Conference implications make rivalry against Fresno St. special
SAN JOSc >> There’s simply no way to talk about the rivalry between San Jose State and Fresno State without mentioning the 1986 game at Spartan Stadium.
Wild momentum swings, 1,072 yards of offense, 38 fourth- quar
ter points and 317 yards in penalties, San Jose State’s 45- 41 win over Fresno State had it all and was the defining moment of an era that saw at least one of the schools capture the conference championship nine times between 1981 and 1991.
The present- day rivalry between the Spartans and Bulldogs isn’t at that point, at least not yet. But for the first time in nearly 30 years, their meeting Saturday in Fresno will have conference title implications.
The Spartans are 4- 0 for the first time since 1955 and are tied
atop the Mountain West Conference with Nevada. With a win, SJSU can all but knock out Fresno State (3-1) from title contention and bolster its own chances of winning its first conference crown in 29 years.
A loss would put the Spartans in a precarious spot considering the toughest part of their schedule — a run against Boise State (30), Hawaii (2-2) and Nevada (4- 0) in successive weeks — is still on the docket.
“We know this is going to be a real intense game,” Spartans coach Brent Brennan said. “It always is. That comes with the rivalry.”
And in the case of this rivalry, it’s one that’s had its share of swings and even had its obit written.
When the teams met in November 1991, the Mercury News headline read, “Fresno, SJS both will lose. Spartans, Bulldogs end rivalry Saturday.”
At the time members of the Big West Conference, Fresno State had announced that it was joining the Western Athletic Conference for the 1992 season and had no room for a nonconference game against its longtime rival.
The 1991 game, won by Fresno 31-28, was to be the last.
“The more I’m with it, the more I think it’s a terrible mistake,” then-Fresno State coach Jim Sweeney said before the 1991 game. “There’s a lot lost not playing San Jose State. It’s a loss of money, a loss of a rivalry. We’ll fill (our stadium) against Air Force, but we’ve played Utah and it isn’t San Jose State. If we had 50,000 seats, we’d fill it for San Jose State.”
The teams played an early September game against one another in 1994, a nonconference matchup won by Fresno State 43-13.
Two years later, San Jose State joined an expanded WAC, and the series against Fresno State resumed until the Bulldogs left the Spartans again, splitting for the
Mountain West Conference in 2012.
San Jose State followed Fresno State to the Mountain West a year later and the rivals renewed their series in 2013 with a game for the ages.
The Spartans won 62-52 over the No. 16-ranked Bulldogs, who brought a 10-0 record to San Jose, as David Fales threw for 547 yards and six touchdowns to outduel Fresno State stars Derek Carr and Davante Adams.
The victory made San Jose State bowl-eligible and ended Fresno State’s hopes for a BCS bid.
“This is what we ex
pected,” Fales said after the win.
As someone who grew up in the South Bay and is the son of two San Jose State alums, Brennan knew about the Spartans’ rivalry with Fresno State long before he became an assistant coach on Dick Tomey’s Spartans staff in 2005.
Being on the sidelines for those games against Pat Hill’s Bulldogs, though, gave him a different perspective.
“I just remember the energy and the emotion of the game, the pregame going into it,” Brennan said. “Having grown up around the program, I had a good sense of what that was, but it’s obviously a little more so when you’re on the field in the game.”
What Brennan also typically saw was the Bulldogs have their way. Hill’s teams beat the Spartans 13 of 15 times from 1997 to 2011, including five of six times from 2005 to 2010 when Brennan was an SJSU assistant. While both teams were in the Western Athletic Conference from 1996 to 2011, their games usually meant little more than regional bragging rights, as Fresno State generally contended for conference titles and San Jose State could never enjoy any sustained success.
“One of the conversations we have as an athletic department here all the time is building a sustainable program, one that wins in all sports, all the time,” Brennan said. “Not just have one good year and then struggle the next few, which has been historically what’s happened, at least in football.”
The Spartans and Bulldogs have played each other 83 times since 1921, with Fresno State leading the series 42-38-3.
In 19 games between 1973 and 1991, Fresno State won just six times. But the Bulldogs largely dominated the
series for the nearly the next two decades, as San Jose State won only once in 17 meetings.
By 2006, SJSU had lost 12 straight games to Fresno State. At that time, Tomey issued a challenge to his team.
“In my mind, San Jose State used to have a rivalry with Fresno. But we no longer do because we haven’t competed,” Tomey said that year. “It’s our job to make this a rivalry again.”
The Spartans won that game 24-14. In the 12 games since then, San Jose State has won five times and Fresno State has won seven. Brennan has a 1-2 record in the series.
Bulldogs coach Kalen DeBoer was on Jeff Tedford’s staff in Fresno in 2017 and 2018 and said the former Cal coach “made it very well aware what this rivalry meant, how many years it went back and some of the games and how they went both ways — in our favor and San Jose State’s favor.”
Brennan says he has an uncanny ability to remember every rivalry game that he’s ever coached, with his team’s come-from-behind 1716 win over Fresno State last year being the most recent.
As time expired in that game, then- quarterback Josh Love and most of his Spartans teammates eschewed the traditional handshakes and ran towards the end zone to hoist Valley Trophy.
Brennan also remembers the feeling he had in the days after that game ended. Despite their jubilation, the Spartans’ season was done.
While seven other MWC teams got to prepare for bowl games in late December and early January, the Spartans, at 5-7, and the 4-8 Bulldogs both saw their seasons end on Nov. 30, 2019.
“The sad part of last year was that we didn’t win six games, so we were sitting at home over Christmas break, and that wasn’t any fun,” Brennan said. “We want to be practicing, we want to be getting ready for a bowl game, we want to be getting ready to travel somewhere and play for something meaningful.”