http://www.mercurynews.com/sjsu-spartans/ci_18689135

Link doesn't work for me.

Try it now...

Yep works now. Thanks.

Wow, that's a great read. Despite how I sometimes feel about the legitimacy of the tutoring that some athletes receive (especially in light of what went down at UNC), that's a pretty nice legacy for an erstwhile pac 10 rival coach that I never actively disliked.

good article, thanks.

After Tomey left SJSU, he or someone else talked about the scholarship problem, I remember reading about it; so it's not like Wilner is getting a scoop on a secret being revealed just now. But yeah Tomey is one of the good guys, and his W-L record at SJSU does not reflect his true legacy there.

I have always thought highly of Dick Tomey, and my regard for him just went up some more.

Congratulations to SJS for digging its way out of a tough hole.

Thank you for the link Cal89.

BearBones;546081 said:

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I have always thought highly of Dick Tomey, and my regard for him just went up some more.

Congratulations to SJS for digging its way out of a tough hole.

Thank you for the link Cal89.

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+1

SJSU had quite a program when I was at Cal. Top 20 and even 10 or close to it at times...

Really curious to see how they do now with more scholarship players. They have Stanford for their first game...

good story. Should we schedule the Spartans?

I think we knew this at the time.

What is somewhat BS is that SJSU apparently had one bad year of APR, but since the NCAA uses a rolling 4 year window, they were punished twice for essentially the same problem and were up against the wall again in year 3, but were able to appeal and get the punishment deferred. The 4 year rolling window makes it hard to get hit with APR violations too, but when you do, it makes it really hard to recover.

It's amazing at how poorly thought out the NCAA's punishments are, especially for an organization representing college athletics. They way they deal with lost scholarship is very strange too. In USC's case, '10 lost per year' means 15 per class max recruits instead of 25 - but over three years, that will mean they are down to possibly 65 scholarship players, which to me that is a 20 scholarship reduction in plain english. However, if the USC penalty were 5 lost or even 7 lost per year, it would have almost zero effect. With redshirts, a school with well balance classes should not be taking more than 20 kids anyway.

As for Miami, lets say their violations are deemed 2x as bad as USC (I think they are worse, especially if the bounties accusation can be proved, but just for the sake of this conversation, going with 2x), nominally they should be given a 4 year bowl ban and 6 years of a 10 schollie reduction. In year 4-6, they'd roll with 60 scholarship players max and not have many more in years 3 and 7. OK maybe that does seem fair compared to USC. Will the NCAA do it? Dunno.

I hate to be a stick in the mud, but back when Cal used to play SJSU pretty regularly, didn't they try to stick it to Cal fans when the game was in San Jose by charging ~5x as much for that game as they did for their other games? If they're back on the schedule regularly, our AD needs to protect Cal fans from that type of gouging.

I'd love for SJSU to become a power. We need more top teams on the west coast to raise the profile here against the east coast bias.

D1 football, CA weather, Bay area / Silicon Valley on top of that and not having the same academic hurdles or rigors of Cal & Stanford, I'd say that makes for some decent upside right there. And, if (or when) they decide to make a bigger stadium, there is space for that too. San Jose is the 3rd largest city in CA and with over 30,000 students...

drunkoski;546518 said:

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hard for me to see a situation where SJSU would be a power. SDSU on the other hand could be if they started giving a crap about football.

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Actually, back in the 70's and very early 80's under Don Coryell and Claude Gilbert, they won many a Big West Championship with 9 and 10 win seasons...after Gilbert left, they went downhill......

Cal89;546377 said:

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SJSU had quite a program when I was at Cal. Top 20 and even 10 or close to it at times...

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SJSU has never finished ranked in the AP Poll. Ever.

In the Coaches Poll, they finished ranked only once and that was at #20 in 1990 with a record of 9-2-1. This is arguably their best team ever...but even so, Cal beat them that year 35-34.

As far as weekly polls during their glory days 20-odd years ago, I don't know. That's a mighty big paper trail. Pre-internet microfiche stuff, probably. Maybe somebody else with the time can dig it up. That #20 ranking in 1990 is the final ranking of the season.

Even so, the records available show that the SJSU of yesteryear started the season with early losses and I can't see a one-or two-loss SJSU being ranked on a weekly basis, especially with a purported East Coast sportswriter bias in favor of teams East of the Rockies and way down South that may exist to this day. I'm sure it was more prevalent two decades ago.

Furthermore, I don't know how the Big West of 20 years ago would be ranked as a conference in terms of Football. It seems to be Sun Belt level (comprised of 3 teams that later dropped football) and maybe woeful Cal of those days destroys it on a weekly basis if they were a conference member. I don't know, but most likely.

Cal89;546377 said:

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Really curious to see how they do now with more scholarship players. They have Stanford for their first game...

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I'm not a fan of Stanford, but the Trees will kill them because they are out to prove last year was no fluke. SJSU would have to put Andrew Luck on a stretcher to have a hope of winning.

In this case, it's not a "an enemy of my enemy is a friend" sort of deal and I actively want SJSU to win. No way. I dislike both schools and their fanbases. If I had it my way, Cal should rule the Bay.

I don't recall the poll, but if they finished #20 in any poll, that's probably what I remember. They were also quite a bit higher than that during the season, actually seasons. Being from the South Bay, I know this to be accurate as I followed them fairly carefully.

I remember my senior year in high school, 1984, they beat Cal handily, 2+ TD's as I recall. My freshman year Cal won. However we lost to them the next two years, including a pretty good beating by them... Mike Perez was their QB.

They were once good to very good team.