THE RENO REPORT - Good Luck, Chuck!

An Iowa native & SDSU Alum on the Firing of Chuck
Long

By Jamie Reno
Exclusive for East County Magazine

November 25, 2008 (San Diego) — The announcement this week that San Diego
State University head football coach Chuck Long was fired stirred up wildly
mixed emotions in me. On the one hand, as a rabid San Diego State football
fan who attended SDSU in the 1980s and is sick and tired of losing seasons,
I was ecstatic. Get rid of the guy! On the other hand, as someone
who has idolized Long for the last 25 years, I was crushed. How could they
fire my hero?

Yes, I am admittedly conflicted. When you're born and raised in Iowa, as I
was, studying Chuck Long's storied biography is an unavoidable rite of passage
and rooting for him is an inextricable part of your DNA. While at the University
of Iowa from 1981 to 1986 (he redshirted his freshman year), Long had an epic
run. One of the greatest Big Ten quarterbacks of all time, he led the Hawkeyes
to four straight bowl games including the Rose Bowl in 1995 under legendary
coach Hayden Fry. Long, whose impossibly accurate passes, innate leadership
and calm demeanor let everyone on the field and in the bleachers know just
who was in control, was edged out by Bo Jackson that year in the closest Heisman
Trophy voting ever (Long should have won).

That season, in the most memorable game in Iowa football history, #1 Iowa
faced #2 Michigan at Iowa's Kinnick Stadium. With Iowa trailing 10-9 and time
running out, Long led the Hawkeyes on a methodical 66-yard drive against the
nation's top ranked defense, twice converting third-and-eight situations into
first downs. Long drove the Iowa team to the 12- yard line with two seconds
remaining to set up kicker Rob Houghtlin's game-winning field goal as time
expired. His numbers for the day against the best defense in the land? 26 of
39 passes for 297 yards. Take that, Wolverines!

A member of the college football Hall of Fame, Long was just as well known
for his classy demeanor off the field as for his athletic prowess on it. A
genuinely good guy, good student and good citizen, the humble but ever-confident
Long's legend in Iowa has only grown these past two decades since he graduated
- yes, with a diploma - in 1986. I've followed his career closely ever since.

Long was a disappointment as a quarterback in the National Football League,
but that was largely because he was drafted by a horrible football team. A
classic old-school pocket passer who was about as mobile as the Chargers' Phillip
Rivers--maybe even less so  --Long played for the Detroit Lions when
that terminally sorry team had one of the worst offensive lines in modern football
history. Long didn't have much of a chance to shine in Detroit, and although
he later played for the Los Angeles Rams, he never made much of an impact in
the pros. But that didn't tarnish his legend one bit among Iowans, who care
little what a player does after college as long as he contributes while in
Iowa City.

Long, whose pro career ended in 1991, eventually moved on to college coaching.
Returning to his alma mater in 1995, he served as Iowa's defensive backs coach.
Long had no coaching experience but very quickly became a respected defensive
coach. In his three seasons coaching the DB's (1995-'97), Iowa led the nation
in interceptions returned for touchdowns in 1995, and led the Big Ten in interceptions
in 1997.

After the 1998 season, Iowa coach Hayden Fry retired, and Long was considered
for the job, but Iowa instead went with Kirk Ferentz, who remains at Iowa City
today. Long left Iowa City to become the quarterbacks coach at Oklahoma,
whose head coach Bob Stoops and Long were teammates on Iowa's 1982 Rose Bowl
team. Long was a coach on the Oklahoma team that won the 2000 national championship
and coached quarterback Josh Heupel to a second place finish in the Heisman
Trophy balloting that year.

After the 2001 season, Long was named offensive coordinator.
Oklahoma won the Rose Bowl following the 2002 season, and in 2003, the Sooners
set a Big 12 Conference record by averaging 51.5 points per game. In 2004,
Long was named as a finalist for the Broyles Award as the nation's top assistant
coach. He was an assistant coach at Oklahoma for six seasons, including four
as an offensive coordinator, and Oklahoma compiled a 67-11 record during his
time there.

When San Diego State fired coach Tom Craft three years ago, all kinds of A-list
names were buzzing around Montezuma Mesa as his possible successor. When Long
was picked, some people were a bit surprised. Long appeared more than ready
to take on the duties of a head coach, and I was excited about SDSU's football
future for the first time in a long time. Long had no head coaching experience,
but he had paid his dues as a valuable assistant at two esteemed Division One
programs. He was a winner, and I just knew he would turn this program around
with his football knowledge, quiet confidence and indefatigable optimism.

But Long showed up at State with a bit of overconfidence. Perhaps he didn't
really know what he was getting into, but upon his arrival he inexplicably
told the media--me included--that he could win right away and that he didn't
think it would even be necessary to wait until he got all his own recruits
into place before the team started producing on the field. That proved to be
a gargantuan mistake in that expectations were raised. And certainly it didn't
help his case when Long proceeded over these last three years to win just two
road games and go 9-27. It's been ugly and painful to watch.

I went to San Diego State. I lived in La Mesa and rode my bike to school every
day. I went to every football game my junior and senior years. State had a
very good team my senior year, the one  in which we lost to, yes,  Iowa
in the Holiday Bowl. It was the year after Long graduated. Mark Vlasic, who
later quarterbacked the Chargers, led Iowa to a very narrow victory over SDSU.
It was an epic game, and I thought I would be seeing so many more great SDSU
football games over the proceeding years. But there have been far too few.

I still think Long could have turned the program around, but in Long's third
season his team should have showed signs of improvement. Instead, this was
arguably the worst season in San Diego State football history. The team went
2-10, losing to Cal-Poly (not even a Division One school) and then to New Mexico
70-7. Ouch!! The Aztecs, it pains me to say, have become the Washington Generals
of college football. The laughingstock. SDSU is quite possibly the worst football
team in the nation this year, at least they were until they pulled off a too-little
too-late upset of UNLV last Saturday in the season's final game.

Sure, there
were a ton of injuries to key players. And yes, SDSU had lost 13 scholarships
over the past three years because of a very poor Academic Progress Rate (APR)
that were mostly the result of the Craft regime and not Long's doing. But wins
and losses are all that matter. And this team had two many of the latter. Even
when you're in major rebuilding mode, even when you're trying to change the
entire culture of a football program and turn it not only into a winner but
one in which players are accountable in the classroom, you still need to post
a few wins. So now Chuck Long is out of a job. But am I out a hero? No, not
really.

Long's failures at SDSU don't change anything he accomplished in college.
They also don't tarnish his image as a class guy. He inherited a mess of a
football program, one that was reeling. The academic standard for football
players was a joke when Long arrived. Now the football players at SDSU actually
go to class. Well, some of them, anyway. Everyone who encountered Long these
past three years in San Diego describe him as an honest, personable, decent,
hard-working guy. Will he ever be a  head coach again? Yes, probably. But he'll have
to swallow his pride and go back to being a QB coach or offensive coordinator
for a while.

It's just crazy to me that San Diego State cannot produce a winning football
team. I certainly can't argue with the administration's decision to give him
his walking papers. Even if they'd won one or two more games this year than
they did last year, I would have insisted that Long be given the chance to
continue rebuilding. But this team was abysmal on the field, they were awful,
and the buck stops at the head coach's desk.

So, for the record, as a hardcore Aztecs fan I say, "See ya 'round, Long!"
But as a dyed-in-the-wool Iowa Hawkeye, I say, "I'll miss you, Chuck. You're
still a class act, and I wish the very best for you in the future."