BYU football: Aztecs are improved team with coach Hoke

SAN DIEGO — This city has balmy climes, palm trees, and picturesque beaches. What San Diego doesn't have is a successful college football program.

San Diego State hasn't enjoyed a winning season, or played in a bowl game, since 1998. Last December, after suffering 10 straight losing seasons, the Aztecs lured Brady Hoke away from Ball State in hopes that he can be the man to establish a solid foundation and bring respectability to a program that has lost 20 consecutive games against nationally ranked opponents.

"We've got a lot of past history that we're trying to change, a culture," Hoke said this week as his team prepares to host No. 18 BYU Saturday (4 p.m., The mtn). "You have to believe in what we're doing and believe in each other. Those things are part of what you do as a coaching staff and as players — you try to improve and have a higher competitiveness every time you take the field."

Prior to his six-year stint at Ball State — a program Hoke guided to a school-record 12 victories last season and the program's first-ever appearance in the national rankings — spent eight seasons as an assistant at Michigan and helped the Wolverines earn the 1997 national championship.

Hoke and BYU coach Bronco Mendenhall worked together two decades ago at Oregon State, where Hoke was the defensive line coach and Mendenhall was a graduate assistant.

Since Hoke took the job at SDSU, he and Mendenhall have talked about changing the culture there. "My point was, there's always been athleticism and good coaching. It's just simply a clearer identity that's tied to culture," Mendenhall said. "That was, in a nutshell, what I told him. That's one of his strengths, establishing that. Time is certainly a part of it. I think they found the right coach, at least from my knowledge of him."

Why is Hoke the right man?

"There's a couple of things. Number one, he's very tough. I mean that not only mentally, but physically," Mendenhall said. "He demands a lot of his players. He has very high expectations. He's unrelenting in terms of holding them accountable. I think that has a lot to do with breeding and developing a culture. Once you get a culture set, then your team has a more clear identity. I think he'll be relentless in working to get that done."

Another key, Mendenhall said, is that Hoke has assembled a staff of experienced, proven assistants, including offensive coordinator Al Borges and defensive coordinator Rocky Long, the former coach at New Mexico.