Fresno State athletic program aims high

Its back to the wall, Fresno State athletics is going for broke — again.

The Bulldogs athletic program is entering its final year in the Western Athletic Conference. Kicking off this key transitional season is the unusual football opener Saturday at Candlestick Park against California.

The nonconference game is being put together by an East Coast promoter. Fresno State already has sold about 12,500 tickets, and university officials are hoping for a payday of about $1 million.

There’s excitement brewing about a football team led by a Carr (Derek, younger brother of former Fresno State great and NFL No. 1 draft pick David Carr) and a rebuilding men’s basketball program under new coach Rodney Terry.

But it’s the challenge 10 months down the road that is both rejuvenating and haunting the Bulldogs’ world. That’s when Fresno State will join a Mountain West Conference that is supposed to be a big step up in status and competitiveness.

University officials insist their main thought this year is “Win the WAC!” Yet, it’s human nature to look ahead, and these same officials admit they’re ecstatic about moving to a new home in July.

“It’s an exciting time,” Athletic Director Thomas Boeh said last week. “We are well-positioned to go into the Mountain West and we’re well-positioned to compete there.”

Coaches, students and fans already are catching Mountain West fever.

“I think it’s a good move,” said Rodrigo Andrade, a 22-year-old senior who was hitting the books last week in the Fresno State student union. “I’m hoping the Bulldogs get better and better.”

Jim Tully of Clovis, who described himself as an avid college sports fan, said the Bulldogs’ future was bleak in the WAC.

“They had to get into the Mountain West,” said Tully, 47, as he dove into a sandwich last week at the Dog House Grill near the campus. “The move was driven by money. I hope they do well.”

And fourth-year Bulldogs swim coach Jeanne Fleck, who started her career more than 20 years ago as an assistant at Mountain West member Wyoming, said Fresno State and its supporters should be proud of their high ambitions.

“That’s the way life works,” Fleck said. “You always want to better yourself. And if you can, you feel better.”

Stepping up — again

But good feelings and good results are two different things.

“Once we’re there,” Boeh said of the Mountain West, “we’re going to have some challenges ahead of us.”

That’s putting it mildly.

For 40 years, it seems like Fresno State athletics has constantly been one step ahead of a collapsing bridge.

In the 1970s, the Bulldogs and their fans realized they had to build a new football stadium or watch their program go the way of the dodo bird.

In 1991, Fresno State President Harold Haak, weeks away from retirement, announced that the Bulldogs were leaving the deteriorating Big West Conference for a WAC that enjoyed some national prominence and showed the promise for more.

Now the WAC is coming apart at the seams at the same time big-time college sports — in particular, football — are undergoing earthquake-scale changes.

So Fresno State makes yet another leap. Perhaps it’s fitting that at the same time, the athletic department has replaced the natural grass in its football stadium with synthetic field turf — a $1.2 million nod to keeping up with the upper echelon of its sport, the schools that belong to Bowl Championship Series conferences.

College athletics, never a stranger to the temptation of wealth, has gone mad for money. Ambitious programs can’t live with it, can’t live without it.

And most of the money, generally from huge post-season bowl payouts and lucrative TV contracts, is concentrated in the BCS.

The effect is obvious: Money begets winning and winning begets money.

There are six conferences in the BCS. The WAC isn’t one of them. The Mountain West isn’t, either, but Fresno State is betting this new conference has the potential to reach that level or can generate the political clout to force a more equitable system such as a football playoff.

The Mountain West is quite a gamble on Fresno State’s part.

The BCS conferences already have shown their disdain for the Mountain West’s aspirations by simply ignoring them, and perhaps with reason. The Mountain West, as its name suggests, is mostly anchored in neighborhoods with more sagebrush than people.

And there is no guarantee for Fresno State that the Mountain West will lead to more money, be it from TV or bigger crowds at Bulldog Stadium. If Mountain West opponents such as Air Force, San Diego State and New Mexico sound familiar, it’s because they used to be Fresno State’s stablemates in the WAC. Boise State, long the WAC’s football powerhouse, joins the Mountain West this year. Hawaii (football only) and Nevada, also WAC members, join the Mountain West at the same time as Fresno State.

Mountain West Commissioner Craig Thompson at a news conference last month didn’t hesitate to acknowledge the conference’s limitations. The average athletic budget in the Mountain West is $38 million, much smaller than most schools in BCS conferences.

The Mountain West covers only about 5% of U.S. households. Mountain West schools in the last 11 years have spent $840 million on facilities, but this is dwarfed by the capital projects among BCS schools.

