This Is Sparta! San Jose State Climbs the Mountain to First Conference Championship Title
“You don’t climb a mountain in one single bound. You do it a step at a time.” – San Jose State Head Coach Brent Brennan
Or alternatively, from Confucius:
“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”
For the last few weeks, my friends have been wondering why I’ve been texting them incessantly about San Jose State football. It’s like trying to tell someone about the latest thing they really need to know about but you think they’re missing out on. Most of the time it doesn’t pan out, but that one time it does? You live for that.
On October 24th at around 9 PM, my buddy and me were bored during quarantine and up watching college football. We were talking about Air Force and San Jose State since there was nothing else on. He was pretty confident that Air Force would cover -3.5. Not knowing much at all and just to play devil’s advocate out of boredom/hilarity, I replied that San Jose State would cover +3.5. We made a friendly wager, that if Air Force won by 4 or more, I would buy diapers for his daughter. If San Jose State lost by less than 4 or won, he would send me the money to buy a 10-piece wing combo.
I do not remember much about the game other than our back and forth banter. I do remember that San Jose State won (17-6) and that I was very excited to make the journey down on Sunday to King’s Wings in Bessemer to get my 10-piece combo. I got 5 honey mustard + lemon pepper wings and 5 hot + lemon pepper wings, with lemon pepper sprinkled over the fries and a fountain Coke. I remember that meal like it was yesterday, and those wings are arguably the best I’ve ever had. I can still taste them.
Needless to say, the seed was planted and my fondness for San Jose State began. My friend and me jokingly paid attention to them for the next few weeks, and we noticed they kept winning. The next game they beat New Mexico 38-21, then San Diego State 28-17, UNLV 34-17, and Hawaii 35-24. The Spartans were 5-0 and I started seriously paying attention.
Is this team actually real?
(Side note: as a gentleman, I offered my buddy the same deal when San Jose State was a double-digit favorite against New Mexico and he declined. He did not want that second L. It is good that he did not take me up on it because he would have lost again. It is bad that he did not because I did not get another 10-piece combo from King’s Wings.)
Outside of the weekly recaps or lead-up pieces in the East Bay Times, it was hard to find much to read about this team. It is San Jose State. They were 1-11 in 2018 and 5-7 in 2019. They were projected to finish last in their division this season. No one expected them to do much of anything. They had never been a serious contender in the Mountain West Conference (MWC) in any way.
But what I found out about the team in those East Bay Times articles by Justice Delos Santos led me to feel inspired from a source I would never have expected.
This is a team that could not practice or play at home because of Santa Clara County’s COVID-19 restrictions. This season, their home games were played in Honolulu (essentially a home game for Hawaii) and Las Vegas (essentially a home game for Nevada, and an advantage lost in the MWC Championship against Boise State).
How did this team keep winning even though they had not actually been home in weeks, some not having seen their parents since July?
The process started before this season, and leading into last season (Link):
Where the outside saw darkness, Coach Brent Brennan saw the light.
Before the 2019 season, Brennan showed his players screenshots of scoreboards from their 1-11 season. There were four times when the Spartans were tied or leading in the fourth quarter. They lost three of those games, but Brennan made his point: they were close.
For the players who are still around, the message stuck. And while San Jose State’s improbable season has caught the college football world by surprise, the undefeated Spartans knew this type of success would come.
“I remember those pictures,” linebacker Kyle Harmon said. “The memory I have of those was that we are not too far off here, regardless of record or what people might be saying.”
One can also look to Running Backs Coach Alonzo Carter as to why. From ESPN’s Kyle Bonagura and Adam Rittenberg on December 12th (Link):
Carter, San Jose State’s running backs coach and recruiting coordinator, isn’t a light traveler, but an experienced one after he served as a backup dancer for MC Hammer during the “Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em” tour in 1990 and 1991.
“Everybody laughs when I come rolling out with my luggages and my suits,” Carter said. “I pack three suits. They’re like, ‘Man, what you doing?’ I’m like, ‘You’ve gotta be prepared.’ I’ve got a suit for each away game and a suit for the bowl game and a suit for the Mountain West championship game. Being somebody who’s gone out on the road, making a home in a hotel doesn’t bother me at all.
“It’s been a while since I’ve done it, but hey man, I’m good.”
You have to see Alonzo Carter’s dance moves to believe them. Link.
Many point to the team’s cohesiveness stemming from the time the Spartans spent at Humboldt State, 320 miles north of their home in Arcata. Justice Delos Santos writes (Link):
In the 10 days that they spent at Humboldt State, the players had a regimented routine. Treatment, lifting and practice in the morning. School by video conference in the afternoon. Meetings and study hall at night. Running backs coach Alonzo Carter said the structure enabled the players to form bonds and perfect their craft.
