Spartans’ greatest season we never saw coming
Amid county virus controversy, SJSU leaves to play in Arizona Bowl
SAN JOSE >> The San Jose State Spartans football team left town Sunday to write the final chapter of the greatest season in school history.
While it’s true that the 1939 team went 13- 0, those Spartans didn’t have to play amid a global pandemic that forced them to move six hours away just to have training camp. Or play their games in an empty stadium. Or play a home game in Hawaii and two more in Las Vegas. Or be the subject of controversy instead of celebration.
“The hits just kept coming,” one of the team’s star players, defensive tackle Cade Hall, said Saturday.
Hall was talking about the season, but he just as easily could have been talking about the past week.
The Spartans survived all the hits this season, putting together a 7- 0 record, winning the Mountain West championship game against conference kingpin Boise State and rising to No. 19 in the latest Associated Press poll. Only once in history has SJSU been ranked higher; the 1939 Spartans were 18th.
And yet, when the Spar
tans left Sunday, bound for Tucson for one last game, the Arizona Bowl on New Year’s eve against Ball State, they left amid criticism.
Under current Covid protocol, any person traveling in or out of Santa Clara County is required to quarantine for 10 days. The Spartans, a hundred or more in their travel party, returned home last Sunday from two weeks in Las Vegas and now, six days later, have left again.
Bad News Bears, meet the Scofflaw Spartans.
“It stings a little bit,” Nick Starkel, the SJSU quarterback, said of some of things he and his teammates have heard the past week.
“Not the best- case scenario,” said Hall. “We’d love for the community to be involved and for there to be no issue.”
And then there’s SJSU coach Brent Brennan, a relentlessly upbeat man who seems to be too good to be true. Asked about the past week, which included a strong rebuke from a county health official and a threat to not let the team board its flight to Arizona, Brennan nodded calmly.
“I believe everyone is doing the best they can — on all sides,” he said. “This is such a unique time and unique situation. Everybody is doing the best they can.”
San Jose State has fared better than many major college sports schools in handling the novel coronavirus. It had two football games canceled this season because of virus issues involving opponents Fresno State and Boise State.
A recent New York Times’ survey of FBS schools showed San Jose State had the second-fewest number of cases out of the seven Mountain West Conference schools.