San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
No one saw Aztecs playing games in Carson, but that’s 2020 for you
Home sweet … Carson? Lacing up cleats to host visitors … 113 miles from campus? Playing on the field that seeded the legacy of … the L.A. Galaxy, a football team of a completely different kind?
The wackiest of seasons — in the wackiest of times — arrived for the Aztecs on Saturday at Dignity Health Sports Complex.
They lined up to play UNLV, 15 minutes from the Los Angeles International Airport in a city known for soil and groundwater contamination. When San Diego State coach Brady Hoke coached in 2009 with the program he boomeranged back to this season, that Oct. 24 game against Colorado State was the team’s seventh of the season.
No tailgaters streamed through the gates Saturday. No fans barked themselves hoarse in the stands.
But when Jordan Byrd returned the opening kickoff 20 yards, pan
demic-riddled 2020 loosened its maddening grip — just a bit.
When the Aztecs went three and out to open, the rust of an offseason like no other lingered. Then the defense responded with a three and out of its own. But football, warts and all, stepped back into San Diego’s spotlight.
Nothing at this stage in our tangled, twisted lives should be surprise, really. The year in sports has been one head-shaker after another. They still haven’t played the Masters.
As Ted Leitner exited his car to walk inside, the voice of the Aztecs entering his 26th season in a way and place no one could have predicted smiled and shook his head.
“Never seen anything like it,” Leitner said. “But they’re playing. There was a time when they weren’t going to play, so I’ll take it. You’re not going to hear me complain.”
They blocked and tackled and ran lungs beet red. That’s what matters most — no matter how strange, no matter how far.
Fans waited and waited and waited to see quarterback Carson Baker, a sophomore, sling it full time. Though his first attempt was nearly intercepted, his second — a nifty inside screen to Kaegun Williams — sparked some adrenaline.
Those who follow the Aztecs relished a glimpse of the wrinkles Hoke mixed in after retaking the torch from longtime friend Rocky Long. For far too long, football had been virtual recruiting tours, position-by-position Zoom meetings and an enterprising offensive player who showed coaches he remained in shape this spring by doing squats with his mother draped over his shoulders.
Then, the Mountain West joined the Big Ten in shelving the season with a move that appeared to be written in ink.
One cleat forward. Two cleats back.
“Everybody’s got a plan until you get punched in the face,” Hoke said at the time. “That’s what (boxer) Mike Tyson said. You get punched in the face. You get another plan.”
Against the Rebels, the Aztecs finally earned that chance to punch back.
The first points of 2020 came less than a week before Halloween on a 4-yard rollout touchdown toss from Baker to wide receiver Ethan Dedeaux for a 7-0 lead with 6:06 to play in the opening quarter.
A pregame hype track played over the PA system to fire up, well, the stadium personnel doing temperature checks for workers at the gate. The music boomed, reverberating off empty metal bleachers. When the national anthem drifted into the night, some manufactured applause and whistling was piped in like a 1970s sitcom.
On the field, football. In the stands, our stubborn reality.
One plus, minus the tank of gas fans will burn through if they are able to attend games at Dignity Health Sports Park in 2021: The video boards and sound system will remind you how embarrassingly bad the versions at SDCCU Stadium had been.
These days, you take your optimism where you can get it.
The rest of college football hardly has been waiting for Mountain West scores to roll in — but each snap, from Columbus, Ohio, to Carson offered a patch of cloth to the reclaimed fabric of the fall.
And yes, it also was soaked in the surreal. Odd is the new normal, after all.
Across the country, the game reminded us that playing means possibility. Indiana beat blueblooded Penn State. Rutgers won in the Big Ten to end a 21-game conference skid. A potential gamewinning field goal for Rice hit rattled around the goal post four times, hitting one upright, then the crossbar, then the other upright, then the crossbar again before falling harmlessly to the ground.
The coach at Stephen F. Austin channeled all of our frustrations by ripping off his shirt after his team’s win Saturday, whipping it around like someone at a Vegas bachelor party with dad bod on full display.
Football took another step back, regardless of the length of the season or the location.
Home sweet, Carson? At this point, we’ll take it.