Canzano: San Diego State elevated the stratosphere

Part 3 in a Pac-12 series.

San Diego State and Boise State played on Saturday at Snapdragon Stadium.

SAN DIEGO — John David Wicker kicked off his college football Saturday in the corner booth of a coffee shop on a misty and rainy morning.

“It was the gut punch of gut punches,” San Diego State’s athletic director told me.

More on that haymaker in a bit.

This is Part Three of a series on the new-world Pac-12 schools. The Aztecs will officially join the conference on July 1, 2026. The first two parts of the series took readers with me to Boise State and Gonzaga.

Wicker wore a black SDSU baseball cap, a gray sweatshirt featuring the Nike “Jumpman” logo, and black sweatpants to coffee on Saturday. Kickoff against Boise State was almost 12 hours away.

The AD’s game-day schedule would eventually unfold like one of those relentless Slinkys making its way down a staircase, but it was eight o’clock in the morning, and there was coffee in his mug, and a stillness in the room.

“I thought about ordering 20,000 rain ponchos off Amazon and maybe doing it as a giveaway tonight,” Wicker said. “But we couldn’t get them ordered. Maybe we should get them anyway and just have them on standby at the stadium in case there’s a next time.”

The AD’s duties that day would include greeting the team at the stadium and making the customary walk through the Snapdragon Stadium tailgate area. There would be countless handshakes and back-slaps with donors and season-ticket holders, a drop-in at the school’s “block party” event, and a pre-game radio appearance on the flagship radio station.

The “gut punch” Wicker spoke of?

It had nothing to do with Saturday’s game or the weather, although people in San Diego appeared to be freaked out by the precipitation. Wicker was instead talking about the phone call he received from former Pac-12 Commissioner George Kliavkoff on that fateful Friday morning in early August 2023.

“Kliavkoff called and told me the Pac-12’s vote to add San Diego State was the second item on the board’s agenda that morning,” Wicker said. “Everything was looking great. We were ready to be voted in. Then, George called me back and said, ‘We never got past the first agenda item.’”

The conference imploded.

San Diego State retreated to the Mountain West for cover. It was a pride-swallowing twist. One that would be reversed months later when the Aztecs and four fellow members of the MW withdrew, and joined Oregon State and Washington State in a conference rebuild.

“We’re thrilled to be in the Pac-12,” Wicker said.

San Diego State Aimed for the Moon

San Diego State had a hole in its academic game for years. The 125-year-old university was a (R1) research campus, but didn’t offer independent doctorates. It was hamstrung by an archaic state law that required California State University institutions to partner with a doctoral degree-granting institution, such as the University of California.

The Aztecs wanted to change that. It hired Huron Consulting Group to get to work on that front. It also examined the athletic department’s brand and profile and studied what might be done there.

Tim Walsh, Huron’s managing director, confirmed to me a couple of summers ago that retired Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany and retired Duke University athletic director Kevin White had joined his consulting team.

Were the academic and athletic missions intertwined?

“They’re part of the same strategy,” Walsh told me. “San Diego State wanted to elevate its brand into a different stratosphere.”

Three years ago, the Governor of California signed a law that allowed CSU campuses to offer independent Doctor of Public Health programs. Doing so didn’t just raise the academic profile of a school such as San Diego State, it spoke the love language of other university presidents. It positioned the Aztecs as a more attractive potential addition.

Unlike some other schools, San Diego State isn’t struggling to attract new students. As classes began in August, officials announced it had enrolled more than 40,000 students across its San Diego and Imperial Valley campuses for the first time in university history.

There were more than 95,000 undergraduate applications for the fall term. More than 6,600 of those were admitted as first-year students, also a record.

“I wanted Sean Lewis To Be My Coach.”

The Aztecs broke ground on their 35,000-seat football stadium — Snapdragon Stadium — in the summer of 2020. The school spent $310 million on the project and zipped through the construction process. Despite wet weather (and no free ponchos) the football game drew an announced crowd of 29,201 on Saturday night.

“I’m biased, because I built it,” Wicker told me, “but it’s an NFL stadium from an amenities standpoint.”

Season tickets for football at San Diego State are currently hovering around the 6,500-7,000 mark. That’s down from more than 8,700 in 2024. Coach Sean Lewis is 8-2 this season. His defense smothered Boise State’s offense in a 17-7 victory on Saturday that put the Aztecs in the Mountain West driver’s seat.

