FINALLY: SDSU FINDS FOE ON GRIDIRON
Will play at Colorado after Buffaloes lose game vs. Trojans
It took the better part of five days, but the San Diego State football team finally found someone to play football with this weekend.
Just about the time Thursday evening that some people were sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner — or others were napping on the couch after a day of food and football — SDSU announced that it will play a nonconference game at Colorado on Saturday afternoon.
Kickoff is 2 p.m. PT for a
game that will be broadcast on the Pac-12 Network.
SDSU (3-2) has been searching all week for a game after its scheduled Mountain West contest at Fresno State was canceled on Sunday because of COVID-19 issues within the Bulldogs program.
Colorado (2-0), which is coached by former Helix High standout Karl Dorrell, became available Thursday when its game Saturday at USC was canceled because of COVID-19 issues within the Trojans program.
“This decision was made under the Pac-12’s football policy due to USC not having the minimum number of scholarship players available for the game at a specific position group,” the Pac-12 said in a statement, “as a result of a number of positive football studentathlete COVID-19 cases and resulting isolation of additional football student-athletes under contact tracing protocols.”
USC had two players test positive for the virus earlier in the week, which sidelined those two players as well as five other players through contract tracing. Another Trojans player tested positive Thursday, which prompted the USC-Colorado game to be canceled.
SDSU has played Colorado only once, losing a 2002 road game 34-14 to a Buffaloes team ranked No. 17 in the nation. Colorado has wins over UCLA and Stanford this season. The Buffaloes had their game against Arizona State canceled two weeks ago because of ongoing COVID-19 issues within the ASU program. Losing the USC game would have reduced Colorado’s six-game schedule to just four games if the Buffaloes had not found a replacement.
The Aztecs are 5-1 against Pac-12 teams over the past four years, highlighted by victories over No. 19 Stanford in 2017 and No. 23 Arizona State in 2017.
SDSU is coming off last week’s 26-21 loss at Nevada. The Aztecs close out the regular season with a Mountain
West game against Colorado State (Dec. 5) at Carson’s Dignity Health Sports Park and a nonconference contest at BYU (Dec. 12).
On Wednesday, the game time for SDSU’s game against the Rams was moved up to 4 p.m. — it was originally 7:30 p.m. — because of new COVID-19 guidelines from the state that require non-essential activities to be completed before 10 p.m.
Of course, now next week’s Colorado State game is in question because of the coronavirus situation with the Rams, who had to cancel this week’s game against Air Force because of the virus. So SDSU could be looking for an opponent all over again next week.
Why SDSU and Air Force did not match up for a Mountain West game has not been addressed.
By not adding a conference game to the schedule, the Aztecs miss an opportunity to boost their record in the Mountain West. The best SDSU can finish in the MW is 4-2 (.667) — 3-2 (.600) if the Colorado State game gets canceled, too — which will make it difficult to move ahead of Nevada (5-0), San Jose State (4-0), Boise State (4-0) and Fresno State (3-1) in the standings.