Canzano: San Diego State elevated the stratosphere
Part Three in a Pac-12 series.
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.