Yet, Thompson seems to like the Mountain West’s position, as if he is itching for a fight and wants the conference’s schools to cover his back.

“Our attitude has always been somewhat of the old western, pioneer spirit,” Thompson said. “…We have to do things differently to cover our needs and concerns.”

Taking the high road

Money being the lifeblood of college athletics, Fresno State has no choice but to try a new venue even if it has the feel of an old pair of shoes.

“We’re at a crossroads,” football coach Pat Hill said. “It’s like any other business — there are the super businesses and then there are the other businesses trying to compete at the highest level. We’re one of those teams trying to compete at the highest level. Where do we go from here? We keep competing.”

Why this optimism at Fresno State despite the long odds? Maybe it’s because Fresno State officials already have been through the fire and are proud of their athletic program’s progress in the last five years.

The litany of tragedy, outrage and despair connected to the Fresno State athletic program in the early part of the 21st century is well-known: A former basketball star convicted of murder, a near-continuous array of NCAA violations in the men’s basketball program, a handful of gender-equity lawsuits, academic embarrassments, sword-wielding recruits … on and on it went.

Things started turning around in about mid-2005. That’s also when Boeh took over the program.

“I give much of the credit to Thomas,” said Paul Oliaro, the university’s vice president for student affairs and chairman of the Fresno State Athletic Corp. board, which oversees athletic finances.

Boeh’s lack of popularity in some circles is so common it’s become a cliché. He killed the wrestling program soon after he arrived on campus, embittering many fans. He was at the helm as the school trumpeted a $10 million donation from former Bulldogs football player Alphonso Bigelow that never has materialized. And he spearheaded major changes in the Bulldog Foundation, the 60-year-old fundraising group that has seen its membership plummet partly in response to what some donors see as Boeh’s gruff manners and heavy-handed management style.

Harry Gaykian, a Bulldog Foundation member for 43 years who works often with Boeh but retains close ties to some of Boeh’s critics, said hard feelings were perhaps inevitable.

“The university went a different direction” in its fundraising strategy, Gaykian said. “We weren’t happy for a long time. But times change. You get used to it.”

Boeh says he has heard it all. Then he and his supporters point to a few of the things the athletic department has accomplished during his tenure: A new aquatics center, a new lacrosse program, the rebirth of women’s swimming, the new turf in Bulldog Stadium, consistently balanced budgets despite the recession and big jumps in scholarship costs, a rise in big-check donations, across-the-board increases in academic progress rates, a graduation rate heading toward 60%, an aggregate grade point average of over 3.0 among all 450 athletes and, perhaps most importantly, the absence of NCAA officials, judges, police officers and “60 Minutes” reporters banging on the athletic director’s office door and demanding to know why Fresno State athletics is the shame of the Valley and the laughing stock of America.

Those in the know say Fresno State had to clean up its act if it hoped to woo the Mountain West.

“The strength of our program positioned us to get the invitation,” Fresno State President John Welty said.

Thompson in an email said Fresno State brings many strengths to the Mountain West. There are renewed rivalries, such as with San Diego State, he wrote. And there is the renown of Hill’s program.

“Certainly the Bulldogs have created a national perception of playing anyone anywhere in football,” Thompson wrote. “That, along with some wins, will continue to build the national reputation of a changing conference.”

This habit of many outsiders to confuse Bulldogs football with Bulldogs athletics drives Fresno State officials nuts. Ask these officials about the future of Fresno State athletics in the Mountain West and they make every effort to mention as many different programs as possible.

But it’s football that convinces some 13,000 Bulldogs fans to fork over up to $95 per ticket for Saturday’s game that is a three-hour-drive away.

It’s football that enables BCS conferences to consistently enjoy bowl payouts of $24 million, which is the size of the entire Fresno State athletic budget this year.

It’s football that convinces TV networks to sign multibillion-dollar contracts with the biggest conferences.

And it’s football that lures some of America’s best known, most prestigious universities to cheat in that chase for riches.

This all-too-human dilemma — what we love can be the death of us — is much on the mind of Fresno State’s Welty as the Bulldogs prepare for a new era.

“The huge TV contracts just lead to the arms race getting bigger and bigger,” Welty said. “There’s been a lot of discussion about cost containment, but virtually no action. With the Division I football schools, there’s got to be more equity of some kind or we’re going to have the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. It’s going to have disastrous consequences.”

By George Hostetter / The Fresno Bee