Mountaintop View 4-18-18

The theme of today’s links happens to be San Diego State. Plus, some proposals at some rule changes, because the kick-off change wasn’t enough for one off-season.

Aztecs announce new staff members.

This is a few weeks old, but San Diego State filled two of their coaching vacancies. Ron Caragher was named the on-campus recruiting coordinator as well as offensive quality control. He came from SJSU and has 10 years of head coaching experience to boot. Similarly, Jerome Haywood was named the assistant on-campus recruiting coordinator and defensive quality control. He played for SDSU and later in the CFL.

Rocky Long signs an extension.

Also from last week, head coach Rocky Long will be sticking around Mesa through 2022. The press release mentions he is the winningest coach in the MWC and only three-time MWC Coach of the Year. He finished his 7th season as head coach and 10th with the school, helping build them into perennial bowl team and annual contender for the MWC Championship.

The Aztecs have a unique strategy to college football.

It’s an interesting read to be sure. Long says his program isn’t concerned with getting into a P5 conference, but rather winning the MWC title each season. They use non-conference games to develop the team and possibly pull upsets, while focusing on winning each in-conference game. Even bowl games are treated differently. On one hand this can all be seen as controlling what can be controlled rather than trying to prove themselves to P5 teams. On the other hand, this can be seen as a half-hearted and apathetic stance, more of a “you won’t get there with that attitude” mindset.

Rule Proposal: Limit coaches in the press box.

This NCAA proposal seeks to limit the amount of coaches/GAs on the field and in the press box. They propose 9 on the field and 6 in the press box. Doing simple math, the article says 15 is the exact number you get when adding a head coach with 10 full time assistants and 4 GAs. So this would impact quality control assistants and offensive/defensive analysts.

Rule Proposal: Ban coaches’ restrictions on transfers.

This NCAA proposal wants to end the power coaches currently have to limit or deny a player the ability to transfer. Along with this, they would be allowed to play immediately provided they maintained a certain GPA. Furthermore, this would include a clause where players could be let out of their scholarships if the head coach leaves with no penalty (this site wrote about something about that a few months back). There’s also a grad-transfer clause, which this site has been against. Similarly, they want to find a way to increase penalties for those programs caught tampering. It’s all extremely interesting and worth a read.

MWC releases rotation schedule through 2022.... and there are no surprises.

Consider this a teaser to the TV schedule, which is usually released sometime soon. The rotation cycle is the same as the past one, but still interesting to size up your teams home and away slates coming up.

On the horizon:

• From yesterday: Mike Garcia wrote about some new Lobos bball commits and Jeremy discussed Hawaii’s 2018 football schedule.
• Later today: Talking about the spring eval period.
• Coming Thursday: Our first roundtable. What does each football team need to improve upon next year?
• Coming Thursday: Casey (from OBNUG) and Mike revisit the Boise State 2014 recruiting class, starting with the QBs. Will either be here or on OBNUG.