as Saturday's road opponent, San Jose State's future viability should also be of growing concern to UH.

For UH, San Jose State is not only one of its longest running opponents (this will be their 32nd meeting), but also the closest geographical one.

Whoever takes over at San Jose State — and the betting is it will be a young (read: cheap) assistant coach — it will be a hands-full job with a 2010 schedule that opens with consecutive games at Alabama, Wisconsin and Utah.

That was part of Tomey's problem this year, a schedule that began with games against USC, Utah and Stanford. But the so-called "body bag" games and the paychecks they bring have become a necessity for the Spartans, especially with the dire economic climate in the CSU system and a depleated scholarship count.

Not that the Spartans, who claim a home attendance average of 15,904 this year, were doing all that well financially before the crash. But at least Tomey had elevated the turnouts above the sewing circle gatherings of 6,468 they had been averaging before his arrival.

Before Tomey, the Spartans had but one winning season in 12 years and hadn't been to a bowl in 15. But sustaining the success of the 9-4 New Mexico Bowl campaign of Tomey's second season (2006) has been elusive, with SJSU going 12-21 thereafter.

When Tomey took the job, he pronounced it "a challenge I couldn't resist."

Truth be told, if Tomey couldn't do it, it might be a challenge nobody can surmount.