“There was little free time,” Carter said. “I think they took appreciation to that, just the effort that was put into making it as convenient as possible for them.”
San Jose State effectively created a bubble amid the redwoods. The team lived in dorms, a short walk from the Redwood Bowl, Humboldt State’s football stadium. Players weren’t allowed to leave campus. The only people they interacted with in-person were teammates and coaches. The short time at Humboldt State was challenging, but the shared struggle allowed the Spartans to grow closer. “We were able to bond over the fact that we’re grinding through this together,” Robbins said. “No one’s alone.”
The bonds have only tightened since the team’s Humboldt State experience as the Spartans have successfully navigated through the pandemic without a COVID outbreak that has affected so many other college programs. San Jose State’s two canceled games were because of coronavirus issues within the Fresno State and Boise State programs. Brennan has noted multiple times throughout the season that everyone has sacrificed for the sake of the group. The culture of connectedness starts with Brennan.
“There’s a saying in football: ‘You are a reflection of your head coach,” Carter said. “If he cares, then that’s what we’re all about. We all care. That’s how the staff was put together. That’s how this team was put together. They care about each other. We care about each other. That’s not an accident.”
Senior Offensive Lineman Trevor Robbins also offered valuable insight (Link):
Robbins said that while Brennan is competitive, he cares about his players beyond football.
“Obviously, he wants us to win, but he wants us to be men,” Robbins said. “He wants us to be good husbands, he wants us to be good friends and he wants us to be good overall people.”
And their coach’s care for them went a long way. Down 20-7 at halftime against Nevada with a trip to their first Mountain West Conference Championship on the line, Coach Brennan kept it simple in his locker room speech to the team (Link):
“We need to fix two things. We need to fix our physicality, and we need to play for each other.”
San Jose State opened the second half with a kickoff return for a touchdown and eventually scored the only 23 points of the half to win 30-20. At 6-0 and one step away from their goal of an MWC championship, Coach Brennan spent his post-game interview gushing over how much his players care about one another.
Many organizations strive for this, but a culture like that at San Jose State in 2020 is not built overnight. Quarterback Nick Starkel was a starter at Texas A&M in 2017 and 2018 and Arkansas in 2019. He believed enough in what Brennan was building that he transferred without taking an official visit to the school. His beliefs were later confirmed (Link).
“When I first got here, I saw a team that was mature in their knowledge of the game,” said Starkel, a second-team all-Mountain West pick. “A team that knew not just the routes that they were running or the protections or run plays we were calling, but they knew why they were doing those things.”
The cohesive culture, the maturity, and the understanding all added up to a dominant 34-20 victory over Boise State in the MWC championship game. The defense stifled a typically dominant, methodical Broncos offense. In response to Tyler Nevens and the Spartans running game being stopped, Starkel put up the biggest game of his career when it mattered most, with stats of 32/52 passing for 453 yards, 3 touchdowns and 0 turnovers, delivering San Jose State its first MWC championship in its first title game appearance. The Spartans were previously winless in 14 appearances against the Broncos. After the game, the team, coaches and staff broke out singing “Lean On Me” in the locker room.
Coach Brennan’s message to his team before the game was one he’d preached all season long and all throughout his time as head coach (Link).
“What we talked about pregame, and really all season … I know we have the Climb the Mountain theme. It was really here is a process to winning this game. There is a process to building a winning football program. there is a process to being a good player and just focusing on right now is the biggest part of that. Consistency of that. In pregame, we talked about this whole season, this whole story has been about us and this game’s the same. It’s about us, how we handle the ups and downs, how we respond to the good things and bad things that happen in the game. I thought our response tonight on so many occasions was fantastic.”
“Climbing the mountain was just a good metaphor for us because we had been so far from the top for so long. If you look going backward, our last winning season was 2012. Our last winning season before that was 2006. That was Everest. The reason that teams sits there and screams ‘Lean on Me’ arm in arm like that is the exact same reason they play good football together. They love each other and they care about each other and no one wanted to let each other down. Also the journey, our COVID discipline has been crazy good.”
San Jose State enters bowl season with a 7-0 record, as well as a 7-0 record against the spread. Fittingly enough for a team that has an “Anytime, Anywhere” mentality, the Spartans will not be playing in the inaugural Los Angeles Bowl against a Pac-12 team because the game was cancelled due to COVID-19. Instead, they will be headed to Tucson to play Mid-American Conference Champion Ball State on December 31st.
And even though I know my friend will not side with Ball State on New Year’s Eve, I know that I will for sure be getting a 10-piece wing combo from King’s Wings before I watch the Spartans complete their storybook season, the first time since 1939 they’re undefeated this far into a season, when they finished 13-0.