Lewis looks like a terrific hire. Wicker got that right. After Brady Hoke announced his retirement, the AD zeroed in on Lewis, who was working as the offensive play caller at Colorado.

What did Wicker like about Lewis?

“I mostly saw the job he did at Kent State,” Wicker said.

Lewis spent five seasons at Kent State before going to work as the offensive coordinator at Colorado under Deion Sanders. With Lewis in play as a candidate at SDSU, Wicker decided to move his football hiring process to the state of Colorado.

The AD had some other candidates fly into Denver for interviews. Lewis ultimately sealed the job by explaining it wasn’t just about football to him.

“He told this story about a player who played for him at Kent State who was late to a team meeting or event,” Wicker told me. “The player told Sean he’d got a flat tire on his way and had to wait for someone to come help fix it. Sean was confused by that.”

“You don’t know how to change a flat tire?” Lewis asked the player.

“No,” came the reply.

“Do you know how to change your oil?” the coach asked.

“Nope.”

Lewis decided on the spot that he wanted to add a ‘life-skills’ element to his coaching operation. Players at Kent State learned how to change their oil, fix a flat, and perform other basic skills. Wicker told me, “It was done for me at that point — I wanted Sean Lewis to be my coach.”

NCAA Tournament Units Add Up

San Diego State’s basketball program was the runner-up for the national championship in 2023. It was an energizing postseason run. Brian Dutcher’s team plays in a 12,000-seat on-campus basketball arena. It has a sweet basketball practice facility on campus, too.

The new-world Pac-12’s performance-based revenue distribution results in an “eat what you kill” formula. Schools will keep 50 percent of the revenue from NCAA Tournament units they earn, per sources.

Based on recent tournament performances and back-of-the-napkin math, San Diego State might expect to receive roughly $1.4 million in NCAA Tournament revenue from the Mountain West. In the new-world Pac-12, however, the Aztecs could rake in up to $8 million for the same on-court performance.

SDSU is deep and talented again this season. Fans and students will fill the campus arena for home games. “We’re like the NBA team in San Diego,” Wicker said.

Is San Diego State a basketball school?

Or a football school?

It’s a fun debate with the football team coming off a Saturday-night victory that put it in first place in the league. But the hysteria around San Diego State basketball reached a fever pitch with Kawhi Leonard in uniform and Steve Fisher on the bench years ago. There were conference titles, a couple of Sweet 16s, all that.

Wicker said, “They captured the imagination of the city.”

Then came Dutcher’s Final Four run.

The SDSU football program had Marshall Faulk in the 1990s. He was legendary, but his talents on the field never resulted in a ranking in the Top 25 that rose above No. 21 in the AP Poll. It gets me thinking about Lewis and the potential upside of the football program.

Would an end-of-season run in football cause a spike in season-ticket sales for next season? Could the football team someday glue fans to the seats like the basketball program does? What would winning out do to San Diego State’s bottom line?

Buried in there is another question about Lewis and his job outlook. It’s one of the great dilemmas in college football. Lose too many games and your coach is a bum. Win too often, and the same ‘bum’ gets job offers from other schools.

“You control what you control,” Wicker said.

The Numbers Tell a Story

San Diego State’s $67 million athletic department budget last year suggests the school will be a well-funded operation by new-world Pac-12 standards.

Spending in football rose in recent years, spiking nearly 40 percent from 2019 to 2024. The Aztecs spent $23.5 million on football last season. They’ll spend even more this season. And while the terms of the new-world Pac-12’s media rights deal aren’t yet known, the expectation is that it will be better than what they earned in the Mountain West.

As one league source told me this week, “Our schools will have more dollars tomorrow than they had yesterday.”

The Aztecs have momentum where it counts. The basketball program is humming. The football program is winning, too. Wicker told me that his donors are excited about being in the Pac-12.

San Diego is not Los Angeles. It’s not 5.9 million TV households. But San Diego is the eighth-largest city in the country, and it provides the conference with a badly needed presence in Southern California.

I sat with Wicker in that coffee shop booth on Saturday. He spoke about vision, hope, and enthusiasm for the new-world Pac-12. But first, he told me about that gut-punch call he got from George Kliavkoff.

Said Wicker: “We got to the Pac-12 anyway.”

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