Lost in the Bay Area Shuffle
By Tom Schreier
San Jose State is the alma mater to football figures such as Bill Walsh, Dick Vermeil and Jeff Garcia, but you wouldn't know it based on the football program's popularity today.
Walsh won three Super Bowls with the 49ers in the '80s after playing tight end in college. Vermeil was a backup quarterback at San Jose State before coaching the Philadelphia Eagles, St. Louis Rams and Kansas City Chiefs. Garcia was also a quarterback at SJSU and won four Pro Bowls in the NFL, but has always been known more for marrying Playboy model Carmella DeCesare.
Even with these notable alumni, the football team is still irrelevant in California. The most press San Jose State seems to garner is when they play USC as a warm-up game for the Trojans' regular season.
On Friday I went to Spartan Stadium not to watch the home team, San Jose State, but rather to watch Hawaii, a Western Athletic Conference rival that was in town for a nationally televised game. The Hawaii football program has a great following. Spartan Stadium was packed with Hawaiians from the Bay Area and natives who took a four-hour plane ride to catch the game. The Warriors are essentially Hawaii's national team. The Hawaii Road Warriors tailgating service filled a quarter of San Jose State's practice field.
There are plenty of reasons why SJSU football doesn't draw large crowds. They are in the Western Athletic Conference playing teams such as Louisiana Tech, Idaho and Utah State. They are not in the Pac-12 where they would be playing the likes of Stanford, USC and Oregon. There is also a lot of football options in the Bay Area. The Raiders and 49ers have strong followings along with Cal and Stanford traditionally fielding strong teams.
Spartan Stadium (capacity: 30,456), which opened in 1933, is hardly a mecca like Stanford Stadium (renovated 2006, 50,000) or California Memorial Stadium in Berkeley (renovated for 2012 season, 63,000). In fact, mention Spartan Stadium and most people (even in California) will think of the arena in East Lansing, home to the Michigan State football team, which seats 75,005.
The Hawaii-SJSU game was a good experience. Sections 131-34, which housed the road team's fans, were rocking as the Warriors came back from a 20-7 halftime deficit by forcing five-straight turnovers and went up 27-22, only to lose 28-27 in the final seconds. Even Krazy George Henderson, the man who claims to have created ‘the wave' during a 1981 Major League Baseball playoff game in Oakland between the Athletics and Yankees, was beating his drum and got the crowd into the game.
Besides the exciting game, it is also fun to say I spent the evening in the same venue that Bill Walsh, Dick Vermeil and that guy who married Carmella DeCesare once played.
Tom Schreier is a senior mechanical engineering major and writer for the Sports section.